>> and we will not go back. >> one of us can be dismissed, two of us can be ignored. but together we are a movement and we are unstoppable. that was former planned parenthood president cecile richards speaking at the women's march, just one day after donald trump's first inauguration. and this morning, almost exactly eight years later, still, richards passed away at the age of 67. and one of his final statements as president joe biden said richards richards, quote, fearlessly led us forward to be the america we say we are. i couldn't agree more with that statement. it's so important to remind everyone of today. and as she said in that speech, one of us can be dismissed, two of us can be ignored. but together we are a movement and we are unstoppable. that does it for me tonight. it's been quite a day. the rachel maddow show starts right now. hey, rachel. >> has it only been one day? jen. >> do we have any confirmation of that? >> it feels counting days. >> one of the reasons that i

know it's only been one day is that you've been wearing this outfit the whole day that i've seen you today. and you, unlike me, tend to change your clothes every day. i just wear the same thing at work every day, so i'm no way to tell if we judge days by your black suit, we would just think it was one day. >> so. exactly. that can't be the bar. exactly. >> so we will. we will depend on you being our guide star here. jen. thank you very much. it's been a long day. we'll have another one tomorrow. i'll see you then. see you then. and thanks to you at home for joining us this hour. really happy to have you here. you know, it was a tough inauguration, a really bad inauguration. the drunk vice president inauguration was a really bad one. abraham lincoln was president. he had just been reelected to his second term. now, abraham lincoln had had a perfectly fine vice president in his first term. it was a guy from maine who was an abolitionist. but when lincoln was going to run for a second term, he decided it might be a good strategic decision to trade in the guy from maine. for a

southerner instead. and so lincoln ran with a different vice president in his second term. and lincoln won that election, and he got himself a second term. but when it came time for lincoln and his new running mate to be inaugurated, for them to be sworn in, lincoln's new vice president was almost too drunk to stand up at the inauguration. his name was andrew johnson. he apparently went to the outgoing vice president, the guy from maine. he went to him on the day of the inauguration and begged him for a bottle of whiskey, please. the outgoing vice president fetched him a bottle of whiskey, and then andrew johnson apparently drank most of it that morning before the inauguration. some accounts from the time suggest that johnson had actually been drunk for the better part of two weeks. by the time the inauguration rolled around that morning, before he himself was

due to be sworn in as the new vice president, andrew johnson gave a caterwauling, slurring, screaming speech that no one could understand. when it came time for him to put his hand on the bible and swear the oath of office, he instead grabbed the bible and swung it around over his head, and then made a big show of kissing it. he kissed the bible. it was expected that the newly inaugurated vice president would finish out the day by swearing in all the new u.s. senators. but andrew johnson was so hammered he couldn't do it. so he bailed in the middle of the inauguration, and somebody else had to take over and swear in all the senators for him. but i got to tell you, that wasn't even his worst inauguration. he had two and that one where he was too drunk to stand up and kissed the bible and had to bumble off before his job was done. that was actually the better of his

two inaugurations, because after that totally drunken debacle, andrew johnson, the new vice president, he basically fled the capital. he was so embarrassed. he was so humiliated by having been so drunk at the event. it was like the talk of the town. it was in every newspaper in the country. it was this huge humiliation. there were calls for him to resign. there were calls for lincoln to fire him. somehow, johnson just slunk away from the capitol. immediately following the inauguration. he stayed away from the capitol for about a month. he finally came back and saw president lincoln on april 14th, 1865. and of course, that night president lincoln was shot and killed, which is how andrew johnson became president of the united states. and in his term as president, he had a terrible time of it. you may recall that he was the first president to be impeached. when it came time for the next presidential election in 1868, his own party dumped

him and ran somebody else instead, even though he was the incumbent president, johnson was just terrible. but the new guy they picked to replace him, he lost the election anyway, which meant that andrew johnson had to do another inauguration. right? because now he's the outgoing president. first inauguration he'd been part of. he humiliated himself by drinking himself into oblivion at the second one, where he was supposed to hand over power to the new incoming president, ulysses s grant. andrew johnson just decided that he couldn't do it, or he didn't want to do it, or he couldn't get it together. he refused to ride down to the capitol with the new president. he refused to get into his own separate carriage and ride down to the capitol to go to the inauguration alone. he eventually, without telling anybody in advance, this is how he was going to handle it. he just refused to go altogether, and he stomped off in a huff. and that's how we had the transition of power that year.

