1-800-290-7477 now or visit us at mso fund.com. >> that does it for us, and remember to tune in tomorrow morning for special coverage of former president jimmy carter's national funeral service. coverage starts at 6 a.m. right that does it first, and remember to tune in tomorrow morning for jimmy carter's national funeral service. coverage starts at 6:00 a.m. right here on msnbc. and on that note, i wish you all a very good night. from all of our colleagues across the networks of nbc news, thanks for staying up late. i'll see you at the end of tomorrow. ♪♪ tonight on "all in,".

>> this area of altadena has become a wasteland. you've got some homes that are still standing, but it's just a matter of time. >> the most destructive fire in the history of los angeles is still uncontained. multiple major wildfires raging in l.a. and ventura county. tonight, the latest from southern california and the stakes for victims hoping to recover and rebuild. >> we lost everything we own, but it doesn't even look like a house anymore. then the justice department says they will release a report on from's insurrection trial before inauguration as the president-elect makes an appeal to the supreme court over his new york sentence. and 12 days until he takes power, how to process donald trump's threats of imperial conquest. >> if you look at greenland, for example, if the people there are being treated horribly, i would bet the people would probably vote for an alliance with the u.s. >> "all in" starts right now.

good evening from new york. i'm chris hayes. tens of thousands of californians are under evacuation orders across los angeles metro area as five wildfires are currently burning, largely without containment. the newest of those fires, the one you see in the north there on your screen is the lidia fire, which started burning just this afternoon in altadena, california, near the san gabriel mountains. the largest, of course the one that we were covering last night, is the palisades fire, which is growing. it is not contained, in fact growing at an alarming rate. nearly 16,000 acres have burned so far. governor gavin newsom called its size and scope at this early stage unprecedented and for all intents and purposes, the town square in the pacific palisades neighborhood of los angeles simply no longer exists. thousands of properties have burnt to the ground. homes, businesses, schools, places of worship just all gone as firefighters struggle with an overwhelming disaster and a shortage of water.

>> we lost everything we own but it doesn't even look like a house anymore. it just looks like a -- >> so for at least 1,000 structures have been destroyed and that number is almost certainly to rise in the coming days. nbc news national correspondent jacob soboroff joins me live from pacific palisades with the latest. jacob, i have been talking to you and texting with people from that neighborhood and around there all day. to a person, everyone is just saying, it's apocalyptic. i've never seen anything like this. this is off the charts. this is something new entirely. >> it's sickening, is how i would describe it as a lifelong or at least native son of pacific palisades, chris. i think when you think about devastation like this, the only

thing that brings to mind what we see all throughout pacific palisades right now would be the big one. as kids here, growing up in southern california, you are warned about what to do. stop, drop and roll in the event of this big earthquake along the san andreas fault. it turns out it wasn't the big one at all, at least not yet. it is the palisades fire. pacific palisades, as we know it, has ceased to exist over the course of the last 36 hours. not only the town square, as you described it, the village is gone, but there is no infrastructure in this town any longer. the two grocery stores are gone. the library, the public library is gone. the park is gone. the high school has burned. both public and private schools in town have burned. houses of worship have burned. over my shoulder is the methodist church in town. it's on fire right now as i'm speaking to you. i don't know how -- a important

neighborhood in los angeles, one of the bigger -- and forget about important but a los angeles neighborhood. there is a city that the fabric of neighborhoods, have literally been wiped off the map in the second biggest city in the united states, and the number one most populous county in america. >> there are lots of people who are dealing with the loss , you know, encountering the loss in front of them, but also a lot of people at this hour, talking to people in a different metro area who have moved once, now they may move again. there is folks in santa monica who are in kind of a wait and see position. what is the kind of lead in the, in terms of the projection of the movement of this, and how informed, and how reliably informed our people along the border of the fire about what to do and where to go? >> there is no reliability to any of this because of one thing, and that is the winds that have continually shifted, seeming like almost every other minute. and even since i talked to you,

