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hi there everyone. >> it's 4:00 in new york, one week after the earliest warning signs and six days after the first sparks of wildfires that have now turned life completely upside down. >> for hundreds of thousands of people living in america's second largest city. fears are rising about what happens next in what california's governor describes as one of the worst natural disasters in u.s. history. a new round of high winds beginning tonight now threatens to feed the flames of the major wildfires in the l.a. area and push back some of the progress firefighters were able to make over the weekend. the palisades fire is now 14% contained. the eaton fire, that's the one burning near pasadena, is now 33% contained, and the number of people under mandatory evacuation orders has

dipped a bit as well, to just below 100,000. the extraordinarily high winds are expected to last through wednesday. officials are promising to be prepared. >> we're not in the clear. i want to make sure of that. we are not in the clear as of yet, and we must not let our guard down as we have right now. extreme fire behavior. and we need to make sure that the community is staying updated with the most information, updated information as well. follow all evacuation warnings and orders without delay. and please, please stay safe. >> now, ahead of tonight, fire crews are being deployed to areas considered vulnerable to the wildfires and at various fire stations throughout los angeles. another concern for officials there criminal activity. 34 people have been arrested, including one for impersonating a firefighter while burglarizing a home. all

of this is happening in the middle of a search for survivors. 24 people have been found dead. 23 people are right now missing. all of them are believed to be adults. now, the confluence of threats and issues for law enforcement and firefighters means that l.a. is in dire need of help wherever it can get it. more than 2000 national guard members from california, wyoming and nevada have been deployed there, and firefighters are arriving to fight the flames from seven states, as well as canada and mexico. offers to help are pouring in from as far away as ukraine. it's where we start today with nbc news correspondent ellison barber, who's on the ground for us in altadena, california. ellison, tell us what you're seeing. >> hey, nicole. so this area where we are is a command center for search and recovery efforts. you mentioned at least 24 people have died in these fires, but that number is expected to rise. and what we've seen are teams coming in and out of this area

as they dispatch back up into these neighborhoods. they're on day three of what they describe as a grid search, where they are trying to recover, either primarily focusing to start on what they describe as disconnected 911 calls where people had called in distress and the 911 call dropped off, or areas specifically where people have reported individuals missing. it has been described by officials as a grim task, and one that is expected to go on for days past this point. it is one of many reasons that fire officials and police officials say they cannot allow community members back into these areas. they say right now, we are literally searching for the remains of your neighbors on your screen there, you're seeing what we saw just a block up from here a couple of hours ago, a hot spot that had reignited in a building that had been no longer burning on fire. that is another reason why they say we still have these ongoing issues. in addition to the winds coming in and possibly moving the bulk of the main active fire to other

areas, they're also dealing with spaces like this, buildings that are largely concrete, that have basements, multiple levels that have collapsed and pancaked on top of each other. and underneath these layers, particularly when it's concrete and brick, it holds heat trapped underneath it. that's what then can reignite and flare up and create those hotspots where fires start back again. even in structures that looked look like they are no longer an active threat. on top of that, there are power lines that are dangling, that are down there, trees that have been burned and also sometimes don't have roofs that can collapse and fall on people. all of that reasons why they say, look, we understand how desperate people are to try and get home and get some basic necessities for wherever they're temporarily staying or just to check on their homes. but they cannot do that. they cannot get back into these areas because they say it is simply not safe to do it. the big question here is how high could that death toll rise to, and what happens in the coming days with those santa ana winds picking back up, it is expected potentially to be as significant of a wind event

in the coming days as what we saw when these fires first ignited and spread so badly. but for people who live here, when they come back, when they're able to, this is so much of what they will see. just absolute devastation. entire communities left in piles of rubble and where they even begin to rebuild is something most people cannot even process. one thing that we have heard from people who live in altadena and even people who live in pacific palisades, they say, you know, we keep hearing this narrative that this is mostly rich people, celebrities that have been impacted by these fires. but they said most of us were working class families. some of us have lived in these communities for generations, or we've just moved in. and in terms of how they rebuild from here, they can't do it, they say, without a lot of help and a lot of families right now are struggling to figure out how they survive in the coming weeks. resources are here. they are available. we've seen la city officials on the ground today in this community. we've seen fema on the ground. but for a lot of people, the scale of need is so big that they're

worried in the months and even years ahead that they might not have the level of help they need to truly rebuild a community like this. nicole, i can't overstate the level of destruction. i have covered conflicts a lot in the last two years, both spending a lot of time in ukraine. and in so many ways, these buildings remind me of the rubble that is left behind in a war zone. there is not anything here that can actually even be salvaged. this is all just mass destruction. air quality also an issue and a concern for people. a lot of these buildings are old, so they're wondering what happens for this community in terms of just livability when there's all this rubble left behind. the immediate concern, though, particularly for these teams where we are, is finding people who are missing and giving families information, or at least recovering remains, so that they can have a proper burial for their loved ones who were trapped with these fires. some of the places they say they are searching pools, because when these fires surrounded a lot of people's houses, they say

people run towards water because that may be the safest option, but then they cannot get out. it is described again and again as a grim task, and they're working diligently here, trying to go out to get answers for those families of people who are still missing. and the worry is that that death toll of 24 right now could rise significantly in the coming days. nicole. >> allison, it's so interesting that you pointed out your coverage. i thought instantly about your coverage in ukraine and in the middle east, and i want to do what you sort of led the conversation toward, and that's sort of give some voice to the victims. this is an interview that 60 minutes did with the calvin family describing what happened before that. that scene behind you looked like that. let me let me play that for you. and we can talk about it on the other side. >> and out of nowhere you see the fire appear across lake street, and you can see it going up the mountain on our side.

>> within an hour for it to move that quickly and that rapidly, and for it to shift paths that fast was insane. >> it was like a hurricane. just fire, no water, but like 80 miles an hour plus. >> it felt surreal, the fire, like racing down the hill at that point. yeah, that's what's scary about this. >> it just was shooting like a blowtorch. like a blowtorch. it was literally just shooting off of the mountain. it felt like you're being attacked by a storm. >> people have talked about this, and there's a lot of, i think, educating ourselves about the weather phenomenon there and this confluence of drought conditions and santa ana winds. but the stories of the victims are really something we're just starting to hear. tell me what you've heard. >> you know, we were in altadena a couple of days ago, and we met this man in between this neighborhood where everything looked like this. just absolute rubble. his home was still standing. the home next to him was still standing, and a house

across the street was still standing. and those two houses that were still standing in addition to his. it was because of him. his name is jose torres, and he was telling us he had stayed. he sent his family, his two young children. i met one of them. she's eight years old. her name was alyssa, and they were picking up leaves because they were trying to prepare in case the fires came back to protect the house and get some of the dry vegetation and dry leaves out of the way. and he said he'd come out in the middle of the night on tuesday when the fire started coming in and he grabbed his garden hose. he said a fire truck didn't make it to that area until wednesday morning for five hours. he said he was out there by himself with the garden hose, trying to save his house and others. he said it was the middle of the night. the fire was so bright and so close, just sparks flying over his head that he didn't even need a flashlight. he said he could see everything clearly because of the flames. the shoes he was wearing that day had a hole in them because he had caught on fire. while he was fighting those flames, he doused himself in water and kept going. and in the entire time he was telling me that story, the only time he

got really emotional and started to choke up was when he talked about the neighbors next to him on the other side and across the street, where he couldn't save their houses. he started naming all of them. he gave me three names and i asked him. i said, i noticed that's when you are the most emotional is talking about the houses that he said i couldn't save. and he kept saying, but i tried. he had so much guilt that he couldn't help the other neighbors, even though it wasn't his responsibility necessarily to begin with. when i asked him why, he said, because this community of altadena, when we moved in here with our family, everyone constantly was helping us taking care of our kids, sending birthday cards. they care about each other so much. and he said he felt like he owed it to them to try and save their homes, and he couldn't. and the immense guilt he had for that is hard to explain. we hear that a lot from people here, the ones the few who still have their homes standing. they say they have immense survivor's guilt because they know how much other people have lost. but then even for them, how do they rebuild? how

