of private life and political discourse. that book will be out in january. i'm really excited to have it out in the world. i think it's useful for people. i'll also be hitting the road going to different venues across the country to talk about it from san francisco to boston to philadelphia to seattle to washington, d.c. to hasan to pittsburgh to chicago, and that's not all, even more dates and locations are in the works. you can either scan the qr code on your screen or go to msnbc.com/sirens call to get one of the tickets to those events. that is "all in" for tonight. have a great day. first and foremost, happy holidays to all of you. and congratulations for almost making it to the end of 2024. it feels like many, many lifetimes ago, but believe it or not at the start of this year in the early days of 2024 as donald

trump vangsuished his republican primary opponents, one of the big questions hanging over the race was whether or not donald trump was even eligible to run for president. multiple lawsuits were filed across 36 states arguing that trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election were wholly disqualifying under section 3 of the 14th amendment. and for a very brief moment a few states successfully removed trump from their primary ballot, but that was until march, when the supreme court ruled unanimously against them. it was just one in a series of consequential rulings that benefitted trump, chief among them the high court's decision on presidential immunity. that decision, which determined presidents are immune from prosecution for any official acts, that decision effectively delayed the start of trump's federal criminal trials until after the election and ensured that trump would not face legal

consequences for trying to overturn the 2020 election until voters head into the polls in this election, in 2024. and oh, what an election it was. the sitting president dropped out of the race 107 days before election day. then he endorsed his vice president as the democratic nominee. meanwhile, the republican nominee survived one assassination attempt in pennsylvania and then he survived another near assassination attempt in florida. and then after all of that, americans in each of the seven swing states chose to return the 45th president to the white house. >> i want to thank the american people for the extraordinary honor of being elected your 47th president and your 45th president. america has given us an unprecedented and powerful mandate. i will govern by a simple motto,

promises made, promises kept. we're going to keep our promises. nothing will stop me from keeping my word to you, the people. we will make america safe, strong, prosperous, powerful, and free again. >> in light of trump's victory in november the federal and state criminal cases against trump have all either been dropped or suspended indefinitely. in other words, trump's delay tactics worked. but still the fact remains that donald trump is the first and only american president to be a convicted felon. but also in just a few weeks on january 20th, 2025, donald trump will reenter the white house emboldened. trump previously famously said that he would not be a dictator, quote, except for day one. and on that first day we will very likely see the start of a sweeping conservative agenda including carrying out the largest mass deportation operation in american history,

expanding domestic oil production, pardoning the january 6th rioters, and reshaping the federal government by firing potentially thousands of career government employees. trump's plans will be assisted in large part by republican majorities in both the house and senate. he'll also have a group of hard core loyalists filling his cabinet to execute his vision. now, whether or not all of trump's picks gain confirmation, well, that remains an open question, but it certainly seems possible that people including pete hegseth, kash patel, pam bondi, and robert f. kennedy jr., that they will be running key agencies within the federal government. so how should be orient ourselves as we head into 2025? what can we expect? joining me now are claire mccaskill, former democratic senator from missouri, and john allen, senior politics reporter. it's great to have both of you

here, wise people, sage people, fortune tellers. claire, i wonder -- you've been through trump one, and i wonder how you're thinking about the dawn of trump two, and how some of the very big promises, bigger even than the promises the first time around will be. >> he was going to build a wall the first time around, no. he was going to repeal obamacare. he blew the deficit up. really there were very few promises he kept in the first administration except cutting taxes for wealthy folks, and he managed to do that with a republican-only vote in the senate and also in the house. i'm not even thinking democrats voted for it in the house. there may have been a few, but bottom line is he's now promised a mass deportation. you know, that is way harder than it looks, and i don't think a huge chunk of folks who voted

for him are going to like the way that looks. he says he's going to take off taxes to social security, all kinds of things to blow up the deficit. honestly, i don't see any way that the congress going to be sitting next year with a very slim margin in the house and only a four-vote leeway in the senate is going to do the things that he promised. so i will tell you right now, promises made, promises broken. >> yeah. john, from the sort of bear knuckle brawl, how do you see trump's chances getting these signature proposals actually run through the bureaucracy and the reality of congress. washington, d.c. is not called the swamp for no reason. trump's grip may be tighter around the gop, but the fact remains they have very, very