i'm not wearing my mask because it was relatively calm and the winds were blowing in a different direction. but i can already feel them starting to change, and that's what fueled this thing. it was a tinderbox ready to go as of the dry vegetation, because of the lack of rain that we've had here, and because of these hurricane force winds. 100 mile an hour gusts last night, according to reports issued, that instantly took the fire that was up in the mountains, in the palisades highlands, and brought it all the way down, miles down to the pacific ocean. and basically not doubt everything in its path. i don't know, i'm sure there are viewers that are watching us right now familiar with pacific palisades. most of the homes in the flats of pacific palisades are no longer there, chris. i'm talking about virtually the entire town as far as most people know it. >> jacob soboroff, who is there in pacific palisades, the neighborhood is as you said, essentially wiped off the map in many respects. thank you, jacob. stay safe. as always, i want to go to nbc news national correspondent morgan chesky. he joins us from altadena,

california, which is facing the eaton wildfire. morgan, what's the latest there? >> chris, we are here in altadena and i'd say good evening but there's been absolutely nothing good about what we've witnessed today and what this eaton fire has done that's created really 24 hours of hell for anyone who lives in this community that's been made completely unrecognizable by what's become a generational disaster for a combination of reasons. we are on one of the main thoroughfares this town, chris, that tonight is filled with smoke, to the fact you can't even see either end of it go fire trucks that are countless but never enough to contain the fires that keep breaking out. as you can see over my shoulder, this just one of the buildings adding to a growing toll. and what's been more frustrating to hear, as we've reported in and around this area, chris, is hearing from the fire crews that

have tried to save homes and other structures and have connected those hoses to fire hydrants, only to have little to no water pressure. we witnessed an apartment building become engulfed in just a few minutes, watch a crew connect, and i say out of every ten fire hydrants you connect to, how many are you able to get water from? he says very few, if any. he says the norm has become little to no water pressure, forcing crews to essentially stand back, do whatever they can to try to keep flames from spreading to nearby structures and watch buildings like this one behind me, and a junior high just down the street, just burn. right now a lot of people still don't know if their home still stands and essentially you have not just here in altadena, but across the greater los angeles area, in these fire zones, a tale of two scenes. what is burning right now, and as you can see behind me, chris,

what has already burned, this is some of the wreckage still smoldering. we can tell from looking at this that this likely burned earlier this morning. that's when the wind really fueled the flames. we know the strongest winds came in the morning. i think, is, the scary part tonight is knowing that these winds are in done just yet and it's going to make for an incredibly treacherous and dangerous night ahead here in altadena as crews fight this brutal blaze. chris? >> morgan chesky, thank you for that and stay safe out there. we appreciate your reporting. at least 1000 properties have already been destroyed by the wildfires, putting additional strain on california's already dire home insurance crisis. according to analysis from the san francisco chronicle, more than 100,000 californians lost their home insurance between 2019 and 2024 point last year alone about 1600 homes lost coverage in the pacific palisades neighborhood.

that's the neighborhood jacob was justin. is the site of the largest fire. it's a neighborhood that's been essentially, as jacob said, wiped off the map, and that is in large part because insurance companies are no longer willing to sell insurance on california homes in areas at high risk of fire damage. and as you look at these pictures, you can understand the calculation they are making. so as a result, california has created a kind of insurer of last resort. it's called fair and it's where folks go when they cannot get their homes insured by any other entity. and the number of homes insured by fair has absolutely skyrocketed in recent years. about 150,000 in late 2019 to more than 400,000 last year. and think about where this is going to go after what we are seeing right now. fair is backed by private insurance groups like state farm and allstate but it doesn't have unlimited funds. in the event of catastrophe, like the one we are seeing, i mean in some of the most high- value real estate in america , the program could easily run out of money. here is what the head of that program told legislators last spring.

