♪ ♪ with so much great entertainment out there... wouldn't it be easier if you could find what you want, all in one place? my favorites. get xfinity streamsaver with netflix, apple tv+, and peacock included, for only $15 a month. >> tonight on the reidout, an exclusive new interview. our

colleague lawrence o'donnell just completed with president joe biden. in his final interview from the oval office. we'll bring you the first bite from that interview in just a moment. also tonight with president biden and vice president kamala harris leaving the stage on monday, what should the future of the democratic party look like and who should run it? one of the candidates to lead the dnc joins the table. plus, donald trump has made a whole lot of maga promises, including many that he says will be fulfilled on day one of his second presidency. will list them all so that you can keep score at home. but we begin tonight with a stark warning from president joe biden. last night, in his farewell address to the nation, the president decided not to put the focus on so much of his administration's achievements, but rather to use

the speech to warn the nation about the threat of the world's wealthiest individuals having essentially unchecked power. >> today, the oligarchy is taking shape in america of extreme wealth, power and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms, and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead. we see the consequences all across america, and we've seen it before. >> during the address, google searches for the word oligarchy shot up, including people asking what the word means. and if you two are curious or you're not a regular viewer of this program, rather than tell you, let me show you exactly what an oligarchy looks like. it looks like not just inviting tech ceos and billionaires like elon musk, jeff bezos, and mark zuckerberg to monday's inauguration, but giving them prominent seating on the dais alongside cabinet

nominees, elected officials and former presidents, including the head of tiktok. despite the fact that lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have deemed china controlled tiktok a national security threat and overwhelmingly voted to ban it in the u.s, it looks like giving the world's richest billionaire elon musk, office space in the white house complex, with essentially unfettered access to the incoming president, despite the fact that he has billions of dollars in government contracts. it looks like kevin o'leary, the shark tank multi-millionaire, saying he's not going to the annual world economic forum in davos, switzerland, which is typically where business leaders, billionaires, heads of state and other global elites gather to address what they see as the world's most pressing issues, writing there's no point the world's most powerful people won't be there for this year. they're all at the winter white house in palm beach, florida, on thursday, friday and saturday it's the new davos, but with

much better weather. and if you're thinking, well, you know what's the harm? rich people hanging out with rich people. who cares. the fact of the matter is the tech platforms these billionaire oligarchs run have a huge amount of influence over the general public. they increasingly help decide what news you get, what you know about the world, and even what people think and believe, and the policies that these billionaires impose on their tech platforms have real life consequences. take meta, for example. the company owned by mark zuckerberg that includes facebook and instagram. earlier this month, after fully bending the knee to trump, zuckerberg announced that the social media company was ditching their fact checking system and rolling back the rules on hate speech, which, according to reports, means that calling lgbtq people mentally ill or mexican immigrants trash is now a-ok and no longer a violation of meta user policies.

and while zuckerberg and the like are trying to spin this as promoting free speech, according to axios, many experts are worried that the types of speech now being permitted will fuel real life violence, pointing to bomb threats in boston and elsewhere that followed online attacks on pediatric gender clinics. and it wouldn't be the first time. 404 media is reporting that multiple speech and content moderation experts drew some parallels between these recent changes, and when facebook contributed to a genocide in myanmar in 2017, in which facebook was used to spread anti-rohingya hate. one expert told them, quote, we believe meta is certainly opening up their platform to accept harmful rhetoric and mold public opinion into accepting trump administration plans to deport and separate families. and in a nutshell, that's what an oligarchy looks like. the

world's richest tech bros and a couple of d-list celebrities paying millions of dollars to rub elbows at mar-a-lago, morally numb to the actual problems of the american people, including the ones they cause, instead only concerned with how they're going to make more money and how to appease donald trump. joining me now is baratunde thurston, host of the life with machines podcast and founding partner of puck news, and matthew dowd, former republican strategist and msnbc senior political analyst. thank you both for being here. baratunde, welcome to the program. having talked to you in a very long time. thank you for coming. there's a lot about what these tech oligarchs are doing. the people that president biden called essentially a tech oligarchy, they're going to be seated on the dais at the inauguration alongside the guy from chatgpt is going to be there. elon musk is going to be there. all of these oligarchs, and they're going to be seated