so all this to say, we've had bad inaugurations before, but before donald trump, the last guy who didn't show up for the swearing in of his successor was andrew johnson in the 1860s, in his second terrible inauguration after the drunk one, before donald trump. it had been that long since we'd had somebody else blow off his successor's inauguration, the way that donald trump did in 2020. for joe biden, it had been that long. we apparently get one of these guys every 160 years or so, whether we need it or not, except now we've had ours. we've had this one twice. and why do we deserve that? donald trump was sworn in for a second term as president today. he did not kiss the bible a la drunk andrew johnson in 1865, but nor did he

put his hand on the bible as he was sworn in, which was odd. he just left his left hand dangling by his side, while his wife held the bible vaguely near to him, but he never touched it. trump's transitioned in his into his second term in office has not been covered in the media broadly as a debacle, but i think, objectively speaking, it has been a debacle. i mean, just describing what has happened in this transition. it's like no other transition we have seen, other than the other bad trump transitions in modern times, it's been error and humiliation upon error and humiliation. in this transition, trump named an attorney general nominee who was actively under investigation for statutory rape and prostitution. he got a whole bunch of republican senators to endorse him. then he pulled his nomination. then he named a leader for the dea, the drug enforcement agency. then he pulled his nomination, too. then

he named a white house counsel. then he pulled his nomination to be white house counsel. then he scheduled nomination hearings for a whole bunch of people who weren't pulled as nominees. but his transition couldn't get itself together in time for many of those confirmation hearings, they had scheduled themselves in coordination with the senate, which their own party controls. and so a bunch of the early nomination hearings have had to be postponed. they're so far is no nomination hearing set at all for his fbi director nominee, who is the author of a series of children's books about king donald and who has supported the qanon conspiracy theory that says that democrats are secretly subterranean cannibals and aliens. there is no nomination hearing scheduled yet for his health secretary nominee, who says hiv doesn't cause aids, who says wi-fi causes something he calls leaky brain? and who says covid was artificially engineered to spare the jews?

there's no confirmation hearing scheduled as yet for his director of national intelligence nominee, who is tulsi gabbard? perhaps enough said. this is the transition where the incoming president sued a newspaper for publishing a poll he didn't like, after he sued a news network for airing an interview with his opponent in the political campaign, which was followed by his pick for fcc chair, citing that grievance to threaten the parent company of that news network. this is the transition where he appointed his son's girlfriend ex-girlfriend, to be an ambassador to greece. he tried to give his other son's wife a senate seat before that didn't work out, and he named a family member who is a convicted felon to be the ambassador to france. bonjour. what's the cost of this stuff? right? like, what's the matter with nepotism? ask france. right? it means france

is going to get a felon as their ambassador from the us government. a felon who does not speak french. trump was asked by a french newspaper why the french people and the french government shouldn't worry about this random pick for ambassador to one of what is supposedly one of our most important allies, trump said in response, quote, he's a very good friend of mine. it's something he really wanted to do. he feels so strongly about it. this was his first choice, by far. that sounds like an excellent reason to give somebody an ambassadorship to one of the most important countries in our global alliance. he he wanted it so much more than the other stuff. he really he wanted it. and i know him. so what's what's what's the matter with nepotism, right? i mean, the good friends and felons and family members of the leader, they get whatever they want, whatever job they

feel strongly about, and that has a cost. it means that people who are qualified for a job like that, people who might do a good job at that kind of a job, they don't get the job. you extrapolate from that one kind of decision to a million decisions about staffing up the government. and once you're stuffing it with people who've paid for the privilege or who are related to you, or who are ex-felons, who have reason to ask you for something that ultimately, in total makes our government suck and makes it an embarrassment. right? these things have a cost to all of us and to our country. it's the same thing with trump taking money from foreign interests and foreign governments, right? there's a reason that foreigners aren't allowed to make political campaign contributions in the united states, right? it's obvious to all of us foreign countries, foreign governments, foreign interests shouldn't get to put u.s. government officials or a u.s. president on their payroll, right? they should. if they do, the u.s. government and