>> it's a gamble, right? and we are one event away from a large assessment. there's no other way to say it because we don't have the money on hand and we have a lot of exposure out there. >> fair was one major event away from catastrophe. they didn't have the money on hand to pay out in the event of a major disaster. and so, last summer, california changed how it works. >> the california department of insurance, which regulates how much a company can charge customers, said if a fair plan can't pay its claim, it can ask for that money from insurance companies doing business in california, which can then, with the permission of the department of insurance, turn around and recoup some or all of those costs from their policyholders. >> you track that, right? if fare can't pay off the billions of dollars of claims, and we are looking at billions of dollars in claims, i think it's fair to say, the companies that backed it, which are the

private insurance companies which didn't want to write the policies for these climate exposed areas, they can turn around and they can pay into the benefits but they start raising the cost on premiums for everyone in california to make that money back, which makes insurance in california more expensive. and i know that i just spent two minutes on like a pretty long detail of insurance, but i've got to tell you, this is everything now. you can't build buildings if you can't ensure them. you can't get a mortgage if you can't insure it. insurance is the cornerstone that we build the built environment atop of, okay? this is where we are. this is the future we are in now . wildfires in california, they are bad. we are seeing a historic one in los angeles. they are going to get worse. the overwhelming majority of the largest fires in the state happened in the past 25 years, and this is one of these areas, unlike hurricanes, where terry camp located in terms of

modeling, this is one area where the causal connection to climate change is really quite straightforward. according to everything we know, all of the modeling, all of the observed reality, the warmer the climate gets, the more fires and the worse the fires are. insurance is going to get more expensive. there will be more insurance deserts. eventually there is going to need to be a bailout of many. whether that is from the government or through a private insurance company raising premiums, the money is going to have to come from somewhere, and it's not just. it's texas, and it's florida, and it's a whole lot of the country, and we are just at the beginning of this curve. i think this is one of the stories of the decade. ben keyes is a professor of real estate and finance at the university of pennsylvania's wharton school. he has done extensive research on how climate risks are impacting insurance costs in america and he joins me now. ben, i want to put up this

chart. you and i were texting last night after the show. shout out to our nba group thread, and you sent me this chart which blew my mind, which is just a pie chart of the worst california fires -- again, only through 2021, okay? and if you leave it up on screen there you see that narrow slice, 1932 through 1999, than 2000 to 2009 and 2010 to 2019 point than just 2020 and 2021, which is more than half of the chart. that chart would look very different now because we've got 22 and 23 and 24. so let's just start with this basic causal relationship between climate change and wildfires. >> thanks for having me, chris. first, my thoughts and , chris. condolences are with everyone in los angeles that's dealing with these fires. as you look at that chart and you think about what's changed over a short period of time, it's not where people live. we think about the pattern of where people have been moving over the last decade, yes they've been moving into riskier areas, moving into that wildland

urban interface that gets talked about when understanding where wildfires occurred. but what's really changed in the last few years is that these are the hottest years on record. so we've had rising temperatures. we've had less rain. this was a year where los angeles saw about 2/10 of an inch of rain since early in the spring and this creates the conditions that are going to lead to more and more extreme fires. >> in terms of insurance, and again, it's like you have these images of just horrifying and in its own way spectacular devastation, and these wrenching stories. i've been talking to people who have friends or family members who lost their home. insurance seems like dry and remote but it is now like problem number 1 for thousands of people, today and tomorrow in the days after. what are these folks --what is going to happen to these people who didn't have private insurance, and the state created essentially this backstop, particularly in this neighborhood so that they could have insurance? >> yeah, the state backstop is going to be bearing a huge amount of these losses, because

they don't get to choose where they are doing business. i think we have this idea of a, let's run the government like a business but this is a state run program that is the insurer of last resort. that means they injure everyone who comes along and says i can't find a policy in the private market and that means they have a very negatively selected portfolio. they have a portfolio that's the riskiest in the entire state and their exposure has simply exploded. it's gone up ninefold since 2018, from about $50 billion-$450 billion of exposure. so when you're thinking about an insurance entity and you want to have some capital on hand to protect your self in the event of a big disaster like this one, they have a very small sliver of capital on hand. it's actually a glowing surplus to where they were a couple of years ago but it's only on the order of a couple hundred million dollars. you add to that the reinsurance and some of the other protections that they have, and losses that amount to around $3 billion will be enough to trigger the consequences that you described, which is leaning on the insurance providers who