near among them. xi jinping, who is so far declined he could, i guess, still change his mind to come. that's the chinese leader. italian prime minister giorgia meloni. we're seeing if she's going to come. who else was invited? hungarian prime minister viktor orban, if he comes. argentine president javier malay, far right. javier. malay is definitely attending. the salvadoran president, nayib bukele, another oligarch pending ecuadorian president, is attending. the alternative for germany co-leader tino chapela. this is a neo-nazi style group in germany. far right united kingdom politician nigel farage attending. bolsonaro denied javier bolsonaro of brazil, denied because he's got some issues, some legal issues because he tried to do an insurrection in brazil. the french far right french politician eric zemmour. far right belgian politician tom van grieken attending. there's never been a foreign leader at an american inauguration, but a bunch of these foreign leaders

and leaders of far right political parties are attending. the tech bros also get equal sort of billing with former presidents. it scares me. how do you feel about all this? >> happy new year, joy. it's good to be here with you. >> and thank you so, so much for having me. >> people with this much money are supposed to be the most protected. >> but sometimes you think you have money and the money has you. >> and so what we're seeing is not the promotion of free speech, but probably the promotion of free cash flow. and when the state and explicitly nationalistic authoritarian state merges with financial and economic power, that's not a pretty picture for most of the people. >> and what's more alarming is that the form of power we're talking about, you laid it out in your opening very well, technology. it's not just technology anymore. >> it's how we connect with our loved ones. it's the information we get, the food we eat, our relationships across the spectrum. >> so with life and the government is supposed to be there to protect us, and now the

government is directly in league with those who have already concentrated so much power. >> so it's not a great sign. there's a lot that we should be looking out for, and i don't think we can underestimate the impact of this kind of alignment. >> also unprecedented, because you've not seen this much money on inauguration stage before. these people generally sit this out, but they're willing to stand up and be counted even as they bend the knee and subjugate themselves in a very public fashion. >> yeah. i mean, i can't imagine what it's going to look like, matthew, to have, you know, this, this set of former presidents there who i'm not sure what their intent in their mind is to go to attend. and all of these tech oligarchs and foreign leaders and leaders of far right wing, really almost dangerously far right wing parties all collected. i'm not sure what message that's supposed to send to the american people, but let me just let you listen to what president biden said to our own lawrence o'donnell just not long ago when he just did an interview with him. this is what president biden had to say. take a listen.

>> when you got up from that desk last night, that was really the final big public moment in a 50 year political career. >> yeah, that's how long it is. the you've served in government longer than any person who's ever served in this job. >> what did that feel like at the end of that that speech, i we were pushed out of the room as people were surrounding you, hugging you. >> and as that emotion was filling the room. but was there, was there a sense of the release of a burden getting up from that desk? >> no, but there was a sense that of serious concern. you've known me a long time. i, i really am concerned about how fragile democracy is. that

sounds corny, but, i mean, i really i really am concerned because you've heard me say it a hundred times. i really think we're at an inflection point in history here. we're unrelated to any particular leader. things are going to change drastically. >> i mean, he's really concerned. he said. he said it sounds corny, but i'm really concerned. are you as concerned, matthew? >> well, as you know, joy, we had a conversation about ten days ago and you asked me who the winners of the week were, and i said, the oligarchs ten months ago. and i think they continue to win each week because of the proximity to power, as mr. thurston was illuminating. i mean, i think you've just paused for a little history lesson here. i mean, we've struggled with this kind of thing for since human civilization of powerful people with the resources trying to get more power and lord it over the others, no matter the system of government. i mean, aristotle was the one that first coined the term oligarchy in the fourth

century bc, and we've had this struggle throughout american history. i mean, people forget that the civil war was about many things. obviously, slavery being the primary primary driving issue, but it was also about an oligarchy in the south. it was an oligarchy in the south driven that. that's why they wanted to leave, because they wanted to maintain their power and money driven by slavery, obviously, and holding vast sums of wealth. and we've seen it in our history, in 1920s and before the great depression, there was the greatest level of economic inequality, with a large number of people holding massive amounts of wealth. that changed, obviously, because of fdr, his policies, world war two, and the growth of the middle class. but i'll give you a fact that i think should be exceedingly disturbing at this moment. and i think it's why president biden is talking about this now. thank god, is the combined wealth of the few hundred billionaires in america, which elon musk and