narrow ajorities here. >> she does point out the most important thing, which is the republican party in the house has basically no margin for error. you've seen president-elect in trump now basically take people from the house that he's going to put into his administration, making that even harder to get things through the house. so that's going to be the biggest challenge. of course, the senate rules do allow for something -- i don't want to get too nerdy here, but they alloy for something called budget reconciliation. i think you're going to see trump put together a reconciliation package and maybe those will be tax cuts and other efforts like you mentioned with an effort to get it to the house and senate because with reconciliation you only need 50 senate votes whereas reconciliation you need 60. that is something folks should look at, what is he putting into a reconciliation packagech and

to senator mccaskill's point a lot of things he wants to do will blow up the budget and reconciliation is intended to help close the gap in deficits and bring down debt over time. in practical reality over time it's been used to do the exact opposite, and all these proposals trump has on taxes would explode the deficit and add to the debt. it's not clear what he would do to offset that. i know elon musk is looking at government programs he thinks he can cut. i don't think the votes are going to be there in congress for anything close you would need to offset what the plans would do the deficit. >> yeah, i mean, unsurprisingly i look at the landscape and see chaos, claire. not just because of the thin majorities, but you have republicans up for re-election in 2026 that may not want to get onboard i don't know mass deportations. you have elon musk and vivek ramaswamy in the mix literally dictating maneuvers in the house and senate. i mean, this just speaks to a

center of gravity that is dispersed and requires someone in the white house who can manage warring factions, and trump's behavior up to this point has not been to manage warring factions but, in fact, pit people against each other. he likes the "game of thrones." that may be interesting from a narrative point of view, but from a governing point of view it seems he's setting himself up for disappointment and maybe that's being euphemistic. what are your hopes for the senate being a source of potential remediation in all of this? >> well, you know, there's a song in the music man about trouble, and it says "t" that rhymes with "p," and in this instance that stands for primaries. so what you're talking about is who in the senate that is a republican is so worried about thaprimary that they will do things that will get them in trouble in the general? and, you know, alex, people need

to remember there's still states that will elect a republican or a democrat in the senate. i mean, pennsylvania is a good example, north carolina not too long ago. you've got ohio who just turned over a seat by a pretty narrow margin. so you've got -- you look at a state like utah where trump has never been the end-all be all to the people in utah. so you look at some of these senator and you look at how long is it going to be until they run, how worried are they about a primary, and how much can they stand up to trump. but honestly the thing that's going to be the most interesting is the clash of the titans, trump versus musk because trump loves deficits. he loves debt. trump loves debt. his entire career has been about debt. and musk is busy acting like some richest man in the world from the sidelines is going to somehow dictate to the members of congress what they do. there will be a blow up there

and i can't wait to watch it. that's what i'm looking forward to. >> you're already popping the jiffy pop. to that point, john, it's such an unusual arrangement because elon musk in the closing days of the biden presidency and the sort of dawn of the second trump term, elon musk is acting in a more prominent role in terms of hill negotiations than even j.d. vance, the former senator. elon musk has interfaced with companies but is out dictating fiscal policy and legislative priorities. i guess from your vantage point how long you think that lasts and what you see in the strange for lack of a better term love triangle between elon musk and donald trump. how feasible is that in the long-term? >> a couple of things. one, when president trump realizes that elon musk thinks he's president musk there's going to bea problem. there's not room for two

presidents in the united states. and donald trump doesn't see room for another alpha male at the head of his government. number one, i think that seems like a collision course that's going to happen. number two, to your point, elon musk does not have governing experience, and you just have to look at his twitter feed to see some of the things that he suggested that vivek ramaswamy that they're not only nonstarters on capitol hill but also the kind of things where it would become a political disaster for any of the members of congress voting for them. when they start to understand how government works perhaps they will adjust a little bit and try to figure out what it is they can actually do and can't do. the third thing i would point out is elon musk has been given the head position or cochairmanship, i guess, of vivek ramaswamy with a blue ribbon commission. and i think senator mccaskill can tell you how much power blue ribbon commissions have in congress, and to my experience the enter's not.