are in the state to cover the cost and ultimately leaning on existing insurance policyholders. so you can think of this very much like an indirect tax on the rest of the state and this is one of the challenges that arises when the private insurance market shifts where they're willing to lend, and right now we are seeing an incredible amount of tightening in the private market. >> this, to me, and again, this is not --this is a life and death and a consuming question for thousands of people right now in california, literally, like from the moment you found out your house was on fire. but it's not just california. florida, lots of other states. this notion, i can't stress this enough, it's not private insurers saying here's the premium and it's super expensive. it's we are not offering. we won't injure this area. we don't-new thank you. the larger and larger areas of the country, that being the case, which means the government as the kind of insurer of last resort, as larger swaths and through that area because of

climate change. >> that's right, and what that does is that pushes the risk into becoming socialized because we are now all bearing these costs and this is worrying on a number of levels. insurance is generally regulated at the state level but this has become a concern at the federal level. so you have someone like senator sheldon whitehouse calling hearings of the senate budget committee, which i appeared before in december, with great concern around this increase in nonrenewable's. insurance is an annual contract. private insurers reassess their risk on a regular basis with fantastic data and sophisticated models point they are extremely nimble as you alluded to earlier, the built environment simply isn't nimble. it is in harms way and it's not easy to adjust and so we need to think of this more holistically at every level of government about addressing these risks. >> thank you so much, so when i turned to on this issue, who has made this sort of his life's work and has been a huge resource for me thinking through these issues. thank you very much, i appreciate it. >> thanks for having me.

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1-800-290-7477 now or visit us at mso fund.com. >> this is a story about getting away with treachery and coming back stronger. these people don't disappear, they just go underground. heroes willing to face down tyranny and the risk to the country if they fail. >> rachel maddow presents ultra season two of the chart topping original podcast. all episodes available now. to understand more with msnbc. >> with just 12 days before trump takes office again, attorney general merrick garland now has in his possession with 12 days before trump takes office again, attorney general merrick garland now has in his possession special counsel jack smith's final report and while he says he

intends to release the portions related to trump's election interference with the indictment around january 6th, the justice department will not release the portion relating to the mar-a-lago classified documents because trump's codefendants are still facing trial. right now, though, the doj can't release any of jack smith's findings and that's because, remember judge aileen cannon, the one that trump himself appointed just a few weeks before he did january 6th, she blocked the release of both reports, even though one is not in her jurisdiction. it will now look to the 11th circuit court of appeals to decide whether to overturn her injunction, to allow the public to see what jack smith uncovered about trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. >> former deputy assistant attorney general in the department of justice, author of the talking sub stack and he joins me know. let's start with some ground

stuff on what special councils do according to rags which they are supposed to issue final reports. we all remember the special counsel final report on the president joe biden's classified documents he had, which you got a lot of attention, so they have to make the reports, right? >> yes, and they give their prosecution and declination decisions. robert her her's report was 350 pages. but it's not simply what they decided to bring but what they decided not to. there are at least two charges here. in the first case, 2383 insurrection. in the mar-a-lago case, 2071, either of which would've provided for trump's disqualification from office. why didn't they bring those cases and why didn't they charge co-conspirator scott terry, boris epstein? that should be addressed in the reports. >> okay. both reports have been written. they are there. now house folks filed for an injunction . they asked aileen cannon to basically say you can't release them and she said yes without even getting a response from the doj. if i'm not mistaken, some of the argument, i was just reading, some of them are really wild. like for instance, that immunity means that the report would