zuckerberg and jeff bezos are part of, are the leaders of have more wealth, more wealth than the 75 million people who voted for vice president. harris combined the few hundred billionaires, more wealth than 75 million people who voted for the vice president combined in this. and i think it's incredible. it's an incredible situation. and the problem i see is the same thing repeating itself of what happened in the civil war, in the aftermath, where the working class whites of the south, who had nothing to benefit by maintaining the system, nothing, because they got nothing out of it, they got nothing out of the plantations, they got nothing out of it. but we're convinced because of cultural sort of language and division, that the white working class, who should have sided with the north in this and should have sided with more freedom and should have sided with the freed slaves, ended up becoming part of that sort of awful thing. and that led to civil rights and that powerful people. and this is my fear today. back then, powerful

people convinced the white working class was not the rich wasn't the enemy who were gobbling up everything. it was these cultural elites that were the enemy in their mind. and it's the same thing is happening today. the powerful people are trying to segment off the white working class who are getting no benefit from this and will suffer in the trump presidency and the trump presidency. but the same thing is repeating itself in our country again. >> yeah. and amen. amen. and i think you're getting an amen from bartender, too. i mean, that that is the reality. bartender. we started as an oligarchy and it was a planter class oligarchy. and then we came a railroad, an industrial magnate oligarchy. and the only 100 years in which we have not been an oligarchy is the 20th century right? and not even all the 20th century. we had to fight the robber barons. right. and i do think the greatest trick that the billionaire class played was to figure out how to make themselves cool to working class, mainly white. but even some nonwhite people who aspire

to them. and they said, no, donald trump is your aspiration. you can get there. i mean, he was born with $317 million, but you can get there. and now look at these guys. here's the people who are going to attend the inaugural david sachs of openai, the uber ceo, the paypal ceo, the spacex ceo, elon musk, amazon ceo, meta ceo, on and on and on. they now control the media so that they can tell white working class and brown working class and black working class people. no no no no no no. the billionaires aren't the enemy. it's the gays. it's the trans. it's the immigrants. it's the brown people. don't focus on us. focus on them. >> the old technique of divide and conquer is at work here again. >> and matthew, thank you so much for bringing that history to the fore. joy, thank you, graphics department for putting the money all on one page like that, because we can see clearly, and the united states has never been simply a story of the rich getting over on the rest, nor has it just been the

story of freedom rising to the top. >> it's a constant struggle and a constant cycle. >> so what i'm also looking for is those breaks and that temporarily convincing story, the breaks between the billionaires and maga over immigration, the breaks between the people who love technology for its ability to decentralize power, the crypto people, the blockchain people, the bitcoin people, the web3 people are all about bottom up power from the edge, not central authority. >> donald trump is all about central authority, and those surrounding him on that dais are about that too. that disconnect is not sustainable, temporarily short term profitable, and the long term, it is a house divided that also cannot stand. >> what i love about the two of you is that you have not just given us some history, but you have given us a plan, because those breaks and they've happened in the 20th century. fdr was a break. a rich man who turned against his class and said, no, we're going to give regular people some money. and those breaks happen. they can happen again. y'all are great.

you have to come back. keep 7 to 8 p.m. open on your schedule going forward. baratunde thurston thank you. baratunde thurston and matthew dowd, thank you. and be sure to tune in tonight for lawrence o'donnell's full interview with president biden on the last word. that is tonight at 10 p.m. eastern, right here on msnbc. go, lawrence. coming up next, with the rise of oligarchy, comes the crumbling of our free press, the blatant warning signs, and our desperate need for media desperate need for media literacy. after the break. when i was diagnosed with h-i-v, i didn't know who i would be. but here i am... ...being me. keep being you... ...and ask your healthcare provider about the number one prescribed h-i-v treatment, biktarvy. biktarvy is a complete, one-pill, once-a-day treatment used for h-i-v in many people—whether you're 18 or 80. with one small pill, biktarvy fights h-i-v to help you get to undetectable—and stay there whether you're just starting or replacing your current treatment. research shows that taking h-i-v treatment as prescribed and getting to and staying undetectable