do they live in a house that's still standing when everything around them looks like this? that pain, that emotional trauma is going to last for them for years to come. and it's also, i think, in so many ways, and you see all this stuff coming through, these are people working, trying to clear vegetation so that when those santa ana winds pick up, that hopefully the fires don't spread even more. but they said, you know, the way the neighbors here in community rallies around each other, the way they care about each other, is the little bit of hope in the middle of all this devastation, that these communities can come back and they can rebuild because they care about each other and they want to do right, not just by their own family, but by their neighbors as well. and that man, jose, who lives in altadena, was a really good example of that out there by himself with a garden hose for five hours, desperately trying to save his home, his neighbors, and his biggest pain was that he couldn't save all of the neighbor's homes around him. >> nicole allison barber, as you always do, bringing all of these

people, all these victims and all of their real time traumas to life for us. thank you so much. please stay safe. i want to bring in to our coverage. pasadena, california fire chief chad augustine, who was at the rose bowl, where camp has been set up for firefighters, as well as a donation hub for victims of the fires. the undeniable, undisputed heroes of the last six days. obviously, the men and women who were fighting these fires. just tell me what it is that you need from the rest of the country at this moment. >> good afternoon, and thank you for having me. >> and there were there were some truly heroic efforts that were made in those first hours and days. and i think what we need most is, is rain and favorable weather conditions. so the positive thoughts and prayers from from the community and the country is, is great, as well as the support. and for the eden fire specifically, we have

over 3400 firefighters here as we're prepping up for increased santa ana winds to make sure that our containment lines hold and that we don't lose any more structures. >> chad, for folks that aren't familiar with sort of the weather phenomenon that that firefighters are contending with, i'm going to play a little bit of sound from the national weather service meteorologist at one of their press conferences earlier today, if that's okay. and we'll talk about it on the other side. >> absolutely. >> the area was experiencing was one of the strongest santa ana wind events that we've experienced in several years, and that's extreme. >> santa ana wind event produced some very extreme fire weather conditions. the first couple of days of the fire, we had wind gusts in excess of 80mph across the fire, along with a very, very low humidities, which what made the atmosphere very dry. and also we had critically dry vegetation. >> we haven't had any rain of note in this area since last april. >> so the combination of those strong winds gusting at 80mph,

the low relative humidity and the fact that the brush was critically dry allowed the fire to spread very rapidly and displace some very extreme fire behavior. >> so just help our viewers understand what that means in terms of how much more difficult fighting fires are in those conditions. >> yeah, that's a that's a great question. and i'd like to highlight that we're in january. right. which ten years ago we didn't have a fire season in january. but here we are with no rain, santa ana winds that usually we would see in the in the late fall and maybe through november december, but with no rain since last april, relative humidity and single digits and wind gusts of 70, 80, 90 miles an hour, a single spark can travel two plus miles ahead of a fire. and that's what we saw. those are the conditions we saw in the early morning hours of this fire, where we had fire starting multiple miles ahead of

the main body of the fire, which is why we had such rapid fire spread in a wind driven fire. >> what is your sense and where is your focus as we head into what is, i guess, another warning or red alert through wednesday? it's almost surreal to imagine a second week of having to fight these conditions and these fires over the next 24, 36, 48 hours. >> we're really focused on as we come in with these increased winds of holding our containment lines. we have some really critical infrastructure that needs to be protected. mount wilson, as well as jet propulsion laboratory or jpl. those are two big ticket locations where we're going to have a lot of crews, and then we're going to prioritize those other thousands of firefighters that we have here, ensuring that our communities stay safe and we don't lose any more structures. >> the governor of your state has ordered an investigation into water supply issues. can you talk about any issues or

challenges you've had in that area? >> yeah, i think it's important to highlight that this this fire crossed multiple city jurisdictions. and there's probably somewhere between a half a dozen and a dozen different water districts that were impacted on that. i can speak specifically for pasadena, where we have both gravity fed and pump pump water, which is really helpful for us. but we did. we had a couple hours where we had impact to our water pressure. one of our pump circuits burned up and we had brave power employees under police escort getting in there, and that power was restored to that pump within two hours. but every water district is going to be different, and you're going to see different stories of, depending on the area, how water and pressure was impacted. but you had such an incredible demand that exceeded the supply, as well as an impact on pressure. and then finally you

had hundreds of homes burning. many of those had sprinklers. many of those had open water lines where you had water just draining into the streets, which also impacted your your water pressure. so those are three major events and major reasons why there was an impact on water pressure. >> you have the thoughts and the prayers for your prayer rain. and really, if there's anything we can communicate to your constituents or to folks in the community or beyond, we are here. don't hesitate to ask. we're grateful to get to talk to you. pasadena, california fire chief chad augustine, thank you very much. >> thank you. >> when we come back, we'll switch gears to that long awaited report into donald trump's election interference in the lead up to the january 6th insurrection. we could see the actual report, the product of jack smith's criminal investigation and indictment of donald trump as early as tonight or tomorrow. and that would be

just days after jack smith's official resignation from the department of justice and days ahead of trump's second inauguration. plus, the incoming national security adviser for donald trump's second presidency plans to make sure nonpolitical and career officials are out of the agency by inauguration day. a loyalty test putting donald trump above america's national security. that we'll tell you about. and later in the broadcast, the man tapped to lead the country's defense department, the same man who has been accused of assaulting women, accused of financially mismanaging veterans organizations and accused of coming to his job at fox and friends smelling of alcohol by current and former fox employees, will sit for his public confirmation hearing tomorrow. we'll ask democrats how they plan to question him and fight against a nomination for someone they describe as unfit to lead all those stories, and much more when deadline i'm barbara and i'm from and must. joseph, michigan. white house

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deep inside washington and hear from someone who's been there. >> you need your morning joe weekdays at 6:00 only on msnbc. >> what we do is try to cut right to the bone of what we're seeing in washington that day. a federal judge over the last few hours cleared the final obstacle for the justice department to publicly release a report written by former special counsel jack smith that details his investigation into donald trump's criminal efforts to overturn the 2020 election. in her ruling, trump appointed judge aileen cannon said she had no jurisdiction over this case, and her decision means we could see that report as soon as midnight tonight. this is all happening upon the resignation of the special counsel, jack smith, after handing in a sweeping, much larger report that also details his criminal

investigation into trump's mishandling of classified documents. doj says it only wants to release that one to members of congress as judge cannon fights its public release. joining us at the table, msnbc legal analyst and former top official at the department of justice, andrew weissmann, is here. also joining us, new york times justice department reporter glenn thrush is here and professor of history at new york university. ruth ben-ghiat is here. andrew weissmann, i start with you. where is jack smith? where'd he go? >> so under the rules, jack smith as his final act under the special counsel regulations, has to write a report. and that report, under the rules, is given privately to the attorney general. so it was really understandable that when he did that, when he handed this in now several days ago, he sort of done the issue of all the litigation and what's happening that's on the attorney general of the united states as to whether he wants to make it

public and the litigation of that. that's not part of what the special counsel does. so i understand jack smith saying, well, we've done what we can do. remember, he also you cannot indict a sitting president. you cannot proceed with a criminal case against a sitting president, which is why he moved to dismiss without prejudice the two criminal cases that he had brought because of the imminency of donald trump assuming that. but what that really leaves is merrick garland litigating the two volumes of this final report. and i unless the supreme court intervenes, it really looks like at 1201 tonight, if, if, unless merrick garland sits on it for some reason, we should be seeing publicly the volume one about the january 6th case, with some redactions for, for instance, grand jury or classified material. but the fight is going to be and is.