obviously those suggestions will be taken seriously by republicans on the hill or at least some of them, but it's going to be very difficult to get votes for an entire package of cuts or piecemeal cuts. >> you know, there's a question of what the legislative branch does, but there's also a question of how useful -- i will say -- the cabinet agencies may be in carrying out parts of trump's agenda. on that note, claire, i wonder what you make of the picks that trump has launched into the stratosphere thus far. does it help him to have someone like pete hegseth at the american department when he wants to weaponize the u.s. military potentially against u.s. citizens or does it make sense that pete hegseth has no experience managing a bureaucracy that size? cuz it help him that tulsi gabbard or kash patel or does it

hurt them. >> it means tbd. it only takes four and some of these folks like tulsi gabbard her meetings with people who are steeped in the intelligence community in washington have not gone well, and i'm talking about republican senators. she appears ill-prepared. she doesn't really understand how the intelligence community works. she has been flat-footed about her love affair -- i should put that in quotes, not literally, just figuratively, her affection for bashar al assad in syria, which we now know we're finding the mass graves of the citizens he's killed. and the other chance people are taking a vote, will they face plant, will they actually be able to execute? and trump is doing something that is not uncommon in washington. yes, he won the swing states, but he didn't even get 50% of

the vote, alex, and he's going to overreach here. there's a huge chunk of people who voted for him who just thought maybe the price of ground beef and milk and eggs will come down if he's president. and he's got that over his shoulder, the economy. and the tariffs he's proposing, the other things he's proposing, that is not a way to get to a place where you're going to bring down inflation, so it's going to be very interesting to see whether or not democrats can stand up to him in a way that speaks to voters instead of talking about him. >> a heaping dose of real talk for your stocking stuffer. from claire mccaskill, john allen, thank you you guys both for joining me on this very special evening. i wish you happy holidays, lots of rest for the months and years to come. thanks my friends. >> happy holidays. still to come tonight, how donald trump's love of crypto could make some rich folks even richer all at taxpayer expense. plus anti-abortion activists

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during his first term in the white house, president trump delivered for the anti-abortion movement. he appointed the three conservative supreme court justices who were key in overturning roe v. wade. now with trump just weeks away from returning to the white house, those activists are ready to hand the incoming president a new to-do list. one of their top asks is outlawing medication abortion. here's what trump had to say about that during his first post election interview on "meet the press." >> will you restrict the availability of abortion pills when you're in office? >> probably -- i'll probably say exactly what i've been saying for the last two years, and the

answer is no. >> you commit to that? >> well, i commit to it, do things change? things change. i don't think i like putting myself in a position like that. things do change, but i don't think it's going to change at all. >> i don't think it's going to change at all, but also things do change. access to abortion pills remains very much a live issue. three states recently filed a joint lawsuit against the fda renewing efforts to restrict the primary drug used in medication abortions, mifepristone. joining me now is mimi tim raju he's president and ceo of reproductive freedom for all. thank you for joining us to peer into the eight ball for us as a country. the first question i have for you are the states trying to sue the fda over mifepristone. what makes that different than the last effort to do basically the same thing that ended with the supreme court basically

rejecting the plaintiffs argument saying you guys don't have standing to sue here? how is this different, and do you think it could be more successful? >> yeah, i think the biggest difference is we don't have a biden administration to defend the fda and its decisions. and we don't have a biden administration fda anymore either. not only do we not have friends in the white house and in the admin who will protect medication access abortion, we will have embedded in hhs, in fda, in the solicitor-general's office, a team of folks who are on the same side as the states that are suing the fda, and that is deeply, deeply problematic. the fda is supposed to be above politics, but we already know the play book from project 2025. and we know based on these nominees trump is putting forward and folks he's surrounding himself with, they have every the intent at pursuing this agenda. i think it's just so interesting, however, that donald trump himself understands extremely well how deeply

unpopular that agenda is, which is why that "meet the press" interview was so interesting, and why he's so careful to not commit one way or another. he knows a majority of americans including the ones who voted for him support unfettered access to abortion including medication abortion and that it's most popular and the most widely used form of abortion in this country. >> i think that political reality is interesting. you can see him try to have it both ways when you hear him talk to nbc's kristen welker. things will change but things don't change, just keeping the door open to whatever may happen, you know? i do think it puts his fda in the hot seat if they, in fact, are the ones that don't argue against a ban on medication abortion and/or it puts the supreme court in the hot seat and puts them in the position of once again outlawing abortion given the fact that, you know, medication abortion is the most common method of abortion in the

