spending inauguration day honoring martin luther king jr. s legacy. also, don't forget, beginning monday, rachel maddow hosts five nights a week for the first 100 days of trump's presidency. alex wagner travels across the country to highlight his policies and promises. watch the rachel maddow show weeknights at 9 p.m. eastern on msnbc. i'm ayman mohyeldin. a special edition of velshi starts right now. >> good evening. i'm ali velshi. it is saturday, january the 18th. we are right now less than 48 hours away from the second inauguration of president elect donald trump, which also falls on martin luther king jr. day. and for just the second time in american history, it will be for a president serving nonconsecutive terms. you have to go back to 1893 and the second inauguration of president grover cleveland for the only other example. right now, let's

take a look at some live pictures. donald trump is at his golf club in sterling, virginia. cats there. all right. well, we'll see pictures in a moment. overlooking the potomac river, where he's hosting a party for about 500 people, featuring live musical performances and a fireworks display. later on, donald trump will head to blair house, also known as the president's guest house. it's adjacent to the white house, where he will stay for the night. that's following a tradition going back to president jimmy carter. and because of the frigid forecast, monday's inauguration will now be held indoors. it will be the first indoor inauguration since president ronald reagan's second inauguration in 1985. former presidents obama, bush and clinton will be in attendance, notably, among the foreign dignitaries set to attend is china's vice president, han jiang. this is the first time a senior chinese leader will attend a u.s. president's swearing in. nbc news has also learned that elon musk, mark zuckerberg, jeff bezos, tiktok ceo shu chu and google ceo

sundar pichai will also attend. among those set to perform, carrie underwood and the village people, whose classic ymca was frequently used by trump on the campaign trail. all indications are that trump intends to move quickly to enact his campaign promises, from mass deportations to retribution. the president elect spoke by phone today with the moderator of meet the press, kristen welker, and told her that deportations of undocumented immigrants will begin very quickly, and that he plans to sign a record setting number of executive orders. he said the theme of his planned inauguration speech will be, quote, unity and strength, and also the word fairness. now, if you're wondering what he means by the word fairness, keep listening. quote. because you have to be treating people fairly. you can't just say, oh, everything's going to be wonderful. you know, we went through hell for four years with these people. and so, you know, something has to be done about it. end quote. the top trump ally told nbc news that, quote, there will be a push to make a

huge early show and assert himself to show his campaign promises were not hollow, end quote. and a trump campaign official told nbc news that the incoming president will enact changes at a pace, quote, like nothing you've seen in history, end quote. a main focus of trump's first day is expected to be immigration. trump is expected to sign up to five executive orders aimed at dealing with immigration alone on his first day, according to three trump allies. the inauguration will follow a week of confirmation hearings for a dozen of trump's high profile picks, including pete hegseth for defense secretary, pam bondi for attorney general, marco rubio for secretary of state, and john ratcliffe for cia director. it's all set to begin just over 24 hours after the start of a new ceasefire in gaza, which is set to take effect in about 4.5 hours. these are ambulances and aid trucks that are staging outside the rafah gate. but the border between gaza and egypt. donald

trump's incoming special envoy for the middle east, steve witkoff. this gentleman participated in the final stages of the negotiations for the deal. following months of intense work by the biden administration. that work was led by brett mcgurk. joining me now is joanne freeman, professor of history and american studies at yale university. professor, good to see you again. thank you for being with us. there's just a lot. the point of i think that introduction is there's a lot going on in america. there's a lot going on in the world. these are tough times. so while the president runs on things that they're going to do, and donald trump wants to get started on implementing some of these things that he's got to do at noon on monday, he inherits a complicated america and a complicated world. >> he does. and it's a good moment to point to the fact that an inauguration serves a purpose. it has a meaning, and it relates precisely to the kind of thing that you just mentioned. you have the campaign. you have all the rancor and the contest and the running around. you have the administration, and they kick in

and do whatever it is that they want to do. the inauguration represents a transition, and what's supposed to happen in a normal inauguration is that the president gets up and says, okay, that's the contest is behind us. and now, as a nation, we need to come together as a nation and not just talking to the people who like me. and i'm not just yelling at the people who don't. but this is a moment for the nation to recognize that there is a new president. this is a moment where i will share my vision for the nation, for all of us. so inaugurations, it sounds kind of counterintuitive. inaugurations are about the nation and we the people. they are not about a president. >> this is an important point, because the most important person in america is today and will remain at noon on january, the american citizen. i'm trying to reframe this, at least in my head, as a the beginning of the rest of the relay, right? the relay to protect democracy, to do whatever it is you want to do. so there are a lot of