judge cannon is saying, i want hearings and i'm essentially kicking the can down the road, and it's going to be a slow walk on volume two. and whether it can go even to congress, because merrick garland has said, i'm not planning on releasing it publicly because i'm concerned about the fairness of a trial for the two defendants. footnote there never will be that trial, but he wants to give the report to congress and judge cannon saying, not so fast. i want to have a hearing. if that hearing lasts until january 20th, this is all moot. >> i mean, glenn. glenn thrush, what i, what i want to i'm going to ask what i want to ask. how does doj continue to get outplayed while joe biden is president and merrick garland is the attorney general? i've lost the plot on all this. why don't they go give it to the attorney general and the president and brief the country on what grand jurors made up of peers of donald trump found in these investigations that were only

halted by his election. >> well, first of all, garland made the commitment to release all of the special counsel reports, starting with durham, from from the comey controversy. and as everyone well recalls, the report on joe biden had profound political consequences, probably as significant as any special counsel report you are ever going to see, certainly more than the ones that we're looking at right now. that's a good question. i mean, they play by the book over there till the very end. and the president has not intervened in previous instances. and there's no inclination, i can tell you, from merrick garland or his senior staff. those of those of them that are still even in the building to contradict canon in every way, in any way. it's just an absolutely stunning reversal. all of the power has moved from

the justice, the garland justice department and jack smith to the trump team. and i mean, the most extraordinary part of this, or one of them, everything's extraordinary about it. but one of the really extraordinary parts about this is todd blanche, the man who's represented trump in these cases is about to take over as the number two in the justice department, arguably one of the most important positions in washington. it's just mind blowing how things have turned upside down. >> well, let me let me press you on. what else is being suppressed by joe biden and merrick garland? and it's vital information about the nominee to lead the fbi. i believe it's new york times reporting that first revealed that that one of the witnesses in the nevada investigation is an immunized kash patel. i mean, is that not relevant to the committees that have to consider him to lead the fbi? >> well, it's interesting. i think that's obviously up to the committee in terms of those things tend to be generated by the committee. i'm not sure what the minority has asked for. what

i can tell you is that there seems to be republican unanimity around kash patel on the committee, even though a lot of the members privately have expressed reservations about his nomination. i don't think that's that's particularly a secret. but again, this has to be generated by the committee, and it's not clear what they have asked for. i also don't know how much would necessarily be part of those immunity agreements. patel took the fifth. it is our understanding in the grand jury which endeared him greatly to donald trump. but that's that's an interesting question. what i can tell you is sources on the hill tell me that they are not going to embark on the patel nomination for a while until they get through. pam bondi, the ag nominee, which is going to happen wednesday and thursday next week. i am hearing it could be as late as as early or the middle of february before the

committee turns its sights on patel, which will, i think, turn out to be a pretty contentious hearing. >> ruth, the study in your book and the study of anemic democracies is riddled with stories not about only the brutality of the autocratic movement, but the feebleness of the democratic one. this feels like exhibit a, b, c, d, e, f, g. >> yeah. >> well, what glenn was saying about how the tables have turned and things have gone the way that the trump team needed them to. >> it's particularly tragic because when we get this first report about attempts to overturn the election on january 6th, you know, today autocrats don't suppress elections altogether. they keep elections going, as in orban's hungary. even russia has elections, but they manipulate the system in

myriad ways to make it, to make elections work for them. and so the more we know about what happened, the more we're armed for next time. because this was a i see this what happened after 2020 as a blueprint or a playbook for what they can do to stay in office indefinitely. so every so the way that with the resignations of, you know, jack smith, it feels like a defeat. but as long as we have access to information, which is why autocrats go after journalists and prosecutors, anybody who can conceal, can make, can reveal their secrets. we will be more prepared next time. >> i want to ask both of you about the consequences of not seeing or not sharing with our allies the intel investigation. i mean, this trying to take it

to mar-a-lago, and nobody even talks about this anymore. it's just the case cannon is successfully suppressing because of nafta, and oliveira is national defense information. that's what he squirreled away. do you think that will come up as part of any of the intel confirmations? >> absolutely. i mean, i really can't stress enough just how important this is. if kash patel, we know he at least in radio appearances, has said that he was aware that president trump had declassified this information. there are two ways to take that. both not good. one is the way that jack smith has has said in his indictment and his papers, which is that's not true, which would mean that the nominee for the fbi has lied, that provides compromise. that is also not a good thing for the head of the fbi. to state the

obvious. the other way to take it is that kash patel told the truth about that, which would mean that the litany of national security information that we have declassified, that he declassified all of that. yeah. now, you ask yourself about our five eyes partners. our colleagues are who we count on for our safety, not just their safety. other other people who we who privately cooperate with us but don't want it particularly known. this is all so detrimental to our national security and the idea that there are serious members of the senate in both parties who understand the national security consequences of that conduct and understand how important the roles of the dni, the head of the department of defense and the fbi are?

>> yeah. i mean, you also have bill barr basically saying the criminal indictment against trump in the mar-a-lago documents case was essentially a slam dunk. i want to ask ask both of you about this as well. i'm gonna ask you to stick around. also ahead. it's not just jack smith who is leaving. fbi director christopher wray has also decided to quit ahead of whatever trump had in store for him. he offered a bit of an for him. he offered a bit of an exit interview a have you always had trouble with your weight? same. discover the power of wegovy®. with wegovy®, i lost 35 pounds. and some lost over 46 pounds. and i'm keeping the weight off. i'm reducing my risk. wegovy® is the only weight-management medicine proven to reduce risk of major cardiovascular events such as death, heart attack, or stroke in adults with known heart disease and obesity. don't use wegovy® with semaglutide or glp-1 medicines, or in children under 12. don't take if you or your family had mtc, men 2, or if allergic to it. tell your provider if you plan to have surgery or a procedure,

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>> my decision to retire from the fbi. i have to tell you, was one of the hardest decisions i've ever had to make. but, you know, the president elect had made clear that he intended to make a change. >> my conclusion was that the thing that was best for the bureau was to try to do this in an orderly way, to not thrust the fbi deeper into the fray. >> that was current fbi director christopher wray, appointed by donald trump and trump's first term, explaining why he's leaving ahead of being fired, as he seems to believe trump was definitely going to do. wray also urged fbi employees over the weekend to, according to politico, quote, no matter what's happening out there in here, we've got to stay committed to doing our work the right way every time, with professionalism, with rigor and with integrity. wray's resignation comes three years ahead of the end of his ten year term. a small piece of trump's

stated plans to change the fbi and all law enforcement institutions across the federal government. we're back with andrew, glen and ruth. i mean, glenn, why wouldn't why wouldn't? i mean, you cover the department. you've worked in the department. you both know better than me. i mean, every day a thousand things happen at the fbi. every day is an opportunity to save. to save somebody, to save the country from an attack, from a foreign government, to save a company, perhaps from a hack, from a foreign government to save. i mean, why walk out ahead of what trump said he was going to do on a social media platform? >> look, i think that's a question that a number of staffers that we've spoken to and agents have asked, why not stick it out? let the guy fire you. at least you can kind of have your hand on the tiller towards the very end. specifically, if you're that concerned about these threats, particularly the ones posed by china. totally legitimate

question. but this fits into wray's style. what's interesting is he's a guy who tried really hard to be boring, right? to keep his head down. it didn't minimize his interactions with trump, minimize his interactions with biden. and it didn't work. the politics found him. you know, to some extent, the decision that he made, which is the one that damned him in the eyes of trump, patel and the others, was to participate in the mar-a-lago search. he really had no alternative but to do so. and he said that on the 60 minutes interview, given the evidence that was presented to a judge for the search warrant, it was it was compelling evidence that trump had violated the law. and i don't think there's any question in terms of the when one looks at the two indictments of jack smith brought, that the one down in florida was more rooted in concrete, concrete

fact. it didn't necessarily rely on any novelty in terms of legal theory. so wray tried to keep out of the rain, and the rain found wray and his temperament, as opposed to jim comey, was to, i think, to get out of dodge before things got much tougher. >> i mean, wray and garland seem to have a theory of the case that the line, the career agents and prosecutors and folks like glenn will hold the line of democracy. glenn is correct in describing how wray viewed mar-a-lago, that he reluctantly participated. but participation is what you do at show and tell. at school, he upheld the rule of law by going into mar-a-lago to retain or regain control of national defense information. the whole opting in and opting out of the rule of law is a mistake. wray and garland have made from go. >> yeah, well, first of all, participating in the mar-a-lago search is not something where