united states. are you -- i mean i know what you think about trump and the fda, but i do wonder how you think of the court and is there anything that might suggest they would be hesitant to do the thing that i think has tarnished their reputation perhaps in the eyes of some irrevocably. >> so i'll say the negative part first, i mean the court kicked the can down the road really by ruling on standing. they left the door open for anti-abortion extremists to file a different kind of case with more credibility, so, frankly, i'm very concerned about this court. this is the same court as you pointed out that overturned roe v. wade. this is a court that did not equivocate specifically on this issue. they left it to standing, which frankly the lower court should have dismissed it in the first place on standing. but, yes, the fda should be an independent agency. there is a shot or a chance that the administration and the folks in it will decide to let 20 plus years of authorization of fda

approved medication abortion stand. i am skeptical about the court. that being said, we absolutely have to continue to build public awareness of the popularity of this medication. you know, last year when this case went to the court from the kazmierczak court in texas all the way to the supreme court, we ran a multi-platform campaign educating american voters about the importance of medication abortion. and that's exactly what we're poised to do again. it does matter when the public is raised in awaterness and actativeness on these issues. overturning roe was a terrible, terrible precedent to set for so many issues trump and the gop are trying to avoid being tagged with. >> you know, i wonder independent of this particular effort to ban medication abortion, there's also state level efforts like the one undertaken by texas attorney general ken paxton who is suing a new york doctor for unlawfully providing abortion inducing drugs to texas residents, which

is in direct violation of state law. basically this new york doctor is part of a group that mails medication abortion to women who cannot access it themselves. there are shield laws in eight states that protect those doctors from doing what they think is medically necessary for these women. it is a challenge between effectively red states and blue states. red states saying that's not legal, don't send medications here, and blue states saying we're going to treat them accordingly. even if it's not ultimately successful, interests a chilling effect on doctors who want to do what they think in their eyes is the right thing for these women. >> so, look, we know there's a reason ken paxton is going after this new york doctor, and you're completely right. it's the chilling effect, but it's also an opportunity for them much like they did on immigration, much like they did, you know, by busing immigrants to other states, they're trying make the case that there's something wrong with doctors

from one state taking care of patients from another. they know -- and we said this last year or the last time this went to court. they know that medication abortion is popular. they know it is very easy to access, that it is a back door -- it is a way around abortion bans in red states, and they have suitly no interest in letting their constituents have access to this care in anyplace else. this doctor in particular, they're putting their careers on the line to take care of patients from other states. what i think is really interesting and a story i would like our side to do a better job of telling, and we're going to be talking about it a lot in the next coming year is the success story of blue states. the fact that california, new york, so many places have these fantastic show blocks, that they have supportive ledge gislature attorney general, they are providing folks to come over and get this care. this is how we're going to

survive the next couple of years before we can really get access, and these folks are heroes. i want us to talk about how the blue states are leading the way and protecting our federal freedoms and expanding them, while the red states continue to do what a majority of americans do not accept, which is hold these women captive in their states restricting them from bodily autonomy and care they deserve. >> we're now at the point we have to have sanctuary states for women's reproductive health care, and here it goes. i really appreciate your time. >> happy holidays. still to come, the cruelty is the point for trump 2.0 when it comes to immigration, but the resistance is already beginning. plus how donald trump's crypto boosting could make some of his biggest financial supporters very, very rich. that's next. iggest financial supporters very, very rich that's next.