people, i think, who may turn away from it. that's their their right and their choice to do so. but in fact, i think of this as the next leg in our journey to preserve democracy. democracy doesn't come or go away overnight. it needs to be worked at. right. >> it never has been something that goes of itself. i think many of us, my generation and before and even after took it for granted. yes, because it's always been there. it works. you have elections, that democracy is a given. and one of the things we now know is that it isn't. it's not a given. it needs to be defended and protected, which is precisely what a president swears to do when they take their oath of office. you need to defend and protect democracy, and that's going to require people being alert to what's happening, people being aware of their rights as american citizens, people understanding that the government is theirs. people in the government are public servants to them. these are all

things that sound inherently obvious. but in our current moment, i think for many people they are not obvious. >> we have had people for years criticizing the role that money plays in politics. we're seeing something very different now. we are seeing a collection of oligarchs, of billionaires doing things. no one call them oligarchs because we don't know where this is going yet, but doing things that seem to be having remarkable influence over policies that will affect them, will affect them directly. it's one thing to have billionaires around, one thing to have them influencing policy, but there seems to be something that's starting to feel like a quid pro quo. i'm going to come and bend the knee to you. i'm going to donate to your inauguration. i'm going to help you out, and i'd like you to regulate me a little bit less. >> absolutely. and again, to get back to the obvious, we didn't vote for elon musk, right? we didn't vote for any of these people. they're wealthy people with a lot of power who are using the fact that they're wealthy people with a lot of power to get more power. but the fact of the matter is even more

so than a president. they don't serve us. they have no desire to serve us, necessarily. who knows? there are some good guys in the mix, but generally speaking, they're not there because of us. and so again, i think this so often, and i guess i don't often have a chance to say it with a lot of people listening. it's so fundamentally important for americans to remember that the government is about us, that it's about we the people, right? democracy is governed by the simple fact that whoever we give power to, they're accountable to us, right, for how they use that. >> but if you give that up ahead of time, you do their work for them. and in other words, my view is that if you are going to be in a government that you feel is going to take some of your rights away, and it's quite possible that this one might do so don't give anything up. no, until they wrench it from your hands. >> don't give anything up. don't be quiet about it. don't step back. be alert. be loud. yeah. organize with people to speak up

together. you know, no matter what happens, we see it over and over again that, you know, the government initially was grounded on the fact that public opinion matters. and that was different in the united states than in the monarchies that were there during the founding period. what that means is that if the public speaks up loudly, really loudly in big numbers, that has an impact. and we've seen it over and over again in ways that are always sort of surprising. oh, look at that. hey, wow. they backpedaled. i think that's so important for people to believe in that simple fact that rather than just sitting back and thinking, oh, well, i guess this is happening now, right? speaking up loudly in big groups, right there is a real we've still got power. >> we in the media still have power, and citizens still have have power. this is not a moment to sit it out. good to see you, joanne. thank you for being with us. joanne freeman is a professor of history and american studies at yale. joining me now is the congressman, jasmine crockett of

texas. no. a person no one has to convince to speak up when things are completely stacked against you. and, congresswoman, i want to just remind people, because you and i met when you were in the texas legislature, where things were completely stacked against you and you still did those things because you felt it was necessary to show people you were doing it. and it did motivate public opinion. and it it, you know, didn't get you the entire victory you wanted. but it does give you some wins. >> that's absolutely true. i am used to having my back against the wall coming out of the texas house, where definitely there is always a republican trifecta. as far as i'm concerned, the system has been rigged against us to be that way, simply because we have these terribly gerrymandered districts. but, you know, here's the deal. trump is coming in and he's already disappointing his base. and i could not be more ecstatic about this. people are so upset because they're like, hey, we spent thousands of dollars to get here just to see

our fearless leader. and you're telling me that this is going to be a closed party to just a select few, right? like that's what we're hearing. and if it is a weather issue, then please tell me why it is that you didn't see that we were supposed to have bad weather. this wasn't a last minute thing. you decided at the last minute to change the game because he doesn't care about people. and i think that that's what we're going to consistently see, is that he is constantly going to do everything he can to cater to those billionaires and some of these folk that we really shouldn't be close with. the fact that a high ranking chinese official is coming to an american presidents inauguration at a time like this, at a time in which the entire congress decided that tiktok was actually a threat to the american people, because china is the one that absolutely oversees it. it's a really weird time. >> talk to me about these executive orders. this happens. obviously new presidents come in. donald trump's going to do a