create like opprobrium or public criticism of donald trump and that the presidential immunity decision means you can't have that, which just struck me as genuinely deranged. what do i know? why can she even have jurisdiction over the jan sixth part of this? >> she has none over jan sixth, which they made clear. when she issued it, she didn't know that they had very wisely separated them out. she probably shouldn't have jurisdiction even over mar-a- lago, because she's dismissed it. but rather than make a big stink about it, doj went straight to the 11th circuit and just said, give us this release. the one thing about the canon order that's way out there, she said you can't do it until the 11th circuit rules and three days thereafter. totally lawless, why three days after, and they did tell the 11th circuit, make sure to dissolve that part. as to your point about

opprobrium, that is what he's trying to say here because normally you shouldn't be able, under immunity principles, to get a stay but he's looking for that to be a special presidential principal. and the question is there, will the supreme court embrace it ? >> i guess the question is ultimately does the supreme court weigh in on this. if they do, what do they do? where goes the 11th circuit? it seems there is little really no argument to keep the jen reese 61 secret. let's cabin for a second the mar-a-lago docs because there are codefendants and you could drop the charges and just expect that he's going to pardon them, and do it. but just on the sentencing thing, which is we are headed towards on friday, trump is supposed to be sentenced in new york courts. he lost on the appellate level. he's now filed, i think at the highest court of appeals and the new york state system and also some sort of federal court injunction , a bunch of hail marys. who is going to decide that one? how is he going to get out of it, harry? >> he's doing six things at

once. if he's going to get out of it here's how it will work. the u.s. supreme court will say it's an immunity issue and therefore he gets an immediate appeal. we'll take it and consider and they just bottle it up for a few days, it will go off calendar. but they shouldn't, chris. there is a principle that if you are saying i don't want to go to trial, you get --that's immunity in that, you are very right. here he's just saying he made, merchan, a couple that evidentiary rulings, and there is no, in the language of the court, irreparable injury there, so they shouldn't do it but if they do, that's what they will do. >> that theory, they will do it. >> they have no argument, as you say, on the january 6th stuff. on the other stuff, they say they won't do it themselves unless it's dismissed. they said that six, seven times. every time i read it i thought, are they fixing to dismiss the cases and then release everything. >> people should know, as the supreme court is considering all

this, that donald trump called sam alito today, just to chat about a possible job applicant to be the general counsel of the pentagon is trump is like, very in the weeds of general counsel staffing. alito admitted they talked. he said they did not discuss the emergency application he filed. i was not even aware of the time at application such an application had been filed and i'm sure this conversation between donald trump in the spring court that might decide his fate on this was entirely aboveboard. there was nothing at all corrupt or weird about it and we can just take both of these men's words for it. that about does it. harry litman, thanks very much. >> less than that, abe fordyce kicked off the court, i'll just mention. >> thank you, harry. >> thank you. still ahead, donald trump said he would lower prices for americans. why is he talking about invading our allies instead?

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1-800-290-7477 now or visit us at fund.com. >> trump's going on a shopping spree. he's got his eye on a country, an island and a canal. if you look at trump is going on a shopping spree. he's got his eye on a country, an island and a canal. if you look at greenland, for example, if the people there were being treated horribly i would bet the people would probably vote for an alliance with the u.s. >> it does seem right for the picking. >>'s argument about the panama canal is long overdue. >> you better bet we are absolutely going to change the gulf of mexico to the gulf of america.