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i think crypto it was got a great future, i think it does.

maybe we'll off the $35 trillion. i'll write it on a little piece of paper. >> it did not get a lot of attention at the time, but in the lead up to the election donald trump really did say that he wants to pay down the national debt using crypto currency. and now that he's been elected, trump's wild crypto fantasies may very well become reality. as charley warzel writes the atlantic there is speculation trump could make good on the proposal to create a strategic reserve of bitcoins in the u.s. which could involve the federal government buying 200,000 bitcoins a year over the next few years. this would be an incredible scheme, a wealth transfer from the government to crypto whales. that seems like a pretty kazy thing to do not least but crypto currency claims to be all about creating money that does not rely on the u.s. government, but it makes sense when you understand crypto currency not as a new technology or the

symbol of some online libertarian movement but as an industry rife with speculators looking to cash in on donald trump's second time. as warzle writes, whether trump understands crypto beyond the basic notion that it's a good way to win votes and get rich off the backs of his most fanatical supporters is not clear. trump is corrupt and he loves money. joining me now is the author of that piece who's a staff writer at the atlantic. charley, i'm such a fan of your writing and this piece in particular was very helpful for me and i'm sure other people who read it to understand the handshake between maga and crypto. can you elaborate more on the sort of anti-institutional bent that unites these two subgroups of people and why there's so much kinship in these two worlds? >> yeah, there's a lot of synergy here, and a lot of it is probably cynical, right?

as i wrote in the piece crypto kind of seems like a technology that was in the some ways built for the way donald trump likes to conduct business, right, which is off the books and sort of nakedly financial. like greed is good in the crypto ecosystem. and perhaps more important i think is the ethos of crypto currency especially bitcoin and the idea of block chain, the technology it's built off, which it is an anti-institutional technology. that's the way that it was created to -- you know, to take the middle man out, to take away the banks and the central bankers and the government and the oversight and regulation and all those institutional guardrails that they help protect people but they also leave people out of the financial system. people who are into crypto are really into that anti-institutional authority, and it makes a lot of sense. we are in an extremely low trust moment. the maga world is full of people

who are incredibly skeptical and distrustful and resentful of elites, and they like the idea of this. so this culture has a real, you know, overlap with the maga and the trump ethos. >> yeah, nothing says anti-institutional like the u.s. president creating a strategic bitcoin reserve built on goals. what? i mean, can we talk about the irony of maybe using federal gold reserves to buy a strategic bitcoin reserve? i mean the whole point of crypto is that it's outside the government. do you see any issue with the creation of this? do we need to worry about a crypto crash, also will the public care? i mean this is undermining the very point of crypto. >> it's undermining the point there's just -- you know, it's hypocritical, but it's also very alarming, i think. who's to say whether donald trump's going to make good on any of this or whether this is lip service to a constituency

that, you know, put a lot of money behind him and put a lot of faith in him. i think what's really alarming about this is the fact that this would be a wealth transfer from the federal government to the people who currently hold a lot of bitcoin. the government will be buying bitcoin from these people, and every time -- every year it would buy about 200,000 bitcoins. every year it did that, that -- you know, that purchase would drive the price of bitcoin up, further enriching those people who have crypto and making it so the next year when the government was buying those reserves, it would cost the government more money. they'd be getting a worse price. and then, you know, aside of the corruption element of that, you also have this idea of the government having the strategic reserve of the most volatile currency that has really existed that's not like tulips, right? it's a very alarming thing for, you know, our global financial system and our government to be immeshed with this technology

that's, like, best suited for doing crime. >> well, and as you point out the narrative of that taking crypto bros and making them richer year over year is not something the quote-unquote populous working class of maga would tolerate. in theory it's such an obvious transfer of wealth like many other trump policies to the richest again and again and again. one would think there'd be political fallout from that. >> when i put all this stuff, the trump policies, just the notion that, you know, crypto has enriched a certain set of people hoohave become really important political donors to this researcher molly white who studies crypto currencies and the volatile effects, what she said to me was very striking, which essentially is there's this anti-institutional authority adopted by these folks. but then once they get the power or the influence, they basically lose that and say, well, we're

not anti-institutionalist, it's just we want to be the institutions, we want to be the authority. and that's i think what we're trying to see here with if these trump proposals go through, if we start to see, you know, the posh regulations for crypto that help it thrive, i think what's going to happen is it's just going to be a new set of authority, and it's going to be, you know, the people who are rich from this. >> i mean, charley it's a great piece. i'm a big fan of your wrying like i said at the top of the segment. everybody should go read it. it's important perspective in the coming months and years. thank you for your time in this busy holiday season. >> thanks for having me. stim to come trump is vowing to use even more inhumane tactics on undocumented immigrants during his second term in office. what those groups that fended off his worse impulses before,

what those groups are planning to do now. that's next. those groups are pg to do now. that's next.