the u.s. president will start serving those foreign interests they're getting paid to serve instead of doing stuff that is good for our country. so obviously, we cannot have foreign donations to campaigns. that principle, we all understand. we understand the cost to us as a country, why it would make our country kind of suck if other countries could pay our politicians to do stuff to serve other countries instead of serving us, we get that. that said, there are no restrictions on foreign citizens or foreign governments buying stock in trump's media company or buying up crates and crates of his $100,000 trump branded watches, or approving and financing huge new trump real estate projects like the ones that are going up in oman and the united arab, united arab emirates and saudi arabia and india. they just get to pay him. they just get to put him on their payroll while he's

serving as president. and there's no reason why foreign interests, even foreign governments, can't just put money directly in trump's pocket by buying his new crypto coin. and yeah, that must be awesome. if you are a foreign despot or an evil mustache twirling zillionaire even in this country and as of today, you're essentially i mean, you essentially have an open invitation right now to get the us government and the us president to do things that are good for you and things that are bad for the american people and the us government. you essentially have an open invitation to do those things, and that might be great for you, but those things are bad for the american people, right? it's not just a spectacle to behold. the president, you know, launching the things that he has been launching, right. the president

launching his own meme coin currency, selling stuff with his brand on it, doing business deals with foreign governments while he's serving as president. it is, you know, at one level, that's a novel thing for us to see. this is new, but it's also boring because this is the oldest story in the world, because this is every other country on earth, right. this is the kind of corruption that is how most of the world works. this is the kind of corruption that explains why most government sucks around the world, and why most countries aren't democracies, because this stuff has a cost. why is bribery bad? bribery is good for the people who are participating in the bribery. right? but bribery is bad for everybody else because it means anybody who doesn't pay a bribe doesn't get anything from the government. once you can pay officials in the government to do things for you, the whole government quickly just turns into a system for extracting bribes and doing nothing else. why is corruption

bad like like favoritism in government contracts? why is that bad? it's bad not just because it sounds gross and it feels gross. it's bad because it makes the country suck. it means every government contract is more expensive for the taxpayers who pay for it, and that more expensive contract buys less. corruption means that bridges and roads and buildings get built by people who have criminal and corrupt means of getting those contracts. they're not getting those contracts because they know how to do the work well, or they'll be expected to do it well. trump, profiting from all these schemes in office from the middle east, apartment towers to the trash coin, ponzi like schemes that he's launching even just days ahead of today's inauguration. all these things mean that he's effectively accepting cash tributes from people in this country and from people around the world. and once a once a once a political leader is

accepting cash tributes from some people. what that tends to mean is that people who don't pay him tributes go to the back of the line, and the only people who get served are the people who are putting money in his pocket. it means that american foreign policy, american tech policy, american immigration policy. eventually, all american policies will all be tilted to the benefit of the people who are paying him. and that means that policy will get worse for everybody else. the executive director of the campaign legal center described trump's new crypto coin that he created this weekend as, quote, literally cashing in on the presidency, creating a financial instrument so people can transfer money to the president's family in connection with his office. and woe be to you if you need something from the u.s. government and you haven't given them any cash. i mean, the

exciting thing about having all the billionaires at the inauguration today is that it is new for us to see that. wow. that's crazy. that's like gilded age stuff. wow. novelty, i guess, is its own reward. but the boring thing about seeing that is that we know exactly where this leads, because every other country in the world that has ever gone through this same process has produced the same results. corruption and oligarchy everywhere and always make for lousy, boring countries with bad governance and worsening standards of living. and regular people having fewer and fewer opportunities to change the system back to something that's based on law, to something that might work for regular, everyday people. i mean, the good news for the country writ large is that president joe biden's term in office is ending with the job market being the best it has

ever been in the history of this country. job numbers are huge, wages are rising. the economy is growing as fast as it was before covid. the murder rate is the lowest it's been in decades. stock markets are not only at record highs, they just had their best two years in a generation. made in america, manufacturing is up, drug overdoses are down. millions of people got their student loans forgiven. anybody with medicare is paying a maximum of 35 bucks for their insulin. every lead pipe carrying drinking water in the whole country is on schedule to be removed. the biden infrastructure bill is still kicking in, set to deliver not just big infrastructure improvements, which themselves are good for the economy and good for people's lives. it will also continue to create tons of good paying jobs all over the country. for years, more americans have health insurance than ever before. even the budget deficit is better than when trump left. to top it all, biden has even left trump a ceasefire. ceasefire deal between hamas and israel, right? if that's what joe biden is