you go on air and say, well, i had no real choice. you had an obligation to do that. and that's one where there were all these efforts to that bent over backwards to try and get the documents voluntarily. and when none of that worked, including trying to do it not voluntarily through a subpoena, they did it through a search warrant, and it and they found what they needed to. it's really important to remember that with respect to what wray has done by saying he's stepping down, it's all about the ten year term. and he by saying i am stepping down rather than adhering to the congressionally mandated ten year term, is he pulled the rug out from democrats and republicans who thought we put that ten year term in to make sure that that position would be apolitical? it's so important for the rule of law that that be apolitical. and wray said that at his confirmation hearing that

he understood that. and so it's no answer to say, well, i saw that the incoming president would want somebody different. that is the point of the ten year term. make him have to do something that only, only donald trump has ever done, which is remove a sitting fbi director for without cause. and he really undermined the congressional imprimatur for the rule of law. >> ruth, some of what is broken is all of the bending of these institutions that are supposed to be immune to politics around the political moment. >> yeah. and you see that with wray's language, how far that he's been pushed on and put on the defensive when he says that he's resigning because he doesn't want to put the bureau further in the fray. well, they didn't create the fray. it was donald trump who created the

fray by having those documents there. and, as andrew said, resisting, you know, other kinds of attempts to get them. and the whole episode is how much trump has kind of conditioned even the most powerful americans to feel that it's not in their interests to make waves. and glenn is right that when you have an authoritarian, you can't avoid politics. politics comes after you, which is why there's now going to be all these purges of, quote, nonpolitical people. and what those really are are purges of people who uphold a different politics, democratic politics, accountability, impartiality, objectivity. those are not allowed to be politics in an authoritarian context. the only politics is the politics of the leader and his people. so, you know, this is these these transitions were going through with these resignations and being on the verge of something new happening are very sinister.

>> i'm so grateful to all of you. and thank you for having this, this candid conversation with me, andrew, glenn and ruth, thank you so much. up next for us, team trump's loyalty test for those now tasked with protecting america's national security. we'll bring you that story next. >> the first 100 days bills are passed, executive orders are signed, and presidencies are defined. and for donald trump's first 100 days, rachel maddow is on five nights a week. >> now is the time. >> so we're going to do it. settle in. >> providing her unique insight and analysis during this critical time. >> how do we strategically align ourselves to this moment of information, this moment of transition in our country? >> the rachel maddow show five nights a week beginning next monday. >> 48% of americans don't get enough magnesium, which is vital for bone, nerve, and muscle health. i recommend qanon magnesium glycinate. it's formulated for high absorption

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critical agencies for u.s. national security. the associated press is reporting this, quote, incoming senior trump administration officials have begun questioning career civil servants who work on the white house national security council about who they voted for in the 2024 election, about their political contributions and whether they have made social media posts that could be considered incriminating by president elect donald trump's team. that's according to a u.s. official familiar with the matter. the trump transition team didn't deny any of that reporting. basically said that's right. in a statement to nbc news, a member of the trump transition said this, quote, it is entirely appropriate for the transition to seek officials who share president trump's vision for putting our nation in america's working men and women first. joining our conversation, former obama deputy national security adviser ben rhodes. so ben rhodes, that is true. trump won. elections have consequences and trump can pick whomever he wants. but just explain who these people are that the ap is

reporting on. >> yeah, i mean, so the national security council, which is the white house coordinating function for all foreign and national security policies, is actually comprised of a majority of career officials. so what does this mean? it means that when somebody wins, they usually bring in the senior members of that body the national security advisor, the deputy security advisor, the people leading responsibility for different policies. >> but most of the people that work at the nsc, they're career foreign service officers, they're career military officers, they're career intelligence professionals who are detailed, they're essentially loaned from their home agency to the national security council for periods of 1 or 2 years. and so when i came in in 2009, we had a lot of people from the bush nsc who stayed on. >> that was critical because those people knew what was happening. >> they knew what was going on in the world, in different regions, on different issues. >> same thing happened when trump came in. same thing happened when biden came in. it would completely reorient the nature of national security

policy to say that rather than expertise and experience and relationships around the world or within the u.s. government, we're only goick people who are loyal to donald trump's personal political interests. this is a sea change, a transformation in the way national security happens. and if you want to do that, you would start at the nsc. >> let me read some comments from the interview with the incoming national security advisor, mike waltz with breitbart. this is from breitbart's reporting, incoming national security advisor mike waltz told breitbart news that every intelligence official from the various departments and agencies across the federal government, currently detailed to the national security council, the nsc at the white house under outgoing president joe biden, will be expected to vacate the premises by 12:01 p.m. eastern on inauguration day. waltz said, quote, our folks know who we want out in the agencies. we're putting those requests in. and in terms of the details, they're all going to go back. waltz said it

was specifically to get at whistleblowers like alexander vindman, quote. one of the major problems trump faced in his first term came from inside the nsc with some of these details. as the person who spearheaded the first impeachment of trump, alexander vindman, was one such person. this is sort of a pre purge. and as you point out, it's unparalleled in modern transitions. what is also unparalleled is this extraordinary threat environment. just talk about that a little bit. >> yeah i mean this is project 2025 nicole. i mean, this is the transformation of the us government in maga's image. >> that's what's happening before our eyes. >> they said they were going to do it, even if trump backed away from that at times. and now they're doing it. and some people might be watching this and thinking, well, why doesn't the president get to pick everybody that works for him at the nsc? the point is that, first of all, i don't know the politics of all those people.

and frankly, a lot of people that work on national security tend conservative, right? so it's not as if this is a bunch of left wing democrats who are filling the spaces of the intelligence community and the us military. but the other thing, nicole, is what is going to occupy the time and attention of the nsc. often it's crisis. you don't know what's going to happen. there could be a terrorist attack. a country could invade another country. there could be humanitarian crisis somewhere in the world. we're seeing i'm in los angeles today that there could be climate emergencies. the first reaction to convening the people at the nsc. i was in those meetings. you get everybody together in the situation room, try to figure out how to respond to a crisis. the first reaction of this maga ification of the nsc would be what's in donald trump's political interests? how can we make this, you know, validate his narrative or punish his enemies? not like, how do we best respond to this crisis? right. these are people that are literally going to be dealing with some of the most sensitive things in the us government, and they're going to be viewing each action through the prism of what is in donald trump's personal

interests. and the world itself is not going to bend entirely to donald trump's political interests. so it's incredibly dangerous to lose expertise, to make people feel like they have to participate in total groupthink. and that's the other thing is you want different views around the table while you're trying to solve problems. they don't want different views. they want people who are preconditioned to think that whatever instinct donald trump has is correct, and that is inevitably not going to work out well in dealing with a dangerous and unpredictable world. >> i want to ask you to stick around, because i think it's important to make clear that all the policy will be set by donald trump and by the cabinet secretaries, who are all whomever donald trump picks and whomever can be confirmed by the senate. we'll have that nothing is more senate. important than family. conversation. i'm a family you're born into, a family you choose or a family you make. i'm padma lakshmi. i came to this country when i was four years old with my mother. we came here because it was a land of opportunity.

but for many, that's not the case. immigrant families are being separated. black and brown families are torn apart by a broken legal system. lgbtq people suffer discrimination in adoption and health care. the need to protect and defend the civil liberties we all hold dear is more urgent than ever because families belong together. you can help by joining the american civil liberties union today. 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. the aclu has fought to allow lgbtq couples to marry, for racial justice. to stop a family separation. we can't do this work without you.