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real value from your life insurance when you need it. >> with abacus, the second inauguration of donald trump, morning joe kicks off coverage. >> 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 monday, beginning at six on msnbc. >> msnbc premium gives you early access and ad free listening to rachel maddow chart topping series, msnbc original podcasts,

exclusive bonus content, and all of your favorite msnbc shows now ad free. subscribe on apple podcasts. >> the free press is crumbling, editors are disappearing. social media is giving up on fact checking. the truth is smothered by lies told for power and for profit. we must hold the social platforms accountable to protect our children, our families and our very democracy from the abuse of power. >> president biden bid farewell from the oval office wednesday with a dark and timely warning about the erosion of american journalism. and joining me now is angelo carusone, president and ceo of media matters. angelo, this felt like probably the most important farewell address, honestly, since eisenhower warned of the military industrial complex, i thought it was spot on. it was frightening, but but i thought honest and accurate. what did you think? >> yeah, i agree, i mean, i you

know, i think it's hard to say it now or see it now unless you're really in the fight every day. but when we look back on this time, there's going to be all sorts of things to think about. covid and, you know, the finance industry and everything. but in the decades ahead, when we look back what this is going to really be defined and, and described as is sort of the information war and the time at which entrenched powers really, you know, sort of were able to grapple a total stranglehold over our information. everything else is secondary to that, because those problems are either magnified or solved as a result of that bedrock. and i think that this is prescient and true, and, and technology is obviously going to intensify and inflame that, as the president alluded to. >> right? i mean, i think people understand that a billionaire, rupert murdoch owns fox and the new york post, and then he bought the wall street journal and people went, oh, hold on. that was sort of a normal, maybe right leaning, but business paper now it's owned by him. and so but people understand that that means, oh, you're dragging that all to the right, jeff bezos i don't think people necessarily saw coming. right.

he said, i'm going to take over the washington post, but i'm not going to get involved. and then he said, oh, we're not endorsing kamala harris. pull that. but we are endorsing pam bondi. do that. and then a bunch of people started quitting. and telnaes, who is one of the great cartoonists of all time, ann telnaes, quit because bezos killed a cartoon that she was going to run that lampooned him and lampooned donald trump, a bunch of washington post employees. they sent a letter. they asked for a summit with him, more than 400 employees asking bezos to meet, saying they're deeply alarmed by recent decisions at the paper. the paper has lost jennifer rubin as a columnist. a bunch of other columnists have left. people are canceling subscriptions. and then this happened. they changed their slogan at the washington post. the washington post adopted the slogan democracy dies in darkness. after donald trump first entered the white house in 2017. this week, as he attempts to come back, they've

changed it to riveting storytelling for all of america. seems like a change. your thoughts on the rupert murdoch ization of jeff bezos? >> that is, that is an example of where we're going. and it ties in with the first segment that he had to about sort of like entrenched power oligarchs sort of getting more and more power, because obviously what bezos is thinking about is all of his larger business interests, and he doesn't want the washington post to become a liability. what's worse, though, is that even if at even if at best, he says, we're just going to be neutral, we're not going to do anything. he's still privileging lies because, as margaret sullivan, who used to be at the times, described it, journalism is being a truth vigilante, that it is a profession. it's not a storyteller. that is a that is a thing you do to get the truth out there. you tell stories in effective ways, but you're ultimately as a journalist, you're a professional that has a mechanism for getting to and sussing out the truth. and then you you have to advocate for it. and if you're taking the position as an enterprise, as that slogan does, that we're

interested in happy customers and making money. that means you're not going to be a truth vigilante. that means you're going to make sure that you're not telling your customers things that are going to bother them, but they may get mad and walk away. or worse, you're not going to do things that could potentially harm your larger business interests. you can't be both of those things. so he's picking a side here, and he's sort of turning the publication into an instrument of whatever is the dominant narrative. and in an environment that we're heading into with trump and this larger avalanche of misinformation and sort of this right wing echo chamber, when you take a neutral posture, especially from that perch, you are basically enabling and privileging the dominant narrative. and that is going to be the lies of the trump administration and his and his allies. >> yeah, i can't imagine the former heads of the washington post attending the inauguration. i mean, what is he doing there? you know, i mean, it is it just him being there is sort of a bad sign. you, pam bondi yesterday sort of gave a load of very well versed gobbledygook. she sounded like a publicist who didn't want to answer a question when she was asked whether or not she