leaving donald trump. think about what trump left biden. trump left biden the depths of the worst pandemic in a century, the worst financial crisis since the great recession and the most violent attack on our democracy since the civil war. that's what trump left biden. biden was able to turn that around and hand donald trump, essentially a nest full of golden eggs, right? if you wanted to set up a presidency for success, what joe biden is leaving donald trump, this is what you would leave somebody, right? this is it. but that's that's where we are tonight, knowing that this new presidency will, despite itself, benefit from the unbelievably good circumstances they have been given to start, thanks to the presidency of joe biden. but also knowing that they have something very different in mind for our country. let me show you a little piece of tape here. i'm only going to play it once, but

in case you haven't seen this yet, this today was elon musk, richest man in the world, biggest political donor in the history of our country. this is him today, twice throwing something that looks like what is politely called the roman salute at the hockey arena in in washington before trump's appearance there tonight. and maybe this is not what he meant when he did it. who among us knows what is in the hearts of men? mr. musk has not yet commented on what he was doing here, but the roman salute is a thing, and that is what it looks like. elon. elon musk was doing, which added a nice bloodcurdling chill to the day for many people today. go ahead and roll that tape. >> and i just want to say thank you for making it happen. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> my heart goes out to you.

>> he does it twice and again. maybe that's not what he meant. maybe he doesn't know what that is. that happened today. earlier in the day, we started seeing messages fly from january 6th, defendants and their families claiming even before any official pardons had been signed, that they were getting word that their charges were being dropped or they were being processed for release from prison. this is one of the earliest messages we saw today online. this man claiming the justice department was dropping his pending criminal case. this is a man who had been charged with beating police officers with a baseball bat. that's him with the black bat there on the left side of your screen. that's at the capitol building. obviously, on january 6th, there had been word, including from vice president j.d. vance, that nobody charged with violence against police officers would be pardoned by trump. but this man today posted online that he'd heard that his case was being dropped tonight. within the past hour, we got word that there

appears to not have been a distinction made between those convicted of just participating in the january 6th attack and those who participated violently in the attack, including those who attacked police officers physically. the list of people whose sentences were commuted by trump today commuted to time served so they can be released. released from prison includes some of the people convicted of violence against police officers. it includes paramilitary leaders who were sentenced for seditious conspiracy for attempting to overthrow the u.s. government by force. you may have seen today that the proud boys put on their full colors and marched today in washington in advance of tonight's announcement, saying, free our boys. well, now, their leaders and their members convicted of trying to overthrow the government and of violence against police officers, they are all being sprung out of prison, 1500 people all together, either receiving pardons and commutations from trump tonight, of all the possibilities considered about

what trump would do with the people who committed violence on his behalf on january 6th, this was the maximalist option. pardoning and commuting all of their sentences so that all of them are released. this was the maximalist option, and, you know, like the blatant transactional, open for business corruption, you know, founding his own currency that you can buy to put money in his pocket the weekend before he becomes president. aside from all of that, just blatant open for business corruption. what we're seeing here with the january 6th pardons, this kind of thing does have the benefit of novelty, right? we've never quite seen something like this before, but like with the corruption, the boring thing about it is that we know exactly what this leads to. authoritarian rulers all over the world have always liked to have paramilitary, loyal, but unofficial perpetrators of violence and menace to work on their behalf to intimidate and

hurt anyone in opposition, to make it too scary for normal people to participate in politics or civic life. to make everybody who might oppose trump in any way worry about the thugs that might turn up at their door. trump pardoning and released from prison the january 6th defendants, including the paramilitaries, means he is effectively immunizing his followers from committing violence in his name. he's making clear, you know, if you support me, the law doesn't apply to you. not incidentally, the people he's pardoning and their families will feel like they owe trump everything and that they therefore should and now can do absolutely anything for him. in authoritarian hungary, viktor orban's government pardoned a far right agitator who had set fire to the homes of orban's political rivals in turkey. erdogan had pardoned the leader of a far right nationalist paramilitary group that mobilized on his behalf and engaged in street

violence in zimbabwe. robert mugabe pardoned hundreds of people who carried out election related violence on his behalf. pinochet in chile and fujimori in peru gave blanket amnesties to their security forces. if you're on my side, the law doesn't apply to you. don't even ask me about the essay in germany. don't get me started. but this is day one, unfolding pretty much the way we expected it to. and yes, this is novel in american history, but it is also knowable in world history because it's the same stuff every other would be authoritarian leader does. in every country that has had to contend with a leader like that, and as americans, you know, we've had bad inaugurations before, including the one where one of the principals was too drunk to stand. we've had blatant cash in envelopes to the vice president corruption before we've had political violence before we've had civil war. but