>> the fact that they don't want to become part of america makes me want to make them. >> jesse watters never took no for an answer. with less than two weeks until he is sworn in, donald trump is in talking about balancing the budget or lowering the price of eggs anymore. remember that? lower-priced groceries. he won because groceries were high, now he's going to make them lower, right? no, he's talking about annexing overseas territories and maga is scurrying to praise trump's latest social media ramble about buying greenland and taking back the panama canal as well is making canada the 51st state, maybe adding mexico or renaming the gulf of mexico to imply u.s. ownership. the latest installment of this genuinely weird drama came yesterday as donald trump jr. flew to greenland as a pr stunt. the house republican --the republican run house foreign affairs committee tweeted, then deleted a post celebrating from's territorial ambitions with a headline from rupert murdoch's paper., quote, president trump has the biggest dreams for america and it's un- american to be afraid of big dreams.

and i'm going to be honest with you, i don't quite sure know what to make of this. i will level it's an obvious troll, at another level it's like another weird loyalty test for his faithful , like he says a thing and they all go yes, sean hannity, i'm the expert on political public opinion in greenland. so they have to sort of adopt his rantings. i also think there is something serious here. in his first term, trump floated the greenland balloon repeatedly. like it's a real thing. it wasn't like a thing he publicized. it clearly not at him. second of all, if he finishes out this upcoming term he will be 82 years old. the guy is the oldest man ever elected to be president. i think he's thinking about his legacy and whatever strange way he thinks of that, as a property speculator. and then there's also the third aspect.

this doesn't come out of nowhere. ronald reagan rose to prominence in national right- wing politics on demagogue and about the panama canal and right-wing authorities and authoritarian movements and leaders are all, as a rule, obsessed with conquest and territorial expansion everywhere. you could, for instance, read a single book about the long centuries of constant shed and mayhem between european powers over their territories, or about world war i, or read a single book about world war ii. this is what autocratic leaders and demagogues do. they need external enemies. they need conquest. it was out of all that bloodshed, tens of millions of people, that an international norm evolved, a norm still too often violated, yet important nonetheless, that says you don't just take over other people's land. lidia paul green is an opinion columnist in the new york times and a cohost of the matter of opinion podcast. she recently participated in conversation with some of her more conservative colleagues on trump in crisis mode on the world stage and she joins me now. you also served as a journalist and a bunch of places around the world. first of all, what do you make

of all of this? >> i mean i think that on one level it is a lot of trolling , right? and it's also some sort of prime distraction. it's a way to, i think, essentially act on the world stage in the way his apparent heroes, xi jinping and vladimir putin, these autocratic rulers that he has admired and talked about, he sees them going after bits of territory, trying to reshape the map of the world. what i think when you talk about make america great again, it's really a backward looking exercise, this idea of going back to some legendary time when things were so wonderful and great. and in this case, we talk about paris, we talk about other things. we are really talking about the 19th century and we are talking about going back to a period there -- >> mckinley. >> exactly. so we're talking about going back to a period when it was a kind of smash and grab and everybody was trying to kind of find as much territory as they could in the world, and that was

the way that you got security. how did all of that end? it ended in world war ii and the holocaust. it ended in just astonishing human suffering and that gave birth to an international system that allowed us to find ways to resolve these kinds of disputes and talk to one another. we don't need greenland. we are in a nato alliance with denmark, you know? >> yes. all of it makes sense if you are like, let me put on my 1893 cap about how i would think about this issue. it actually is very clarifying, like tariffs and imperial conquest. this thing about the u.n., i want to read part of the u.n. charter. one of my unified theories for why everything is so messed up in the world is that literally losing the actual generation that remember the horrors of world war ii, and some of the lessons that gave about fascism and great power conflict . the

united nations charter preamble, we the peoples of the united nations, determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime have brought untold sorrow to mankind, and to practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbors, have resolved to combine our efforts to accomplish these aims. you know, grabbing other people's land, and that's the other thing about this troll. the greenland thing is --he talked about it a little the way that putin talked about crimea. >> totally. >> if you ask them, they really kind of want to join us. i'm sure maybe they had a little plebiscite over there, maybe they'd vote for us. it's the same thing. >> absolutely, and i feel like we don't actually have to go that far back. my mother is from ethiopia, right? and ethiopia and eritrea have had this kind of ongoing border conflict. ethiopia wants to have an access to the sea and so on and so forth. two of my uncles died fighting in those wars between ethiopia and eritrea, and for what?