would prosecute members of the media for doing their jobs. we're in an environment where if you work for the washington post and you're trying to tell the truth, do you believe jeff bezos is going to be there for you if you get arrested? i don't know that i would yeah, i think you're basically getting to the big point here, too, which is that not only are, you know, we have to think about what is this from the perspective of these big publications and these top down decisions? >> i mean, there's a lot of major publications now that have been purchased by ideological interests, the la times as well. and as you noted, though, there's also shrinking newsrooms across the board. and now you have a full on assault and exploitation. so this is the moment where something, you know, one of the few professions that's actually identified in the constitution, because it's so pivotal to our society functioning, is to have journalists out there doing this work. >> you now have an administration that is going to do everything possible, not just to threaten to bully, harass and intimidate, but basically to cow journalists into making a significant cost benefit analysis every day. even if you have a publication that is not

trying to get you not to step out of line, you have to think about whether or not it's worth the harms and the harassment, and that's that's going to be in everybody's head. >> yeah, well, i can tell you, we don't plan to back down over here. and i know that media matters does not plan to back down either. if they're doing the bad things, we're going to say they're doing the bad things. and that's just the way it is. that's the job we signed up for. and we know that you are a leader in doing the same. angelo carusone, my friend, thank you so much. and coming up, trump's cabinet hearings continue today with character witnesses testifying on behalf of pam bondi, who already seems unwilling to challenge trump as attorney general. the right attorney general. the right back. ♪♪ well would you look at that? jerry, you've got to see this. i've seen it. trust me, after 15 walks, it gets a little old. ugh. i really should be retired by now.

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fake ballots? >> there could be. that's the problem. the department of justice, the prosecutors will be prosecuted. the investigators will be investigated. the deep state last term for president trump, they were hiding in the shadows, but now they have a spotlight on them. >> today was the day to this. today was day two in the confirmation hearings for donald trump's second pick for attorney general, pam bondi, the former two term attorney general of florida was not present. it was just character witnesses testifying on her behalf. but as you just heard. bondi has made

it clear over the past few years that she's prepared to enable trump and all of his desires to use the doj to do his bidding, including for revenge. and her performance yesterday did nothing to indicate that she would be willing to challenge trump on any of his requests, legal or otherwise. remember, the attorney general is meant to be the country's top lawyer, not the president's. and there is a history of ag's from both parties willing to go against the wishes of the presidents who appointed them. there was janet reno, who oversaw ken starr's various probes into her boss, bill clinton, that ultimately led to his impeachment. there was the ailing john ashcroft, george w bush's ag, who, from a hospital bed in 2004, was unwilling to sign off on an illegal secret surveillance program that the white house so desperately wanted. and of course, there was the infamous saturday night massacre on october 20th, 1973, when attorney general elliot richardson resigned after refusing richard nixon's order

to fire watergate special prosecutor archibald cox. the question, which it appears we already know the answer to, is would pam bondi be willing to do anything other than donald trump's bidding? joining me now is former federal prosecutor andrew weissmann and melissa murray, nyu law professor and co-host of the strict scrutiny podcast. andrew, i will start with you. to see how yesterday's performance by pam bondi, when placed against the sound that you heard at the top of this block where she was parroting donald trump's lies about stolen votes and fraud in pennsylvania, how that fares for whether or not she would be an independent ag, or someone who would investigate fake claims about the 2000 election. >> well, it was a really interesting hearing because pam bondi, on paper, is somebody who has qualifications for the job. >> she was the ag in florida.

>> she's an experienced prosecutor. she was very poised and articulate and clearly. clearly is smart. and she said some of the right things about there won't be an enemies list that it's important for the department to be independent. >> and she said all those things, however, and there's a huge but and that is when you actually tested that by saying, was there fraud in the election that was outcome determinative. >> you know, the january 6th, people who are convicted, are they in fact political prisoners and not just defendants who have been given all of their rights? she couldn't bring herself to show the independence that the attorney general position requires. so although she would say things that on one hand that sounded good when push came to shove, when she was tested on it, she really could not bring

herself to say anything that would be disruptive or unpleasant for the president elect, which is part of the job of being the attorney general. >> yeah. let me give you an example of that, melissa. this is the response that pam bondi gave as to whether she would investigate jack smith. >> the president has said jack smith should go to jail. >> will you investigate jack smith? >> senator, i haven't seen the file. i haven't seen the investigation. i haven't looked at anything. it would be irresponsible of me to make a commitment regarding anything. >> so a summary by the president or his desire to investigate jack smith would not be enough for you to open an investigation of jack smith, is that right? >> i will look at the facts and evidence. in any case, if you're joe biden, do you now consider giving jack smith a preemptive pardon because it sounds like she would investigate jack smith?