lot of things by executive order. he may undo certain executive orders that president biden has, has, has put out there. how are you and your colleagues thinking about this? because obviously he's going to try and run with as many of these as he can do. what what's the counterbalance that that you can offer in congress? >> yeah, here's the deal. we are going to be drinking out of a fire hose, which is what we always do with donald trump. there's always so much chaos that it's hard to really rein it in. and so i think that we did a really good job when we were going through the continuing resolution where, yeah, it was over a thousand pages of legislation. and so there actually was a lot of good stuff in there, but we focused in on the fact that they were getting rid of funding for childhood cancer research. right. so we are going to find the worst of the worst. make sure that we highlight that. and then we are also going to make sure that we do some of kind of what needs to be done, which is just kind of make it very plain about the people that are pulling his strings and recognizing that he's being puppeteered, and it's

not by the people. you just had a conversation talking about the most important person, whether it's today or on inauguration day, is the us citizen. we are going to try to make sure that the american people know that they literally were sold a bag of goods. like this was yet another grift, and we're going to make sure that they know that it was nothing more than a grift. >> let's talk about immigration. i want to ask you specifically about these comments about deportation. you are a new member of the immigration integrity, security and enforcement subcommittee. there's reporting this weekend that the trump administration is planning major raids, possibly on inauguration day or the days immediately after that, specifically targeting sanctuary cities. it is something the president ran on. what can people do? this is i think i get this this concern, this and abortion are the two things people are most worried about under this administration. what what is available to us with respect to deportations.

>> yeah. so first of all, you need to know your rights, right? so if you are in a situation where you have an attorney, i would say reach out to your attorney, because obviously when it comes to immigration, cases are at different places and we have different types of relief that people are seeking as it relates to immigration. you have people that are here on visas. those visas may have been expired, whether they were an education visa, whether they were h-1b visa. everyone is kind of in a different bag. okay. so if you have legal counsel as an attorney, i'm going to always tell you to turn to your legal counsel first and second. what i need people to understand about why this is so egregious is that they are going to literally look at people and say, you look like an immigrant, right? like, and they're going to get this wrong. we have seen them do this time and time before. in fact, someone recently talked to me this past week about her son in law and how her son in law got stuck as they were trying to get back into the country, and they thought that he wasn't an

american, and she had to go and prove that her son in law was actually an american. so just know that this is not only going to affect those that are immigrants, but it's going to affect really some folk that are absolutely citizens as well. the other thing that i wanted to say is you mentioned my new subcommittee. we actually have a hearing that is coming up, i believe, on tuesday of this week. so we are going to have our first hearing. i expect that it is going to be prime time nonsense. so for everyone that typically tunes in to c-span, i don't know what's going to happen, but i don't expect anything good. the final thing that i'll say is don't get caught with all the distractions. yeah, they are going to yell out and say, this is president trump being tough on immigration because that's who he is. and he's strong. the same guy that couldn't stand outside in the cold. i just want to point that out. but he's going to say how big and bad and strong he is, while at the same time not talking about how expensive it is to try to

effectuate these raids. and the reality is that we are about to hit the debt ceiling any minute now. so right now, honestly, what he needs to be doing is focusing on the debt ceiling and figuring out what it is that they're going to do, because now that they have a trump trifecta, they're going to have to figure that out on their own. >> congresswoman, good to see you. thank you for joining us tonight. representative jasmine crockett of texas. all right. coming up tomorrow, donald trump's going to take control. well, monday, he's going to take control of an america that is not actively at war, but against a backdrop of a world that is full of hotspots. how america's role in the world is changing at role in the world is changing at the dawn of a new trump if have heart disease and struggle with ldl-c... even with statins and diet... listen to your heart. talk to your doctor about repatha. repatha plus a statin lowers ldl-c by 63%. do not take repatha if you're allergic to it. serious allergic reactions can occur. get medical help right away if you have trouble breathing or swallowing, swelling of the face, lips, tongue, throat or arms.