>> conquest and territory. >> this is why we have these international agreements, these ways to work out these problems. look, if we put tariffs on denmark over this greenland fantasy, the only thing that's going to happen is that ozempic is going to become more expensive. >> which is an actual thing. >> absolutely. denmark is the one to make it. >> the idea of if you give a sort of genuinely psychologically damaged and broken person the biggest bully stick in the world, this is sort of what you get, and i think a lot of people are like, he's fooling, but again, that point you made about jeudy and putin, the kind of liberal internationalism that is so often honored in the breach and is so hypocritical and leads to horrible atrocities and that people look the other way, it's still better than what came before and i think what trump wants is what came before where like no one is pretending and

maybe we take our piece of the pie, russia takes it, china does it, and we'll see what happens. >> that's the thing, that's a whole way of viewing the world and it's a very old way but it's also a way that i think there are a lot of players who would prefer to be operating in that world. you are talking about a world that is purely transactional, where there is no sort of agreed-upon standards about how anybody is going to act, and i spent a lot of time focused on the developing world in the global south, because that's my passion and where i spent most of my time as a reporter. and you talk to officials from these countries, and they're like, we are tired of lectures about human rights from the americans. you know, you talk about your principles but then you ignore them in gaza and things like that, so i do think that there is an audience for what trump is selling. >> absolutely. >> china is in most parts of the world, rushes in most parts of the world, and they are doing these deals. and you've got other players, whether it's -- >> just get what's yours. >> lidia poling, thank you very

much. >> it's a pleasure. still to come, after a barrage of dangerous lies from donald trump and republicans about trans people in america, a really important thing, that you should know what is really true. that's next. if i get declined. >> oh yeah, it's literally called noting decline. so you can feel better about picking those cards. >> buying credit cards on the experian app with no ding. decline and apply for them with confidence. >> let's get real. leaks from incontinence happen. but that doesn't mean that you have to be uncomfortable or embarrassed. forget diapers and paper garments. they're embarrassing, expensive, and never feel right. wherever underwear is the fashionable and reliable solution for incontinence,

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republicans have now run multiple campaigns, congressional, statewide, presidential, playing up fear, for instance, trans women playing sports and trans youth seeking medical procedures with their parents consent, obviously, or simply seeking to use a public restroom with privacy and dignity. and given all this, given how much emphasis there has been on this, i think it's worth asking what is the scale of the issue we are talking about? why are we talking about it? republicans don't have an answer. take west virginia senator jim justice, in 2021 as his state's governor he signed a ban on trans students in school sports but he couldn't tell stephanie ruhle it solved any real-world problem. >> can you name one example of a transgender child trying to gain an unfair competitive advantage at a school there in west virginia? >> well, stephanie, i don't have that experience exactly to myself right now but i will say

this -- >> not yourself, your state. sir, can you give me one example of a transgender child trying to get an unfair advantage? just one in your state. you signed a bill about it. >> i can't really tell you one. >> this republican moral panic has given most americans a wildly incorrect notion of the scale of just trans life in america. so in 2022, hugo polled 1000 americans and found they really tend to vastly overestimate the size of basically every minority group, including the proportion of people who are transgender. respondents guest more than a fifth of the country was trans. the pure estimate is 0.6%. oh, but they're taking over women's and girls sports. another just lie as the head of the ncaa told the senate last month. >> how many athletes are there in the united states in the ncaa schools? >> 510,000. >> how many transgender athletes are you aware of?