>> obviously, there was a lot that was left unsaid here. but the fact of the matter is that pam bondi is going to sail to a confirmation in this position because she has the, i guess, good fortune of not being a frat paddle turned into a real live boy. she's not matt gaetz, and that makes all of the difference here. as andrew said, she is qualified. i will note that her managerial experience is a little light. >> she's been the florida ag. >> the florida ag doesn't even manage as many attorneys as exists in the u.s. attorney's office in the southern district of florida, in miami-dade county. >> the justice department is a huge and complex organism. you are not only managing the attorneys in main justice, and the civil and criminal divisions are also managing the u.s. attorney's offices throughout the country. there are 93 of those. you're also managing all of these different divisions fbi, atf, the u.s. marshal service. it's a managerial job. you are the ceo of all of that, not simply a prosecutor or an attorney. >> and we really didn't even get

into a lot of that simply because the bar is low here, because she is obviously qualified and she's not her predecessor. >> and i think we have to grapple with that. >> the fact that the zone is absolutely flooded with candidates who so go beyond the norms of what we might expect, that someone who does look a little bit like a normie is bound to just get through. >> yeah, indeed. and just to buttress what you're saying, the department of justice has 115,000 employees. there are 12,000 plus attorneys, 16,000 plus correctional officers and 25,000 agents. let's do another one. this is pam bondi. when she was asked about kash patel's enemies list. >> would you have hired someone into the florida attorney general's office who you knew had an enemies list? >> senator, to cut to the chase, you're clearly talking about kash patel. i don't believe he has an enemies list. he made a quote on tv which i have not

heard. i have known kash, and i believe that kash is the right person at this time. for this job, you'll have the ability to question mr. patel. and i'm questioning you right now about whether you will enforce an enemies list that he announced publicly on television. oh, senator. i'm sorry. there will never be an enemies list within the department of justice. >> oh, there's an enemies list. you're on it, andrew. it was published in his book government gangsters. it includes president, democrats, biden administration officials, trump appointees like william barr, rod rosenstein, robert her and you. so she would enforce it. yeah. yeah, yeah. >> it says i'm in very good company. so, you know, one of the things that it's really important to remember is just going to that clip about kash patel and your introductory clip where pam bondi was saying there was fraud in the election in pennsylvania. well, there wasn't. and kash patel is the

person who said that the president elect declassified all of the documents, and he saw the president declassified all of the documents that apparently are in and were found in mar-a-lago. so you have somebody who's not who's going to be the attorney general. i agree with melissa. she will sail through because she's not matt gaetz and she is not robert kennedy junior, and she's not kash patel, but still, she's not tethered to facts, you know, to sit there and say kash patel is the right person for the job. i mean, that is really preposterous to say that there's fraud in the election in pennsylvania. there are no facts to support that and to parrot that you're going to be governed by facts and law, as the attorney general can be tested by then looking at specific instances where she's absolutely not guided by facts. so we're really in for a rough ride, i think because of that dichotomy

of seeing what she might say. but but in fact, what she does, i think is going to belie that. but, you know, we i think we have to hope that she will. >> i'm going to just say that, you know, we should consider it a victory that the right considers a woman attorney general to be qualified for any job, given that they did not feel that way about the sitting vice president of the united states, who was the former attorney general of the largest state in the country, california. andrew weissmann and melissa murray. thank you both. up next, the democratic party is in desperate need, desperate need for shakeup. so its leadership could not be more important right now. we will talk to one of the candidates for dnc chair, progressive faith for dnc chair, progressive faith shakir, next. for people who feel limited by the unpredictability of generalized myasthenia gravis, season to season, ultomiris is continuous symptom control, with improvement in activities of daily living and reduced muscle weakness. and ultomiris is the only long-acting gmg treatment with the freedom of just 6 to 7 infusions per year,