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>> i would say it's to focus on the things that they want to do to those agencies. right. so it's very important, obviously, that people are scrutinizing pete hague's personal conduct. but actually, i think what's more important to highlight in these confirmation hearings for the sake of the country is the type of military he wants to build. what does it mean to be loyal to donald trump? does that mean the use of the u.s. military within the united states? does that mean a loosening of the command structure? so you're not questioning orders that might come down about greenland or panama? i think it's very important for democrats to not just focus on the sensational or the absurd, but to focus on what these people say they want to do, because this time around, they have a much clearer idea about what they want to do to these agencies. and i think it's important for democrats to start to elevate this in the discourse, to get republicans, their republican colleagues to respond to it, and, frankly, to lay the predicate for people to understand what's coming, because it's not just that pete hegseth drinks too much and has been charged with sexual

assault. it's also that he has a very clearly identified agenda that would transform the us military, just like kash patel does at the fbi, just like tulsi gabbard would do at dni. and they have to focus on elevating the actions that these people want to take in these agencies as much as their kind of personal characteristics. >> ben rhodes, thank you very much for spending some time with us today. we're going to be covering all that in our next hour. thank you for setting that up for us perfectly. up next, we'll set the stage for what ben's talking about tomorrow's first public confirmation hearing of one of donald trump's cabinet picks. the next hour of deadline. white house starts deadline. white house starts after a quick break. don't go wave hello to zane. he's king of the... ping. for every 1 sentence spoken on a call, he has 3 comments 2 memes and 4 emojis to contribute. a flood of positivity... during every. single. meeting. but oh how his passion for product management takes your team from level zero to level... zane. you need zane. zane needs benefits. work with principal so we can help you help zane with a retirement and benefits plan

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>> center. you are the whip. >> you count the votes. >> does pete hegseth the pick to run the pentagon, have them? >> well, he certainly has the qualities that we need to lead the pentagon. he knows about a fit fighting force.

>> he is very qualified, in my opinion. >> he has a record, a distinguished record of service in the military. every senator gets to speak for themselves, and they will do that. >> hi again everyone. the one thing you didn't hear there. yes, it's 5:00 in new york. this hour, president joe biden will convene a briefing on the full federal response to the devastating and tragic fires in los angeles. we'll bring you any and all updates on that as we get them. but we begin with what you just heard there. that was republican senator john barrasso answering the question this way, saying, quote, every senator gets to speak for themselves and how just one day before donald trump's choice to be the defense secretary will be questioned on the hill. it does not sound the same as yes, we have the votes. it sets up what will be a very interesting and consequential and possibly dramatic scene tomorrow as pete hegseth, the fox news anchor and national guard veteran, appears for his confirmation hearing. since

hegseth was selected by donald trump in november, numerous allegations and questions have spilled out into public view. news that he financially mismanaged veterans organizations that he was in charge of, news that he abused alcohol and would sometimes show up to work smelling of alcohol, and news that he sexually assaulted women. in fact, he paid a settlement to a woman who said he sexually assaulted her at a hotel in monterey, california, in 2017, although no charges were filed. and pete hegseth has never been charged criminally with sexual assault. all of the claims against him, in fact, are claims that hegseth denies with regards to what the woman alleges. hegseth said it was a consensual encounter. senate democrats, meanwhile, have voiced their concerns about him. senator jack reed, the top democrat on the senate armed services committee, which is holding tomorrow's hearing, said last week this quote. today's meeting did not relieve my concerns about mr. hague's lack

of qualifications and raised more questions than answers. as with any nominee for this critical position, mr. hegseth must undergo the same high level of scrutiny as prior secretary of defense nominees. senator tammy duckworth, also on the committee and the senator who served in iraq, said this, quote, he is not qualified to do the job. he has managed fewer people than the manager of an applebee's end quote, meaning it will be left to republicans to move trump's pick along if they choose to do so. a point made in new york magazine in this quote. it is the first serious test of donald trump's newly invigorated strongman model of governance, and of whether he can continue to bend the republican party to his will. on friday, we learned the top two senators on the armed services committee received the fbi's background check on hegseth, a coveted resource for them. in light of these allegations. and one senators have been asking for.

nbc news reports this, quote, the 25 member committee does not necessarily need to review this background check to proceed with the nomination hearing, but two committee sources familiar with the process said it was unprecedented that the report took this long to get to the panel's top members. that is where we start the hour with democratic senator richard blumenthal of connecticut, a member of the armed services committee. senator, i'll start with this. have you asked to see the report? and do you know anything of what is in the background investigation into pete hegseth? >> we've asked to see the background report. >> we've been denied access to it. >> in fact, we've asked repeatedly myself and other members of the committee, and we've asked for other records. >> i've written to the leadership of the committee twice, asking for documents and other materials that relate to his financial mismanagement of the two veterans organizations that he ran into the ground.

>> but let's be very clear, nicole, even with what we know in the public record so far, he is probably the most unqualified nominee for a position of serious consequence in the united states government in recent history. >> it would be unserious, a joke, except that the position is so consequential, commanding 3.4 or more million americans dedicated to our national defense, serving in uniform, putting themselves in harm's way, risking their lives. >> and he has never run an organization with a budget larger than $15 million. >> and those two organizations, he ran into the ground with deficits year after year, spending more than he received. and so i think we have enough right now to say to every member of that committee, there should be a no vote against pete

hegseth. >> i wonder if i could ask for your reaction to this. there's a 22 page police report in monterey, california that's been released about an accusation, an allegation of rape. pete hegseth has never been charged, but the company he worked for, fox news, did settle with the accuser. and a letter was sent to you to the senate armed services committee or to your chair and ranking member from fox news, gretchen carlson and julie roginsky. it says this quote as survivors of sexual misconduct at fox news and co-founders of a nonprofit organization dedicated to eradicating silencing mechanisms in the workplace. we write to you to share our perspective. while hegseth has allegedly released the survivor from her nondisclosure agreement, his attorney has threatened to sue her for defamation if she were to come forward to discuss what happened to her and if her testimony were to prevent mr. hegseth confirmation hexes.

threats cast a chilling pall on women who simply want to speak out about sexual misconduct and should be, in and of themselves, disqualifying. have you asked your ranking member to talk to the accuser, or what efforts have the democrats made to ascertain the truth about these disturbing accusations and allegations? >> we've sought more details, nicole. >> but let's be very clear. >> the attorney for pete hegseth has threatened the accuser, the survivor of that sexual assault, with a lawsuit, defamation, part of a purposefully and relentlessly conducted campaign to discourage critics from coming forward by the transition team, trump transition team, as well as pete hegseth lawyers. abhorrent. if his goal and

theirs is actually to elicit the truth, we don't want to put pressure on the accuser to come forward against her own inclination or interest. she's the survivor of a serious alleged sexual assault, but it goes to the qualifications that he would bring as secretary of defense, or his lack of qualifications to lead women in the military at a time when sexual assault is still a scourge there and where we need a concentrated campaign against sexual assault, where we need reforms to stop sexual assault. he is the least qualified of any of the candidates i can imagine to lead that effort, and it will impact adversely on recruitment of females for the military, which is a very important goal right now. he has said he wants lesser roles, including noncombatant roles for women in the military. that's not the kind of secretary of defense

that america deserves right now. >> yeah, i mean, you made the tie that i was that i was getting at. i mean, i think in year nine of the trump story, we all know that some of the things that whistleblowers take to congress and some of the things that end up on the pages of the washington post or the new york times are voices for the voiceless. and i just want to show you a little bit more about what pete hegseth, in his own words, has said about women in the military who obviously can't speak for themselves in these 24 hours ahead of the beginning of an effort by republicans and donald trump to confirm pete hegseth. let me show that to you. >> i'm straight up just saying we should not have women in combat roles. it hasn't made us more effective, hasn't made us more lethal, has made fighting more complicated. i also want an opportunity here to clarify comments that have been misconstrued, that i somehow don't support women in the military. some of our greatest warriors, our best warriors out there are women who serve, raise their right hand to defend this

country and love our nation. want to defend that flag and they do it every single day around the globe. >> so i don't know what women will view as a graver threat to their safety if they're serving in the military, especially overseas or in combat roles. the gaslighting or the truth. but i leave that up to them. but again, these are not women who have the power to speak up or speak out because of the structure of the military and the chain of command. what is your commitment to them? >> it's going to mean that they have every reason to choose careers elsewhere. as much as they want to serve the greatest nation in the history of the world, with the most powerful military, with the skills that they will bring not only to combat, but also to preparedness and readiness. we need more women with those skills. and pete hegseth actually wants to purge our military of people who may think differently. he thinks that the current leadership of the military, widely and

prevalently, is unqualified. he wants a purge board to demote or eliminate them from the ranks, including women who may have different views. that's, again, not the kind of military that we want. and he also wants to, in effect, denigrate and decimate many of our alliances, for example, nato. he has said we should abandon it. and his remarks about muslims are going to be devastating to our alliances with countries that may have muslim dominated government. so i think there is a wide variety of areas where women in the military, people who are different, with different views are going to be threatened and they will leave the military or refuse to join it. >> you've hit on the other thing i wanted to ask you about, and this is actually the issue that put him on trump's radar first.