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>> nutrafol is life changing for me. >> get growing at nutrafol. com. >> we are right now. we are about four hours away from the scheduled start of a fragile new ceasefire deal between israel and gaza. the first phase of that agreement includes the

release of hostages held by hamas, which is set to begin in just hours. plus, increased aid access into gaza. this follows months of intense negotiations between qatar and egypt, which are acting as mediators for hamas and the united states. the biden administration team was mainly led by brett mcgurk, the president elect's incoming special envoy to the middle east. steve witkoff also played a role in the final stages, getting the agreement across the finish line and pressuring israeli hardliners to accept a deal that's almost identical to one that was proposed by biden last may. and the trump team will be fully taking over once he's inaugurated on monday, barely 24 hours into the cease fire. assuming that the deal holds, this will be the first foreign policy test for a new trump era coming, as trump has been broadly messaging a very different approach to his second term. you'll recall that one of the main characteristics of trump's america first ideology during his first term was an isolationist agenda, especially

relating to us military involvement overseas. it also involved taking a critical approach to nato and to america's traditional allies. now, as we prepare for trump's second term, he's been pitching a much more expansionist approach a manifest destiny, if you will, to america's south. trump is calling for the gulf of mexico to be renamed the gulf of america to the north. trump is musing about making canada america's 51st state, referring to canada's outgoing prime minister justin trudeau. as governor trudeau on social media. this comes amid political upheaval in canada, where trudeau has announced that he will step down from his post. and as trump continues to promise sweeping tariffs on canadian exports. notably, the united states and canada are each other's largest trading partners. now, trump is vowing to use, quote, economic force to merge the neighboring nations, describing the border as an artificially drawn line. it seems strangely, strangely that in this one case, trump is not

all that concerned about borders. trump is also talking about acquiring greenland, a self-governing territory which was first settled in the late 10th century by norse explorer erik the red, and which denmark has controlled since the 14th century. it's not the first time the us has been interested in greenland. the us briefly occupied it during world war two and reportedly offered denmark $100 million in gold bars for it in 1946. trump was also interested in obtaining greenland in 2019. however, trump's casual interest has turned and turned into what he's now calling, quote, an absolute necessity. end quote. arguing that acquiring greenland is an important national security priority for america. russia and china have been making inroads, setting up commercial and industrial infrastructure in the territory and in the surrounding areas of the arctic. more generally, greenland has vast amounts of mineral resources. trump's talk has energized the island's independence movement,

by the way, and greenland's prime minister. it's got its own prime minister separate from denmark, says that the country is not for sale and never will be for sale, something he reiterated to trump in a phone call on wednesday. but that may not deter trump, who has refused to rule out military intervention in order to take greenland. and that is a threat that's triggered warnings from nato allies france and germany. similarly, trump has also not ruled out using the military to take control of the panama canal, which the us turned over to the government of panama via treaty in 1977 after previously controlling it since 1903. for years, trump criticized the late former president jimmy carter for making that deal. and recently, trump has said that american ships are being overcharged for its use. trump's also framing it as a way of curbing china's growing influence, similar to the situation he's talking about in greenland. and like the reactions in greenland, his comments have triggered a nationalist reaction among the panamanian public and politicians there who view the panama canal with pride. trump's

expansionist rhetoric has sent a geopolitical message that it may not. it may no longer be taboo to buy, sell or steal territory in the modern era. and it comes at a time when other world powers are expressing expansionist aspirations as well, notably russia and ukraine. china in taiwan and some right wing israeli politicians as it relates to the west bank and the golan heights. it also comes at a time of tremendous turbulence and unrest around the world. less than a thousand miles from the panama canal in venezuela. the president there, nicolas maduro, has assumed a third term in office, despite evidence suggesting that he lost the recent election and widespread international calls for him to step aside. the united states calls maduro illegitimate and says that he's got no right to claim the presidency. the biden administration increased the reward for information leading to the arrest of maduro to $25 million, up from $15 million. that was the bounty that was created in 2020 by the trump

administration, which also took a hard line approach to maduro and even took the unusual step of indicting him. elsewhere, north korea is now fighting for russia against ukraine. south korea is in domestic political chaos. the us says there's a genocide in the civil war ravaged sudan. there's a new government forming following civil war in syria, formed out of a band of what used to be isis affiliated thugs. and donald trump returns to power in less than 48 hours. when we come back, i'll talk about america's role in the world on the cusp of a new trump era with mark hanna. he's the ceo of the institute for global affairs at the eurasia group. i feel like new sunglasses, like a brand new pair of jeans. >> i feel like taking chances. i feel a lot. feel a lot. >> brand new.

i don't ever see anyone coming out to maintenance anything, so it's very scary for me because i have everything i love in this home. so, we've now implemented drone technology. how is that safe for me? it enhances the inspection, so it allows us to see things faster. your safety is the most important, and if you're feeling unsafe, that's not okay. it doesn't feel like that in our hearts. i mean, it's worrisome. [dog barks]