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thinning, my dermatologist recommended nutrafol. >> the formulas are clinically tested. my hair is much stronger and longer. i feel like i'm a completely different person. get growing at nutrafol. com. >> after losing the single most important election of any of our lifetimes, and with monday's second inauguration of donald trump looming, it seems like a good time for the party to pull itself together and mobilize opposition to trump and his extreme agenda. a crucial step in that reckoning is electing the democratic national committee's top executive, which is set to take place on february 1st. it's a process that goes through the 448 members of the dnc who vote on candidates who cross the threshold of collecting at least 40 member signatures. that process got a major shakeup yesterday, with the announcement of faiz shakir as the latest candidate. shakir previously led bernie sanders 2020 presidential campaign, and he has a long history of working

with democratic party leaders, including former senate majority leader the late harry reid and former speaker nancy pelosi. in a letter first reported by the new york times, shakir wrote to dnc members that rather than solely focusing on party mechanics, his mission would be to redefine the democratic party as the party of the working class. politico noted that shakir's letter included a pledge to turn the dnc into an organizing army with its own powerful media outlet that will release its own compelling original content and fast. shakir joins me now. he's executive director of more perfect union, a nonprofit supporting pro-labor journalism and advocacy efforts. it has been a long time since, i think the last time i saw you, you were working for harry reid. so you've kind of been across the spectrum of being a reid guy, a pelosi guy, and also a bernie guy. tell me, what is your. you've done it all. you've been through the spectrum. but what is? tell me about your platform.

explain that. what you would do as dnc chair. >> well, first, the diagnosing the problem and the mission here. it's that in this moment, we've got to go reach working class people. they are moving sadly away from us. they're sitting it out. they're feeling disenchanted about can anyone do anything this government worth it. >> so you got to go and get their attention. >> and in this moment where donald trump's going to come in, as with his billionaire class, the silicon swamp that wants to engage in probably the greatest merger and acquisition in history. >> and you know what it's going to be? it's the federal government, the facebook. >> they're all going to purchase the federal government. it's all going to work for them. >> and elon is going to have a party. we can go to working class people and help inform them about the choices that are present themselves and what they're doing versus what we're doing. >> i think it's going to be a great opportunity to go and do some education about the things that joe biden was doing, that, quite frankly, didn't get a lot of attention. >> you know, we were taking on facebook. there's a reason why zuckerberg is so upset. there's a reason why elon was upset because biden administration was taking them on. the next few

years are going to present that opportunity, and we got to go do that in a different way. >> and i was imagining a grassroots organization that says, if you're a dnc member, don't just give 25 bucks. also, come and hang out with us and watch the super bowl. also, we're going to hang out and enjoy it and support you when you go on the on a strike. >> when you're organizing in your community against a supreme court race that's, you know, being and taken away from us, we're going to mobilize, not only just mobilize, we're also going to do media around it because, as you know, well, we got a problem where we can't go direct to a lot of people right now. we got to build media. >> we got to build a lot of lot of direct to consumer stuff. >> you know, i mean, the thing is, is that i have so much to say. i've talked to you for an hour. i mean, one of the challenges that i see at the dnc and that i kind of hear anecdotally, is that you've got a consultant class that gets a lot of money. they get they take a lot of money to run tv ads, and they're desperately sort of trying to win back basically white republican voters, white working class voters, when the working class is a lot broader,

it's a lot racially broader. you are one of the few white, few nonwhite guys that's running for dnc chair. it's mostly white dudes that are running. and marianne williamson and i think one black woman. but it's mostly, you know, white guys. but it is the, the couch, the, the 19 million people who stayed home that voted when joe biden won in 2020. a lot of them were nonwhite, young working class people. and the dnc doesn't seem to want to put money on the ground to get them to vote. they just keep chasing white voters who vote republican by running tv ads. how do you stop the consultant class from doing that? >> i was going to say, let's go with that tv ads thing, because there's a lack of ambition around. what else would you do? that's what i find often as the challenge when i'm talking to my friends in the democratic party about, okay, you're running. how are we going to reach those people? >> oh, well, the we do paid ads. >> that's so the reason why you go to paid ads is because you don't really have an organic, grassroots operation in which there's a movement of people