this is nbc's reporting. hegseth rose to prominence partly based on his searing criticism on fox news of the rules governing u.s. troops in combat. having served in iraq and afghanistan with the army national guard, he argued that american soldiers were hampered by excessive constraints when battling jihadist extremists who, quote, fight like savages. quote, in some cases, our units were so boxed in by rules and regulations and political correctness we even second guess ourselves. hegseth wrote in his book the war on warriors last year. some current and former military officers say hegseth strident statements regarding war crimes, prosecutions of u.s. troops, and his advocacy for service members who were convicted by fellow soldiers risks undermining core principles that have shaped the american military for decades. have you or your staff been through the war on warriors? the book that pete hegseth has written to be able to flag, if not in a way that's compelling to your republican counterparts, but for the public, the troubling record of pete hegseth

public statements in this area. >> you know, that's a great question, nicole. >> i've been on the armed services committee for 15 years. two of my sons have served one as a marine corps veteran, a combat veteran in afghanistan. the other is a navy seal. and the overwhelming majority of our military really believe in following the rules and the laws that relate to combat. it's a messy, nasty, brutal business. but there is the geneva convention. there are rules. pete hegseth says in that book, and he said repeatedly, we should just disregard the geneva conventions. he wants to put the united states, in effect outside the pale and beyond the rule of law, any kind of law. and i find that absolutely abhorrent. i know talking like a lawyer is

perhaps unpersuasive to a lot of people, but there are basic rules that need to be followed. it is, in fact, the power of our example as a great nation, not just the example of our power that gains us power around the world. >> well, and it was a bipartisan principle. i mean, it was john mccain who worked with george w bush as president into the obama presidency to make sure that those principles were upheld. i just want to put you on notice. i think people are hungry for the kind of leadership and moral clarity that you have. i hope you'll be available to us as the days move forward. and the second trump presidency commences next monday. thank you for your time today and your thoughtfulness. >> i'm determined to fight and thank you for your great work, nicole. thank you. >> thank you sir. and let's bring in our coverage. retired u.s. marine corps lieutenant colonel and founder of democratic majority action pac, amy mcgrath. and with me at the table for the hour, distinguished political scholar and professor at princeton university. eddie glaude is here. amy. amy, there's so many signs of what's broken, but it

it feels like democrats have, in the case of pete hegseth, a very nonpartisan job to do it is to simply say that someone who is himself accused of sexual assault is someone we should examine fully. and the entire committee, every member on it. and the public has a right to understand what the fbi unearthed about those accusations. before this person leads the united states military and the men and women who serve in it. >> absolutely. so that's number one. they should be able to see what's in that fbi report. i think that's a given. but even beyond that, though, and the senator also said this with, with or without the fbi report, pete hegseth is completely unqualified for this very important, most consequential position. and i think it needs to be said again, the secretary of defense is in the chain of

command for the employment of nuclear weapons. the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, which is the highest ranking military officer that we have, isn't even in the chain of command for nuclear weapons. so to put pete hegseth in this position, when he has not proven that he can lead even a 30 man veteran group without financial mismanagement, without sexual assault allegations, without allegations of alcohol abuse. this is just insane. you know, mitch mcconnell just wrote an op ed in foreign affairs last week talking about america's place in the world. the republican party and republican senators say that they're the party of national security, and then they're going to uplift this man who by the last trump administration and an official in the last trump administration called him a 44 year old man boy with tattoos to, to make sure that he felt strong into a position like this

of such consequence. they need to do their job here. this is a big deal. >> let me ask you about the status of the fbi report, which gets into all of this, as well as allegations. again, the thing with headset that people should understand is all the calls are coming from inside the house on the allegations of alcohol abuse. they're coming from former colleagues in the veterans groups. he ran the two of them that he, according to them, financially ran into the ground. on the fox news side, it's ten current and former employees of fox news that nbc reported several weeks ago reported he had to be, quote, babysat and often showed up to anchor his program smelling like alcohol. but let me ask you about the status of the briefing on the fbi report, ostensibly about all of this, amy. two democrats on the committee. this is nbc's latest reporting. it says this, quote, democrats in the senate armed services committee plan to huddle tonight to strategize ahead of this

confirmation hearing tomorrow. it's according to four sources. armed services ranking member jack reed is expected to brief senators on the fbi background check. as a reminder, neither read nor the top republican on the committee, roger wicker, have a hard copy as is. standard. what? why not? while you still control the government? as as president joe biden is still the country's president. merrick garland is still the country's acting attorney general. he's the attorney general, not acting. christopher wray is right now, as of 518 in the east, the fbi director. why not do things normally? why all these abnormal concessions to trump and his, in your words, unqualified nominee ahead of them being in charge of anything? >> i really don't know. i don't understand why you wouldn't allow the members of the committee, all the members, to read the report. i don't understand why you wouldn't allow the rest of the senate to read the report. i mean, this is such a consequential a the most

consequential sequential position in the united states government. it is the largest agency in the united states government. as i mentioned, this is in the chain of command for nuclear weapons employment. and the fbi report is going to talk about, you know, past personal conduct. and this is so important because if you're talking about a scenario where, you know, we need a rapid minute by minute decision on the employment of nuclear weapons, do you want this man in the room? i mean, is he even going to be sober? ben rhodes just talked about it in your last segment a couple segments ago about the fact that it's not just about the military, that he will, you know, wants to build. it's also about who's going to be in the room, nicole, when there's a crisis, when there's a crisis that we can't see right now, is this the man we want in the room? i think not, eddie. >> i am today not worried about trump and hegseth and kash patel

and whatever the state of the bannon musk feud is, i am today worried about the democrats. i am today worried about the people who can't take all of the information made available to them. and the present company excluded. but there is a wealth of information available to the general public. there is a democratic incumbent president for another seven days. there is a democratically appointed attorney general for another seven days. there is an incumbent fbi director and every senator to amy's point, does have a right to see what the fbi uncovered about an individual. take fox news aside, take trump appointee aside. take republican. democrat aside. the person asked to be a part of the nuclear chain of command. >> i think what you're what you're saying and what you're asking is so important. if what's going to happen on january 20th presents the threat to democracy, as everyone has said it, as so many people were claiming, why aren't they acting like it in this moment?

>> why aren't people doing what they're supposed to do in this moment? why are they in so many ways as you, as you rightly ask, you kind of soft pedaling, you know, making all of these exceptions in this moment. three things come to mind when it comes to hegseth character, which informs qualifications, which will shape policy. and ben rhodes told us it's not just about sexual assault and the like. what will he do to armed forces? >> right? >> how will he execute the woke scare? the armed forces have been leading the way in the country in terms of diversifying the nation. it's one of the most diverse institutions in the country. what will that look like led by hegseth? so i don't understand why people are sitting on their damn hands. i just don't get it. >> we'll keep asking the question. if you have got an answer, let me know where to find me. amy mcgrath. thank you for spending time with us today. eddie sticks around when we come back. i just alluded to it, the maga civil war raging between steve bannon and elon musk. with one week to go before donald

trump's inauguration, two of his highest profile deputies are in an all out brawl that's taken a new and ugly turn. we'll tell you about it. we'll also explain why this matters. and later in the broadcast, a live report from the pacific palisades on the devastating wildfires that are still burning out of control. and the threat of higher winds is right now making firefighters jobs much more difficult. deadline. white house difficult. deadline. white house continues after a quick what the biggest companies deliver is an exceptional customer experience. what makes it possible is unmatched connectivity and 5g solutions from t-mobile for business. t-mobile connects 100,000 delta airlines employees, powers tractor supply's stores nationwide with reliable 5g business internet, and partners with pga of america on game changing innovation. this is how business goes further with t-mobile for business. with so many choices on booking.com there are so many tina feys i could be. so i hired body doubles to help me out.