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mark hanna. he's the chief executive officer of the institute for global affairs at the eurasia group. he teaches at columbia university school of international and public affairs. hey, mark, i got to talk to you about the very immediate news. and this is before trump's inauguration, possibly in the next four hours or so, we may start to see the beginning of a hostage prisoner exchange between israel and gaza and a cease fire going into effect. we can only hope that's going to happen. but everything is very fluid there, right? talk to me about this. donald trump will take office as this is unfolding. he will. >> and he'll also take credit for this because, you know, this is indistinguishable from a lot of the deals that joe biden and his team were negotiating. >> it looks very similar to the deal that was proposed in may. of course. yeah. >> no, no, no major changes. no major differences. of course, donald trump is going to say that kinder and kinder and gentler approach did not work. i had to come in here and say, there's going to be hell to pay and make a credible threat of, you know, you know, american muscle flexing. and that's what brought not only hamas, but also

netanyahu to the table. now, you know, this is a three phased deal. phase two doesn't even start getting negotiated until 16 days after, you know, after phase one begins tomorrow morning. so there's a lot that could go wrong here. you know, israel has basically said that it you know, it needs all the all the hostages back. it needs hamas to demilitarize, not to have a political presence. hamas has said israel has to get, you know, completely out. the idf has to exit completely. gaza. it's unlikely either of those two eventualities will happen without some more, at least rhetorical conflict. >> so whether or not donald trump wants to deal with it, he's going to end up. and by the way, his guy, steve witkoff, was involved in the negotiations. and by all accounts, everybody was working on the same side of the table. absolutely. >> i mean, this is this is a credit to smooth transition. there were some reports that he strong armed, you know, brett mcgurk and the biden people out. but for the most part they had a shared objective here and were able to pull it off, maybe with

some sort of good cop bad cop routine, i don't know. >> well, let's hope talk to me about you. study this all the time. all the things that i said in the introduction here you study, is there a fundamental difference between america first and america renaming and taking? canada, greenland, gulf of mexico, panama canal. is this a real thing or not? >> i think look, trump, you meant you characterized him as isolationist. i think he's that that fits. but he's also very transactional. right. and i think he looks back at this, has this kind of gauzy, nostalgic view of american power, maybe at the turn of the 19th century. and william mckinley. right. like this kind of territorial acquisition. acquisition is what he's done as a real estate developer. and i think he probably equates in some way great american presidents with, you know, the louisiana purchase and westward expansion and the acquisition of alaska and puerto rico. like, i think there is a way in which he this isn't necessarily expansionist. i don't think he's going to attempt to take these by force,

but i think he's he's coming out throwing punches with some, like, grandiose opening of a of a negotiation before he even takes office, whether, you know, whether and what he's going to accomplish remains very much to be seen. >> one of the concerns about tulsi gabbard becoming the dni is that she has close relationships, or is thought to have close relationships with russia. mike turner, who was the head of the house foreign intel committee, was replaced by mike johnson because he was thought of as sort of a reasonable guy who supports u.s. support of ukraine. this is the ukrainians are coming up to the third year of the war in february. what what do you think happens there? >> look, trump has already kind of modified his original campaign promise that he was going to end it within 24 hours. now it's going to be six months. my best estimate is probably, you know, knowing how kind of messy these things are and the kind of territorial negotiations that occur. i think it will happen within his administration. i think that the war will end. i think it will be closer to two years, two and a half years. you know, mike

turner, jim himes, the on the house intelligence committee, said of his, you know, erstwhile candidate on the republican side that he was only 90% trump. right. and the fact that he wasn't 100% trump meant that trump needed to boot him because he was insufficiently loyal. like, this is the kind of thing that we're starting to see with his appointments. we're starting to see, you know, this is this is a criterion. i have friends that worked in the state department that were asked by nikki haley and her office at us un, you know, what are your loyalties essentially? and these are career people, not political appointees. so loyalty is going to figure very prominently in this next administration. >> mark, good to see you as always. thanks very much for the work that you do and for joining us tonight. mark hannah is with the institute for global affairs at the eurasia group. all right. coming up, president joe biden used his farewell address to warn of a new american oligarchy taking shape. i'll talk to two of the smartest people i know about the so-called tech about the so-called tech industrial complex.