that are associated with it. >> because if there were, then you're talking about a different thing. you are trying to go direct to them and get them out to vote. >> you have a 1 to 1 relationship with them. when you're an amazon worker and you're struggling, you don't have to put a tv ad up to tell an amazon worker that you're getting screwed, or that we're standing with you and your strike, or that joe biden has gone to a picket and stands with workers. no, we don't have to worry about the tva. >> we've got our list. >> we've got people. >> we go direct, we got amazon workers on our list. >> we're amazon workers going to talk to amazon workers. and we're going to tell you, we stand with you when you go on strike, starbucks, when you when you went on strike, the democratic party was with you. >> so when we go back to them in the next cycle, they know that, oh, when the democratic party stuck their necks out a little bit. what i'm urging you to think, you know, and everyone to think about is beyond tv ads. >> there's a whole world of how you engage people as if you care about being a grassroots organization, which we are not tapping into or investing in

because we're so reliant on the paid communication. >> and by the way, i'm for tv. i work on tv. i have no problem with tv, but the reality is there's, you know, like you said, there are a lot of people that we're not reaching. we please come back because we got to talk about neoliberalism, right? >> because it's the easiest and it's the and it's a scam. >> you can get a lot of money just by running an ad, right? it doesn't take a lot of work. >> that's that's come back because we got so much more to talk about. we got to have a whole conversation about neoliberalism. we're going to do that again. foster care. good luck. thank you so much. and coming up, donald trump has promised the american people a whole lot, some of which he's already backtracked on, like his pipe dream of lowering grocery prices. and our job will be as a show will be to hold him accountable for those promises. how we plan to do that after the break, when you realize bloating and discomfort don't have to be routine, everything changes. >> try rice mushroom coffee with six functional mushrooms that heal your gut, improve digestion, and boost immunity. a better routine starts here. >> everyone's getting that new

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>> call 1-833-735-4495 or visit homeserve.com. >> a very busy day of news. >> we have never seen anything like it. >> we're going to report the facts out together. >> there are several stories breaking what protects the country? >> what protects the constitution? >> do you still believe that the collapse of the regime is inevitable? >> what's your level of concern and fear for your own future?

>> america is dealing with many issues, from grocery prices to gun violence. >> it has been over 400 days since the war in gaza started. >> you're watching trump hire a fiercely staff. >> much more to come here tonight. stay with us. >> donald trump made a lot of promises while talking his way back into the white house, including a whole bunch of promises about things he would do on day one, including this memorable ditty. >> he says, you're not going to be a dictator, are you? i said, no, no, no, other than day one. >> well, four days from now it will be day one. and reportedly, trump is preparing a, quote, shock and awe campaign of executive orders to implement right away. he has 100 of them on tap for day one, apparently, and one of his most ghoulish aides, stephen miller, says trump's immigration priorities are expected to be the first cruelties out of the gate. but let's take a look at all of the day one promises trump has made, shall we? he says he'll end the

war in ukraine and pardon january 6th defendants on day one. he also says he plans to drill baby drill on his first day, hence the dictator shtick on the economy. he says he'll cancel president biden's electric vehicle mandate. not sure his boss, elon, will go for that and implement 25% tariffs on mexico and canada, our two biggest trading partners. he's also said he'll bring down grocery prices starting on day one. on immigration, his promises include closing the border, ending biden era border policies, reinstating his muslim travel ban, beginning the largest mass deportation program in u.s. history, and ending birthright citizenship, which you can't actually do without amending the constitution. but hey, yolo, he's also promised to flood the zone with maga red meat, ending federal diversity, equity and inclusion programs, and banning critical race theory from being taught in the

military. and don't forget persecuting transgender people, ending gender affirming care, and banning transgender individuals in women's sports and in the military all. on day one, it's a big long list and the cruelty is the point. and that's just a taste of trump's nasty maga promises. so starting monday at 7 p.m. eastern, right here on this show, we're going to start keeping track with our progress report on how those maga promises are going. tell a maga friend, assuming you still talk to them. and that is tonight's reidout. be sure to watch lawrence o'donnell tonight on the last word, president biden sits down with lawrence for the final exclusive oval office interview of his presidency. they'll discuss his achievements, his legacy and what's ahead for the country. watch the last word tonight at 10 p.m. eastern on msnbc. all in with chris hayes starts now. tonight on all in. >> oligarchy is taking shape in america of extreme wealth, power