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as a student of this movement, i can explain, and there's lots of coverage that plays out how the initial spark, the thing that brought this into public was a disagreement over the issue of work permits, called h-1b visas. they allow companies in the united states to hire foreign born talent for specialized roles on a short term basis. steve bannon's side in coalition is in one corner. elon musk's is pitted against them. on the other side. it's a feud that boiled over on social media, one that escalated again over the weekend in the pages of none other than an italian newspaper, of course, steve bannon attacking elon musk, suggesting this, quote, he will not have full access to the white house. he will be like any other person. quote. he is a truly evil guy. this is bannon saying this about elon musk, quote, a very bad guy. i made it my personal thing to take this guy down, end quote. but musk also

said, or steve bannon also said about musk that he should, quote, go back to south africa, quote, why do we have south africans, the most racist people on earth, white south africans? we have them making any comments at all on what goes on in the united states. musk, for his part, has not responded to these comments publicly. joining our conversation, someone who is oddly expert at all this msnbc political analyst tim miller, former rnc spokesman, now host of the tremendous bulwark podcast, eddie still here. so tim miller, first, take me inside why steve bannon hates elon musk so much and then talk a little bit about musk's efforts to retaliate and take some of bannon's allies off of the platform. musk runs ex. >> yeah, some of this goes back a long way. you know, these guys were going at each other i think back in 2018. >> and i think the interesting

thing about this nicole, because you have to be judicious in discussing the maga infighting because these are a lot of children and, you know, having a food fight in a cafeteria at some level. >> and, you know, bannon's mad at so-and-so and so-and-so is mad at and it's kind of like, who cares at some point? >> but this one actually does matter because it is a fundamental rupture in the coalition for the coalition to survive, they need the nationalist steve bannon wing, which is i would call og maga, you know, anti-immigrant, anti-trade america first, if you will. >> that's sort of the bannon lane. >> and then you have musk, who is really a globalist at his core, but has kind of brought in these tech bros that were, you know, radicalized by covid or whatever they might be. >> they might be quote unquote, anti-woke, but they're not, like meaningfully maga across all these policy issues. >> and musk, in his case in particular, like, does business in china and is on the take from china, which again, is

fundamentally at odds with kind of the america first crowd that does not believe that the u.s. should be doing friendly business with china or doing friendly business with the world, that we should be decoupling from china. so here we have this fundamental fissure with the musk world. and now he's got vivek with him and some other people and bannon. and they are going to like this fight is not just about personalities. like as policy gets implemented in the next trump administration, this will be a you know what to the wall. >> all all out to the wall fight between the bannon world that does not want, you know, the kind of corporate oligarchs to have power. >> and then the corporate oligarchs who do want to wield power over trump. and it's also one where like either side could really win, because while trump might instinctively be more with the bannon, he loves the attention of the rich guys. you know, he loves having them around. he loves feeling like he has with their fingertips. they just mentioned that press conference the other day. zuckerberg came to see me. gates came to see me. bezos came to see me like, this is the ego

thing for trump. so he might very well sell out his maga base and go with the oligarchs. and i think that could potentially cause him some political problems. so i think it's meaning it's a very meaningful political feud. >> andy, let me read to you. actually, let me play you some of what it what it sounds like, what you're hearing in maga world, this fight between bannon and musk, he can't take criticism. >> he's like he one of his weaknesses is that he he needs to be loved. he needs the masses to love him. he you can tell he's on the stage. he needs that glory. he must have adoration. you can tell that it lights him up. so then when the platform, when his apparatus turns against him, and particularly people that cheered him, saying, hey, we don't we hate what you're doing to this country. we know now that you're in, you're lying to us. bald faced lie. these are not high skilled people. when they turn, all of a sudden he has to go to what is the chinese credit score? this is to have a digital ghetto and to only have raised up what praises him. that

that's the that's the that. that is like the little boys mentality of i want to be the super hero. i want to put the cape on and kind of skip around. >> it's a lot of words and i think at the root of it, and i will admit to being a student of the movement, i think it's one of our best sort of tools as a pro-democracy side, to really understand what fuels and animates and attracts voters to the maga movement. he's calling him a hypocrite. that's the accusation. and what i think that could stick, perhaps, you know, in some ways it's an echo of, you know, those acolytes around hitler who called the latecomers september links. >> you're really not an ideologue. you're just really transactional. and then on the other side of it, right? you know, the musks and the ramaswamy's and all these actually reveal the grifting side of trumpism. >> right? and this is a kind of nationalist movement. this is our country. and then there's the other side of it. he's not really a man. he called him a little boy, right? he's not a manly man.

>> and in the, in the i mean, i think there's something in here that's, you know, effeminate too, right? when he's prancing around the stage. >> exactly. and then that line, he's the most racist of all. he's a racist south african. i was like, oh, my god, isn't that the irony of all ironies, brandon, or not? >> exactly. >> so you have again what we talked this collision of populist right wing populism and the corporatists, and they're all in maga world. and the question is, that's not a that's not an issue of personality. those are ideological currents that have been at the heart of this movement from the beginning. >> and just quickly, tim, it matters because you're going to weaken the movement. if you're going to weaken the lock on voters in wisconsin, michigan, florida, ohio, if you're going to reshape an opposition movement, you have to peel off one one side or the other. what is steve bannon's threat? privately, if trump sides with bezos and musk and whatnot? i mean, do you have any sense of how far he's willing to take this feud?

>> yeah, i mean, look, steve bannon's got a business to run, too, but i think that he's willing to take it. you know, i think that, you know, look, we've seen this in other elections where people only turn out for trump. this is part of the reason why, you know, if bannon and his minions decide they're not going to turn out in the midterms for a party that sells out to elon musk or sells out to h-1b immigrants, that could have a meaningful negative impact on, on on maga movement. or on the flip side, if elon says, i'm tired of taking this bs, i'm going to take my huge megaphone on x and start trashing maga americans as the r slur as he did recently, you know, that fissure could get people to stay home. and i think that from the democrat side of things, whether any of these people are gettable, i think maybe so this might be a really hard to hear triggering thing for some democrats, but maybe there's just like one shred of a lesson from bannon's anti musk message, right? maybe the democrats could kind of pick up this populist mantle of going

after the big tech oligarchs, saying they don't actually care about your interests. they only care about themselves. like there might be a little bit of a potential shared message there that could be resonant for the democrats. so i don't at this point, it's kind of like you could see it going either way as far as which side might be hemorrhaging people that might be gettable for democrats, but it's certainly something that's going to be neat that they're going to need to monitor. >> yeah, and it's not even about turning them into i mean, in some ways, it's so far away from what is viewed as sort of civil and small d democratic. but it is about animation. and if you if you depress any, if trump won by what, 237,000 votes across seven states, i mean, every, every event, every fissure to use your word to matters. and this one feels like a big one that isn't going away anytime soon. i want to keep this going. i have to sneak in a quick i have to sneak in a quick when you're a small-business owner, your to-do list can be...a lot.

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help reduce urges to urinate. find it at walmart or these retailers. >> we're all back. tim, i want to come back to you on the why this matters and the why this matters to me is about democrats having a strategy not to eke out an electoral win in four years with tens of thousands of votes over seven states. but to make a run at ohio, like, why don't why don't you like it? understanding this divide and the democrat that smart enough to exploit it and really learn something about it. and these voters feels like

it could be politically incredibly important? >> yeah, absolutely. >> and this is why i said earlier it might feel anathema, but maybe learning a little something from the from the way that the bannon is creating this wedge. let's just, you know, we don't actually know how this is going to shake out who's going to be up who's going to be down. but there's good reason to believe i think it happened on the h-1b visa thing that trump ends up signing with the musks of the world and the vcs. there's a new report out today that marc andreessen, one of the richest vcs in silicon valley, is doing interviews for hiring and the trump administration, allegedly. so, you know, if, let's say these guys end up on the inner circle, the teals and andreessen's and musk's, i do think there will be a big opportunity for the democrats to say to once again reclaim the mantle of being anti-establishment, anti, anti, you know, billionaire class for the working class interests, because these guys just aren't flat out aren't. and the democrats i think struggled in