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to the robber barons back then and busted the trusts. they didn't punish the wealthy, they just made the wealthy pay to play by the rules everybody else had to. >> president joe biden's farewell address, delivered on wednesday. not your typical farewell address, but the significance of biden's decision to dedicate his final remarks to the dangers of unchecked corporate wealth cannot be overstated. his warning of a tech industrial complex, that's the word he. the term he used, parallels president dwight eisenhower's farewell address in 1961, where he cautioned against the growing power of the military industrial complex, a term we now all know too well. the alarm bells come at a time of historic levels of inequality and concentrated wealth. the top 0.1% of the us population holds nearly six times as much total wealth as the bottom 50%. that's according to the federal

reserve, according to the new yorker's david remnick quote, to hear biden, who ran for the presidency not as a democratic socialist or as a social democrat, but as a centrist in the party, speak out against the gathering. signs of oligarchy has meaning, end quote. biden's term has been defined by a number of things, depending on whom you ask. but one undeniable hallmark of his presidency has been his commitment to breaking up concentrated wealth and empowering american workers. that commitment was evident from the outset, through key appointments at key federal agencies like the federal trade commission, the justice department and the national labor relations board. biden's commitment extended to the picket line. he became the first sitting president to stand in solidarity with striking union workers. under his watch, the federal trade commission advanced the most ambitious antitrust agenda in more than a generation, reviving new deal era laws that broke up monopolies and fostered fair competition. and now wall street is celebrating trump's election

victory. quote, trump is getting back to business and ceos are ready, end quote. that's a fox business headline recently, wall street celebrates in all caps, in case you weren't sure, trump ally and investor kevin o'leary, you know him from shark tank, could hardly contain his excitement, voicing the quiet part out loud on fox business. quote i'm licking my own chops right now. these are good times. but the added bonus the extra juice is the deregulation that federal deregulation, particularly on energy independence. i mean, that is fantastic. end quote. it's no secret that our political system has been compromised for some time now, with dark money flooding our elections as a matter of course, eroding the core principle of one person, one vote. several developments in recent history serve to untether wealth from its previous constraints, wiping out america's main streets and weakening our democratic institutions over time. from reaganomics, with its emphasis on deregulation to a series of

supreme court decisions that equated corporations with people possessing rights, the balance has steadily shifted in favor of the ultra wealthy, tipping the scales ever closer to oligarchy. trump's win this year could well become the final domino to fall in this tilt toward institutionalized oligarchy, with his cabinet picks embodying a formal merger of unchecked wealth and power, ceos far and wide tripped over themselves to kiss the ring of donald trump. as the heads of america's biggest companies have been flocking to mar-a-lago to meet with the president elect, sign up to attend his nomination, and write big checks to finance it. this is just the beginning. as the guardians editorial board notes, quote, rarely has the marriage of politics and riches been as naked or unashamed as with mr. trump. the man who rages against elites has assembled a cabinet with 13 billionaires. elon musk, the first person whose net worth has passed $400 billion, says that citizens will face, quote,

temporary hardship, end quote, as his department of government efficiency slashes public spending at stake may ultimately be the question of who shall rule the people? or america's new aristocrats, end quote. joining me now, ruth ben-ghiat, new york university professor of history and the atlantic's tom hartman. welcome to you both. tom, you've written a book about this. so i want to understand from you where we go from sort of talking colloquially about an oligarchy in which a small number of people or companies control a great deal of wealth and influence government decisions to it actually happening. where are we along this line? we're pretty far and farther, i'd say, than we've ever been before. we had a confrontation with oligarchy in the 1860s, the cotton gin and this whole there's a whole long history there. >> but basically by the 1840s, 1850s, democracy was dead in the south. it had become a full blown oligarchy. and, you know, eventually they declared war on the rest of us. we defeated that

teddy roosevelt. after the sherman antitrust act was passed a decade earlier, teddy roosevelt and william howard taft went after the oligarchs. but really, it was franklin roosevelt who finished them off after the republican great depression. but this time is really serious. it's interesting. the 1986 american heritage dictionary defines fascism as the merger of state and business interests. it's not a popular definition of fascism, but it was, you know, for a while, and i'm very concerned about this, ruth, in some ways, what we are facing today is, is more powerful than the robber barons of yesteryear, because today's really rich don't just control steams, streams of wealth and production, but streams of information. >> yeah. >> and so that's why, you know, we're seeing these are people who operate in multiple spheres. think about elon musk who has

defense contracts, has a space program, but he also owns a social media platform, which is, you know, turned into a right wing radicalization machine. and, you know, the one of the cores of authoritarianism is you take rights away from the many. but you you use deregulation and privatization to give unheard of liberties to the very few. and so project 2025 has deregulation as a pillar, and deregulation also is part of the sphere of information of disinformation, because, for example, when mark zuckerberg decides to get rid of fact checkers as, as musk did to on x, it's deregulating speech. it's allowing the circulation of any kind of speech, including hate speech and extremist speech. so there too, you have liberties that erode democracy, that destroy democracy, and