before each of those things has been treated as a calamity and a scandal. this time, it's a platform. this is textbook authoritarian takeover 101 tactics, which means today and literally over the next few days, they're going to see what they can get away with and how much they can cow people into not opposing what they're doing and not speaking out about what's wrong with it. more than ever, this is not a time to pretend this isn't happening. you're going to want to have a good answer. when you get asked what you did for your country. when your country started to take a turn. this radical. we are here. it is happening in our lifetimes. well, we are citizens responsible for the fate of our country. all hands on deck. joining us now is nbc news justice reporter ryan riley. he's the author of sedition hunters how january 6th broke the justice system. ryan, thanks

for being here tonight. i appreciate your time. >> thanks for having me. >> is it fair to call what president trump has done tonight the maximalist solution to the pardon issue that he had proposed over these last couple of years that he's been running to return to the white house completely? >> i don't know that there's anything more he really could have done for january 6th. defendants other than, you know, these issue, these sweeping pardons and really, you know, the commutations that he spoke about when he said originally it was six. and then when the documents came out, it was about 14. we're talking about those cases involving seditious conspiracy involving members of the oath boy, the proud boys and the oath keepers. and so everyone else, including, you know, hundreds of people charged with assaulting law enforcement officers are out, are going to be out here. it's really quite remarkable the situation that we're at. and, you know, i think what was clear, because i've obviously been on this issue for a while and, you know, going back, i remember to the spring, we the thing we were constantly hearing from the trump campaign is, oh, this is going to be done on a case by case basis. same

thing during the trump transition, case by case basis. we're going to look at these cases individually and clearly. donald trump at some point decided nope, we're just going to do these all in one fell swoop. and you had these republican members of congress who had sort of already laid themselves out there and say, that would be really horrible. and of course, you know, i think you can all we can just anticipate what's going to happen to those to those members when they're going to be asked about this. and suddenly, you know, they're going to have a little bit of a change in tune. you know, one thing that's going to stick with me for a while is, you know, ted cruz on january, on january 6th, in the aftermath, called it a terrorist attack, a year later, called it a terrorist attack. then tucker carlson took issue with that. and so he had to retreat from that. and, you know, just when donald trump was on capitol hill, not just a few weeks ago, i asked ted cruz about, you know, the pardon issue. and, and ted cruz told me, oh, that's just something the media is obsessed with, right? this was just a side issue, just sort of dismissing me, moving on. and clearly this is not just a media issue. clearly this is something that donald trump took to heart. those, you know, he held those

fundraisers at his his estate in florida and his estate in new jersey for these january 6th defendants. one of the members of the board is actually of one of these groups that he held fundraisers for is actually going to be interim dc, u.s. attorney. and i think, you know, it was clearly in donald trump's ear here on a lot of these issues. he's someone who's been on the board of patriot freedom project, which is advocated for a lot of these defendants. but the thing that i there's a lot of things i think about a lot, but one thing that really sticks out to me is that a lot of the january 6th supporters themselves, nicole reffitt, for example, who's the wife of a guy who was the first individual convicted at trial, has said that she didn't want these blanket pardons because there were these terrible acts of violence and really and people that she has sat through their trials, watched the evidence that i sat next to her in court. she's watched the evidence, and she's concluded that some of those people deserve some time. she thinks that, you know, her husband, of course, she thinks was was was overcharged. she

thinks other people were overcharged. but there are some people who really brutalize police officers on january 6th, and there's just zero doubt beyond a reasonable doubt. it's all on videotape. you can watch it, you can go to the evidence. and that's and unfortunately, i don't think it broke through with the american public in general, because, you know, i have acquaintances who don't know that these cases are still going on. but, you know, as one federal prosecutor told me, you know, who worked on these cases, you know, just ahead of these expected pardons, the record stands, the record does stand based on what the evidence they put out, the overwhelming evidence they put out. there's really just zero doubt about the guilt of a lot of these individuals who assaulted law enforcement on january 6th. >> yeah. and with the difference between the commutations and the pardons, again, it's essentially a blanket pardon. there's as you as you mentioned, just over a dozen cases for which there are commutations. those are people for whom the conviction stands, although the sentence ends and they're getting sprung from prison, people who are pardoned. it's as if they were never convicted at all, which means all of their rights get