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members. >> i don't want to be breaking up families, so the only way you don't break up the family is you keep them together and you have to send them all back. >> as trump prepares to fulfill those promises, advocacy groups are also preparing to fight him. and at the forefront is the american civil liberties union, the aclu which effectively delayed the implementation of trump's muslim ban while he was in office and helped end the practice of separating migrant families. with less than a month before inauguration day, the aclu says it's ready. joining me now the chief advocacy and information officer. it's great to have you here. tell us something good. dierdre, first of all, trump is preparing for the largest deportation operation in american history, and i wonder how you guys are thinking about a battle which could be of epic

proportions? how are you preparing? >> thanks for having me. really glad to be here to talk about this. trump starts talking about criminals and immediately moves to talking about deporting 20 million people, which is, in fact, double the estimated number of people who are actually undocumented in our country. and the aclu has been preparing on three fronts. first, of course, our litigation front. and i just want to remind you that during trump's first administration the aclu filed more than 400 legal actions against the trump administration and was successful in many of them even arguing before trump appointed judges. so we are confident in our litigation team's prowess and ability to meet this moment. second is what we're calling our firewall for freedom. and this is an effort that we are doing with our affiliates. the aclu has an affiliate in every single state in this

country, and those affiliates have close relationships with their governors, their attorneys general, the legislatures, the mayors in cities. so we've been working together to build out a firewall to protect people's rights and liberties at the state and city level. and then finally there are our millions of grassroots supporters all across the country. we've been holding trainings. we have hundreds and hundreds of people coming to these weekly trainings to learn about what we can anticipate from a trump administration and start to get ready to fight back. >> can you talk a little bit about the states and the firewall? what is it the firewalls of freedom? what does that mean when you say you're partnering with states, i'm assuming they're blue states whether it's governors, mayors, et cetera. is that advising them how to create bulwarks against trump's most draconian policies, or what does it mean on a practical level? >> exactly. o son a practically level it's

giving them the tools they need to exist. to say, no, our state or our city's resources are not going to be used to carry out your undemocratic plan, whatever it may be to violate people's rights. states do not have an obligation to take their state resources whether it be police or national guard or proprietary personal information about their residence and use it in service of trump's political agenda. they are under no obligation to do that, and we're helping them have the tools to not do that. >> states rights is now a liberal cause. i do wonder. you know, you mention the aclu has had success arguing its cases before even trump's appointed judges. how are you guys thinking about the supreme court where so many of these high profile pieces of litigation end up, and they seem to have handed trump some very real wins this year. how are you looking at that as

the final, you know, end game to a lot of this? >> first of all, i'll just remind you that hardly any cases go to the supreme court. it's less than 1% of all legal cases that are heard across our judiciary system go to the supreme court. so many, many cases are decided in lower courts. but, yes, the supreme court does have a mixed record, and, you know, i think we've really seen in the aftermath of the dobbs decision a real disappointment with how politicized the court has been with the general public. however, we see courts as an important piece of protecting democracy. we still argue in front of the supreme court, and we still expect a fair hearing. >> well, listen, all i know is we are going to be looking towards you for a lot of information. i think there are a lot of americans that are looking for push back. it's great to hear how you guys are thinking about the road ahead, and we will be in touch

in the coming weeks and months. thank you for spending a bit of the holiday season. i hope you get some rest before january 20th. thanks for your time again. happy holidays. we will be right back. your timn happy holidays we will be right back. everyone customize and save hundreds on car insurance with liberty mutual. customize and sa— (balloon doug pops & deflates) and then i wake up. and you have this dream every night? yeah, every night! hmm... i see. (limu squawks) only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪

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one final note before we say good night. putting this show together would not be possible without all the radiclas smart and talented people who work behind the scenes. they're also quite nice. here are the 104 people who every week bring you alex wagner

tonight and the rachel maddow show. roll them. ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪

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♪♪ happy holidays. i'm ari melber. i hope you are having a wonderful holiday season tonight. we have a special edition of "the beat." we're calling the egot edition. that of course famously stands for emmy, grammy, oscar, tony. it's one of the