certainly all of the conditions that are difficult for democracy, like inequality, they get much worse when you deregulate, when you privatize. and that's why authoritarians have always taken advantage of these things. >> and it's important to have this specific discussion, because i think most of our viewers have come along to the idea that democracy has been endangered. but, tom, let me just read you something from the new york times white house correspondent zolan kanno-youngs about joe biden's final address. quote, it is notable that biden, who has long been an institutionalist, used his final farewell address to call for major changes to systems that he has spent decades defending. biden came into office pledging to restore normalcy to the us government. he leaves office believing that the democratic system is in need of sweeping change, something supporters of his own party have sought for years. donald trump, by the way, i'm going to hold on for a second. i just want to say what's going on at the at the

sterling national golf club. this is this is these are the fireworks in celebration. this is sort of a private gathering for donald trump in celebration of his inauguration. they've just launched the fireworks in sterling, virginia. this is the sterling national golf club. we're going to put that on the side for a second or keep it up while we talk about it. tom, this is important that that joe biden has decided on his way out that rather than talk about the soul of america, this is actually the big problem. >> yeah. first off, this is not something that just began, you know, last week. this goes back to the supreme court's buckley decision in 1986 and the bellotti decision, which was written by lewis powell himself, excuse me, in 1976, and the bellotti decision in 78 that said that billionaires using money is the same thing as using free speech and is protected by the first amendment. and that and in 78 in bellotti, that corporations are persons and therefore they have first

amendment free speech rights as well. citizens united tripled down on this, but this is something that has been building basically ever since the reagan revolution. the second point that i'd make, and i think it's the one that joe biden is the most concerned about, and it's a legitimate concern. i mean, oligarchy. and for people who aren't real familiar with the term in essence means really rich people. oligarchs basically take over your government and the mechanisms of government. the gears of government are turned towards helping oligarchs get richer and richer. and so oligarchy. and this was the big point of my book, the hidden history of american oligarchy. oligarchy is typically a transitional form of government. that's what's so dangerous about it, because people get really off because they realize that they're being robbed blind. you know that a bunch of rich people are taking all the resources of the country, essentially, or exploiting them. and so the demand for change usually produces one of two results. as i mentioned earlier, we saw, you know, a return to democracy here in the united states twice in the past, arguably three times.

but in hungary, in russia, in egypt. and i mean, i can just give you a dozen examples. the philippines, other countries, when the oligarchs take over and the oligarchy begins and people say, wait a minute, we want change. and they start showing up in the streets and they start protesting and they start really seriously pushing back. then very often what happens is instead of the oligarchs, you know, the oligarchs fight back. well, they did in 1860, of course, but in 1933, fortunately, they just backed away and said, okay, fdr, do your best or do your worst. i'm concerned that democracies that become oligarchies, typically that very rarely lasts more than a generation or two, and they either flip back to democracy or they go into full blown tyranny a generation or two. >> i don't want to. i don't want to hang around for a generation or two with this. tom ruth, let's just talk about hungary. perfect example, because viktor orban of hungary is a darling of the american right. he speaks at

events. tucker carlson went to hungary to demonstrate how america should be more like hungary. perfect example. it is a country that still has a vote, ostensibly a democracy. it is a member of nato. is it? it is, in theory, an ally with nato against russia, even though the officials and oligarchs there tend to be tighter with russia than with the west. and in a country where oligarchy has largely succeeded. >> yeah. and that's one reason if we look at the outcomes of oligarchy, hungary was voted ranked the most corrupt country in the eu last year. and the way that democracy is eroded is, for example, what's happened in hungary with the press, the free press. yeah. orban has domesticated 85 to 90% of the free press. the way that he did it is he got in 2018. he got the media owners of huge properties

like these are media oligarchs, media tycoons, to quote, donate all of these properties to a government allied foundation. and these are these bargains that people who own media properties, some of them are also industrialists. and that's very common make with the leader. and so in one fell swoop, orban was able to control. now the state doesn't directly control these. it's not like the old fashioned, you know, the hitler years or stalin. it's indirect control by cronies who are allies. and so here we have this dispiriting spectacle in the states of people like bezos, who owns the washington post, lining up to be to do these bargains with trump. and so the same in modi's india. it's private people who take over important media outlets and their allies of the leader. so that's how the cronyism works. that's how the oligarchy