reinstated, including, in some cases, their rights to have firearms. nbc news justice reporter ryan riley will be back with you on this a lot in coming days as we start to understand what this really means in, in a, in a granular basis for each of these defendants. thanks for helping us with it tonight, ryan. >> thanks so much. >> joining us now is timothy snyder, professor of history at yale university, the author of both on freedom and on tyranny. professor snyder, i'm really looking forward to speaking to you tonight. thank you for being here. i appreciate your time. of course, one of the things that you warned about in on tyranny was the marriage of paramilitary force with the state that you said when a leader essentially can activate not only the power of the state, but also an unofficial paramilitary force that is loyal to him, but that is deniable, that can do things that the government doesn't have to answer for. but that's among the most dangerous situations

that an authoritarian can create. can you elaborate why you think that is, and does that relate to today's commutations and pardons? >> so it's a the basic legal function of the police is to allow the law to be enforced. and of course, we make mistakes. >> police officers make mistakes. it's imperfect. >> but that's the logic. >> the reason why the police are allowed to use violence is that we are governed by law. >> when you take another group that's not the police, which is not part of the state, which is not governed by law, and say this group can also use violence, then you've changed the nature of the political regime that you're living under. there's maybe still the police, but then there are these other people who aren't the police who may also hurt you or kill you, and they're not governed by law. and when these and then there's a history to this, which is that if these people are, if these groups are created, if they're allowed, for example, to oversee camps, which we might well see very soon, then they get a habit, they get a taste, they

get a certain set of skills, and then they get more and more interesting for them and more and more ambitious assignments and become more and more important in, in the society. so the next step is that you're going to see, i'm afraid these these people be deputized for tasks like deportation or people to be regularized, normalized as part of the way that we get used to violence being deployed in our country. >> and then we're no longer pretending that we're a country of law. >> and as you already said, the problem with what's already happened is that these people have been instructed now that the law doesn't apply to them in the same way that it applies to everyone else. >> professor snyder, what would you say to people who are feeling what i think we're what i think was intended for us to feel today, which is a sort of they use the term shock and awe, as if that worked out well in iraq, i know, but the idea and they told us they were going to do this in advance was to do so much on day one and to do so many things that they knew would

be demoralizing and scary to the country, that people would feel overwhelmed and exhausted, and to either afraid or intimidated to try to do anything to stand up against it. people who are experiencing those feelings right now are feeling really worried or afraid about what's going on. what would you say to them about how to stand up for their country? >> yeah, i mean, number one, we should be aware that movements within this country, like the civil rights movement and movements outside of this country, pro-democracy movements regularly succeed. >> they regularly are in moments like this, troughs like this, valleys like this, where it feels terrible and yet, nevertheless, they can succeed. the second thing to remember is that this is how they want to make you feel. they want to make you feel alone. they want to make you feel powerless. they want to make you feel overwhelmed by the airplanes in the sky and by the angles of the photos of trump and by the gestures of elon musk makes and so on. they want to make you feel that way. so, so catch yourself before you do. >> and the third thing is, if you act, especially if you act with other people, with other

people you admire, who you think are doing good things, you're going to feel better if you do the little things that you can do. >> you can catch yourself before you start being dismayed. so it's and the other thing is these guys have problems right there, divisions between the fascists who are trying to use the oligarchs, and the oligarchs who are trying to use the fascists, all, virtually all of the maga voters interests are going to go unrepresented in this government of oligarchs. it's going to be hard for them to do many of the things they want to do. and the international strategy of alienating your friends and placating your enemies is going to have costs. these things aren't all going to work out. we've just seen a one day honeymoon, and after that, we're going to see how this marriage of all of these various different types of authoritarian interests actually works. and there will be openings. >> there will be openings for protesters, for civil society. there will certainly be openings for democrats in the next six months. >> but you have to have your head up and look for those openings. >> head up, look for the openings. tim snyder, professor of history at yale university. tim, i have a feeling we'll be talking as much as i can get you to over these next few weeks.

thanks for being here tonight on day one. all right. we've got much more ahead here tonight. senator amy klobuchar was in the thick of absolutely everything today, including sitting between trump and vance at the luncheon following the inauguration. that was a bizarre scene. senator raphael warnock from georgia is raphael warnock from georgia is here as well. we've got a (wife) saving for retirement was tough enough. (husband) and navigating markets can be challenging at times. (fisher investments) i understand. that's why at fisher investments, we keep a disciplined approach with your portfolio, helping you through the market's ups and downs. (husband) what about communication? (fisher investments) we check in regularly to keep you informed. (wife) which means you'll help us stay on track? (fisher investments) yes. as a fiduciary, we always put your interests first. because we do better when you do better. at fisher investments, we're clearly different.