this last election by by very much being the defenders of the status quo. and you don't have to not be you know, you can respect your institutions, but also talk about the need to reform and also kind of have a villain, if you will, or have an opposition that's saying, no, this is an entrenched interest that is that is corrupt, that is grifting for themselves and that doesn't care at all about you and i. this hypothetical democrats would would be able to say, i am fighting that. i'm fighting against these foreign elites, that that and these oligarchs and these tech billionaires that have taken over our government. i think that is a realistic political message, and i think that that's a realistic potential for how this plays out. it remains to be seen who trump ends up kind of siding with, but i wouldn't be shocked if steve bannon is wrong about the fact that elon musk doesn't get to be around the white house, and he might end up being around there quite a bit and having a real control over what's happening in our government. >> it is clear to me from way,

way, way outside that donald trump is roaring down the tracks with no awareness of how politically toxic it is to be surrounded by technically and actually the richest man in the world, politically deadly, to be surrounded by someone who is so out of touch that he is actually the richest person in the world and has actually moved into mar-a-lago, and who is actually latched on to the government. that has never i mean, there's a lot of things about trump that broke our politics and that people sort of warned may or may not, you know, come to pass people's revulsion with institutions, their ability to accept someone who was a convicted felon. but it is never been the case that someone who is so completely out of touch with the lives of every american democrat, republican, young, old, rich, poor, every american, that that that person is going to take over the federal government. >> yeah. i mean, i hear you, but we're in a kind of second gilded age. >> we're in a kind of second gilded age.

>> yeah. >> i mean, people were attracted to trump because he said on golden toilet, but they also said he talked like that. >> right? he talks like a hybrid. no one says that. >> he talks like them but sits on a golden toilet. i mean, so we're in a second gilded age. >> toxic calls into fox and friends sounds like that from his golden toilet. >> and then you combine that with the dna of the democratic party. it's always been the case, at least a part of the 20th century, where the democrats try to hold off fascism on the one hand and hold off the red communism on the other. they've got to hold off the right and we've got to hold off progressivism. so what does it mean for democrats who believe that they can just sit in the center in light of these extremes, in the midst of a second golden age, a second gilded age, and not appeal to these populist energies because they're always trying to in some ways put marginalize the progressive wing of the party. look what just happened to aoc trying to sign this bernie sanders and the like, right? trying to blame the current state of the world on progressives, as it were, gaslighting us in some way. so we're in this interesting moment

where historical currents are colliding and we don't know where we're going to end up. >> yeah, it's such a mash up. thank you guys so much for having this conversation with me. eddie. you stick around. tim, thank you for joining us. when we come back, we'll get back to the story that started our broadcast at the top of the 4:00 pm hour, those deadly wildfires in los angeles. as new red flag warnings suggest, things on the ground could actually get worse before they get better there, we'll have a live report from pacific palisades next. >> president elect trump will likely inherit a chaotic situation in the middle east. >> we are getting a picture of what a donald trump cabinet will look like in el paso from philadelphia in israel, new hampshire from msnbc world headquarters. >> msnbc premium gives you early access and ad free listening to rachel maddow's chart topping series, msnbc original podcasts, exclusive bonus content, and all of your favorite msnbc shows now of your favorite msnbc shows now ad for people who feel limited by the unpredictability of

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>> we have some breaking news to tell you about with the deadly wildfires in los angeles. multiple law enforcement sources familiar with the investigation into the palisades fire, telling nbc news that an early focus into how the blaze started is a possible human cause. they stress that that investigation is early, but they're not ruling anything out. let me bring in my colleague, nbc news correspondent liz kreutz, in the hard hit area of pacific palisades. liz, what i was reading through our reporting, and i want to understand what what your sense is of what that means. they have ruled out, i guess that would be a lightning strike or a natural ignition. is that right? >> well, nicole, i mean, it can sometimes take weeks, months, up to a year, even to fully figure out what causes a fire. >> but of course, the atf is on the scene trying to figure out preliminarily what they think it may have been caused by. and they're not ruling anything out, but their line of investigation

is going towards that. it could be human caused. and we should say that something that's sort of indicating that is that there was actually a fire on new year's day in that exact same area where it's believed the palisades fire began. and the thought is that maybe that fire was never fully put out. and then when those winds came last week, it sort of reignited it. and that could potentially be what led to this fire. that fire, they're still investigating whether it was caused by fireworks or maybe an encampment. so there's still a lot of questions. but when we also look at the cause right away, there's also indications on the eaton fire, we're hearing from folks and belief that it could be more of a power line issue there, which we've seen in other fires across california, including the camp fire, the deadliest fire in california history. so i think they're not ruling anything out, but the fact that they are going on the record or not record, but sources are telling nbc human cause shows that that's really where they're leaning at this

time. and, liz, you're in a community that's been absolutely decimated. tell us what you're seeing and hearing today. >> yeah. >> i mean, it's just heartbreaking, right? >> when you look at house after house after house, that looks just like this. >> and what's one of the most beautiful communities in the country? >> if i just go half a mile this way, i see the beautiful pacific coast right now here in the palisades. >> it's really locked down. >> you're not seeing a lot of people. >> you're just seeing first responders. >> that is because of these concerns of looting. they've arrested more than 40 people in the palisade area out of concerns of looting. and so the national guard is here really trying to make sure no one gets in and out. >> the concern, of course, also is that the winds might continue to pick up with this pds particularly dangerous situation. >> red flag warning in effect going into effect starting in the morning. >> right now, the winds have died down. they've suppressed a little bit. so it's a chance for firefighters to really get a handle on this fire before that new wind event. >> and i'll just finally say, nicole, as we see so much devastation, i do want to point out one bright spot in all of this. this home behind me is the

home where just yesterday, a man i met on tuesday last week at the very beginning of the fire, who was trying to get back to get his dogs. he couldn't just yesterday, his dog oreo. just yesterday he was reunited with oreo. we have that video. take a listen. oh, honey. >> oh, honey. oh, my god, you're alive. you're alive. oh, honey. oh! whoa, whoa. >> oh, thank you god. nbc, where is nbc? >> where are you? >> liz? >> thank you. oh, honey. >> thank you. >> so, just a happy ending we all need right now. >> nicole. to see a man reunited with his dog who miraculously survived five days amidst the rubble. and that firestorm last tuesday. i will not ever admit how many times i've watched the clip. it is in excess of ten. it's an incredible. it's an incredible. i mean, the bond obviously, between our pets and

our humans or i guess, the pets and their humans is so strong. but just this bright spot in all of this devastation. thank you so much for bringing that to us, liz. it really it's really powerful. thank you. and we all needed it. eddie. your thoughts. >> you know, as i've been thinking about it, i've been thinking about not only that community, but friends and altadena. but i was also thinking about the nonsense surrounding the fire, the politics that have intruded. and one of the things that came to mind is that, you know, decency isn't a partizan affair. >> it shouldn't be. >> it shouldn't be. empathy isn't only for who's in our tribe. i'm thinking about the great chicago fire of 1871 and how the nation rallied and chicago was built back immediately. i wonder where we are in this moment. i wonder where we. let's love our neighbor. let's love our neighbor. >> and let's keep our eyes peeled wide open. right. i mean, all we can do is be be a mirror and hope for the best. indeed. thank you for being my wingman for the hour, eddie glaude. for the hour, eddie glaude. qu(vo)break explore the world the viking way

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then at 10 a.m, rachel maddow and team will bring you key moments of the day, followed by analysis from our prime time anchors as the new term begins next monday, beginning at six on msnbc. >> what we do is try to cut right to the bone of what we're seeing in washington that day. thank you so much for letting us into your homes during these extraordinary times. we are grateful. the beat with ari melber on this monday starts right now. hi, ari. >> hi, nicole. thank you. >> welcome to the beat. i'm ari melber, and we begin with the story that continues to grip the nation. >> these worsening, ongoing fire conditions in california, crews continuing to struggle to contain what are devastating flames. >> these have been tearing through the l.a. area for, if you're counting now six straight days, the strong winds fueled deadly fires last week, and those types of winds are now expected to pick up again tonight, which brings with it the possibility of not only the rapid spread of current fires, but even more fire zones.

officials have confirmed