actually affects policy, for example, in media. >> so, tom, this makes our role as journalists remarkably important for the next two years or four years, or, as you said, maybe a couple of generations in, in not bending the knee, even if and look, we've seen it in recent weeks. we've seen some people leave their organizations, leave media organizations that appear to be bending the knee. how do journalists do that without losing the influence and audience that that we need to keep? but saying that our job is to hold power to account. and if power is being corrupted, as ruth just mentioned, that's that's for us to call it out. >> yeah. and ruth has written brilliantly about this, too. what we're seeing right now is this horrible tension between the oligarchs who own the media and the reporters, the people who who work for the media, essentially, who's the journalists as you as you said, you know, we're seeing this with the washington post. we're maybe seeing it with other other venues. i mean, you know, people

raising these issues. we just need to keep speaking out. one of the big challenges that we have in particular is that two and maybe three of the major social media outlets, outlets look like they're going to be spinning hard toward oligarchy. in other words, you know, basically fully endorsing trump and the oligarchs message. and but, you know, if you look at, for example, ukraine, i think it's a great example. ukraine was democratic for a short while, then it became basically an oligarchy. paul manafort was the guy who installed the oligarchs in, in ukraine on behalf of vladimir putin, who paid him, you know, through an oligarch, i believe it was $14 million. and then manafort came to the united states after the oligarchs got kicked out in ukraine and ran donald trump's first campaign for free. ukraine succeeded in saying no to the oligarchs and kicking them, kicked them out. and the press in ukraine played a big role in that. >> ruth, let's talk a little

bit. i mentioned that you'd have to go back to grover cleveland to see two nonconsecutive terms. grover cleveland was the only other american president to serve two nonconsecutive terms. his second term was largely seen as a disaster, because the panic of 1893 occurred just after he took office, and he did very little to help americans who had lost everything. his democratic party was decimated as a result. it took nearly a generation for the democratic party to come back into power. let's talk about what this what this looks like to you in the long term for politics in america. donald trump and two houses of congress are now in republican control. they they either have to fulfill their promises and make america think the world's a better plac. or. or what? >> well, one of the things about authoritarianism and, you know, again, taking away the rights of the many and rewarding the few is that for authoritarians, they

have absolutely no interest in public welfare or governance, serving the people. government is converted into an instrument to enrich themselves and their cronies and to weaponize, you know, be weaponized for their revenge crusades. but but here we're talking about, you know, controlling and making money off of things. and so all of the contradictions that have been harming democracy around the world have, like, come to an enormous head. and so you have these very aberrant creations right now, which will over time, more americans will realize what this means. this department of government efficiency named for a cryptocurrency. it has no actual official standing. and it's a perfect example of this blurring of the lines between government, which gets in a way by the very, very rich because both ramaswamy and ramaswamy is

extremely rich as well as musk, of course, being the richest man in the world, this is very scary. and yet they're going to be given power as though they were part of the government. and so i think that over time, the contradictions and the hypocrisies of what have trump posing as a populist, he's the biggest globalist of all. he licenses his name all over the world, and people like musk are operating at globally. bezos you know, i think the contradictions and the hypocrisies will be more and more evident to ordinary americans. and i think that over time, we'll have a revival of perhaps an appetite for a different kind of politics that could benefit the democratic party, certainly not the republican party. >> thanks to both of you. i appreciate this conversation. we will have some version of it. i think many times over the coming days, weeks and in tom's view, possibly generations. ruth ben-ghiat is the author of strongmen from mussolini to the

president. tom hartman is the new york times bestselling author of the hidden history of the american dream the demise of the middle class, and how to rescue our future. thanks to both of you for joining me on this special inauguration edition of velshi. and wow, the hour's over. that does it for me tomorrow. big day of coverage here on msnbc. on president biden's last day in office, in just one day before president elect donald trump's inauguration, i'll be back here at ten eastern for two more hours of velshi and then at 5 p.m. eastern, house minority leader congressman hakeem jeffries will be on politics nation with the rev al sharpton later. 9 p.m. eastern a special hour of the weekend to preview the inauguration. be sure to join us monday. morning joe kicks off inauguration coverage at 6 a.m. eastern. then at 10 a.m, rachel maddow and the team will bring you the key moments of the day, followed by analysis from prime time anchors throughout the evening. don't go anywhere. the last word with lawrence o'donnell starts right now. >> earlier this evening, president biden gave us his final