>> less than 10. >> less than 10 in 510,000? >> yeah. >> less than 10! in other words, less than two thousandths of a percent of college athletes are trans, but thousands of american children's are being brainwashed and altered with puberty blockers. also just not true. we've got a new peer-reviewed study looking at more than 5 million health insurance claims by adolescents , as one study organizer told npr this week, there were less than 1000 youth that accessed puberty blockers and less than 2000 that ever have accessed to hormones. in other words, less than 1/10 of 1% of teenagers with private insurance in the u.s. are transgender and received gender related medicine. here is what is true. there are far, far fewer transgender americans than the far right want you to think there are. they want you to think the numbers are inflated because they need the fuel of real,

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get xfinity streamsaver with netflix, apple tv+, and peacock included, for only $15 a month. 1-800-290-7477 now or visit us at mso fund.com. >> there's two ways, i think to interpret the election, right? one is that people actually like donald trump or they came there's two ways i think to interpret the election. one is that people actually like donald trump or they came to really like him. the other was that inflation was high and the incumbent was unpopular, which essentially suppressed the anti- trump majority that had shown up for a few elections. the former political director of the afl-cio, the largest federation of labor unions in the u.s., which just got bigger today, makes a compelling case for the latter. he argues the results were on a swing right, embracing trump but no confidence in democrats and their system as a whole. michael port orser served as political director of the afl- cio. he's now senior fellow at center for american progress.

i like the piece you wrote. first of all i want to start with just the data, which i think is so important. there is exit polling data which is the actual results as like pre-election polling is and then there is vote cast voter file data, which is like the actual result. that's the data we should be building our takes off of but it takes a few months and you're working off that data. >> well yes, and it's good to be here. it's partly votes cast, which is one of the exit polls but they are already about six of those states that have their voter files up dated, which gives you a better sense of what's actually true because when you go and vote you are counted as having voted and so it's not a survey at all. >> right, so we can get a much better sense from that. the basic idea here, which i've been pinging around, is like what happened in this election basically, was it trump's message or trump himself had

some sort of unique political appeal, or was he there with his own abilities at the time of this essentially anti-incumbent frustration? and you make a pretty convincing case it really is that one. >> right. i think that it was as close as it was because of how unpopular he is. like if it had been a fresh candidate i think it would've looked much more like the backlashes against incumbents around the rest of the world and the point i make is that when you look at the actual number of people going out to vote, there were about 19 million people who had voted for biden four years ago who just didn't vote this time. really, think about that, right? part of the problem, too, is when we look at each election

result just in this very narrow context of what did each campaign do, we missed the larger picture of really the 21st century where, for the first time, we've had nine of the last ten elections firing the party in power. right, that hasn't happened. we haven't had three consecutive flips in the white house since the 19th century, right? people don't like the choices that they're being offered, and basically the best way to win this election is to have lost the last one, and i think the commentary, which is breathless, about trump winning gives the false impression that individual americans have decided they like what he has to offer. it's just not the case. >> that point, i want to take a step back because this is something i'm pretty obsessed with. if you think about johnson in

'64, which was a reelection. he was a sitting president. huge, smashing ratification of johnson. he wins by a huge amount over goldwater. you went about nixon in '72, incumbent, people say we are sticking with nixon. if you think about reagan in '84, huge historic victory, incumbent. we want to keep going this way. and then clinton in '96 was a little different for his race but he won a whole bunch of states. it was not a competitive race the whole way. basically big majorities like we like the direction this is going. it just seems inconceivable to me in this century and day and age that you could produce that kind of outcome anymore. i mean, 2012 and '04, the incumbent squeaked by, but the idea that you could produce a situation which a big majority is like, yes, the status quo rules just seems not possible. >> no, that's not in the offing right now at all. i think especially because of how much we really have separated back into two sections.

one is the blue states and the red states. that's 85% of the population. and in every election in this century, the democrat has won a landslide in the 17 blue states and a republican has won a landslide in the 25 red states. it's two different nations. they are winning big majorities only and half the country, and i think that's part of the illusion of these close national elections is there are very few places anymore where elections are close. it's just the aggregate of the country. >> michael pot hurts her, the piece is in his sub stack. appreciate it. >> thank you. >> that is all in on this wednesday night. alex wagner tonight starts now. good evening, alex. >> hard to imagine any politician, anything gaining a majority of support or interest or anything.alex. >> it's increasingly hard to imagine -- set aside a politician. anything gaining a majority of supp