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three inaugural balls that president trump is expected to attend tonight, and also deliver yet more remarks. he's made a lot of remarks today. it has been a long day for the president and the newly sworn in vice president for the first and second families. it's also been a long day for the for the senior senator from minnesota, oddly. and that's because amy klobuchar is the chair of the joint congressional committee on inaugural ceremonies. so if you watched the inauguration, yes,

you saw a lot of donald trump and jd vance, but you also saw a lot of amy klobuchar. she had a front row seat during the ceremony up on the desk seated directly next to jd vance. she gave remarks before the president and the vice president took the oath of office. she attended the signing ceremony where president trump officially nominated his cabinet. she hosted the congressional lunch after the proceedings, where awkwardly, she sat directly in between president trump and vice president vance. she seemed to be having a great time. if you want to know all the nitty gritty details about the inauguration today, i suggest we direct our questions to senator klobuchar, including the question i am most dying to have answered, which is what did joe biden and donald trump talk about in the limo ride over to the capitol this morning? this morning she attended the traditional white house tea meeting with the trumps and the bidens. and then she got into the presidential limo with president biden and president trump. that is her in the blue coat. she rode along with them down the street to the u.s.

capitol. i did not know that was going to happen, and i do not know what they said, but she does. joining us now is senator amy klobuchar, chair of the joint congressional committee on inaugural ceremonies. senator klobuchar, how are you holding up? >> oh, i'm doing you know, rachel, just great. >> it has been a long day. i took this job, of course, before we knew who was going to win. and it is really important, as you could see, by the presence of president obama and clinton and the bushes, that we have a peaceful transfer of power, despite what happened later, which i hope we get to on these pardons today, which i strongly oppose. but but this was an important moment. and those former presidents get it. while they do not agree with many of the things that donald trump has done or will do, they understood that too. we have to show the world that we are bigger than what divides us. and i made a point that this is at the capitol for a reason, and that

is because there are three equal branches of government. and despite republican control of the court and of with their appointees or of the congress right now, as you know, it's close in the house. there's a lot of requirements in the senate for votes. so we still have power. and we are in this in a big way. democrats in the senate are in this. and so i my job today, though, was to make sure that this went smoothly for the nation. and i think we accomplished that. but now we have a new task on our hands. >> one of the things that was interesting, watching from home, was to see some of the departures from precedent and practice. we saw vice president mike pence, former vice president pence arrive today. he obviously has been replaced on the ticket by jd vance. but the last time that he was at the capitol and in the presence of donald trump and donald trump's supporters, his supporters were calling for mike pence to be killed and president trump was

egging them on. we saw vice president pence today arrive without his wife. we saw former president obama today also arrive without former first lady michelle obama. even though things today went smoothly and effectively. essentially, according to plan, you can see sort of the scars and the friction that remains because of this unusual ascendance to the presidency here. i wonder if any of that was reflected in the conversations that you were part of today, and what people talked about behind the scenes. >> okay, so first of all, i was with vice president pence four years ago, and we made that walk together with senator blunt at 330 in the morning. so i appreciated that he came back and i appreciated what he did that night. as for the car ride, so president biden was very, very cordial in the white house, as was vice president harris and jill and doug the entire time. and honestly, as were the trumps and the vances, this was about an hour of back and forth, just

discussion, different groups. senator schumer, the speaker were there. and so it was a and my counterpart, senator fisher. so that was good. and then we got in the car. and honestly, there was not a moment of silence. and i bet you wish you were in there. but if i told everything i wouldn't be invited back. i will tell you that there was we discussed between those two the car ride and at the white house, a lot of discussion about the fires in los angeles. and i made a strong pitch. i said that i was glad that the new president is visiting los angeles, and we talked about the firefighters, but we also talked about the rebuilding and the fact that the olympics are coming up. and this will be a moment for la to rise from the ashes. that was a good discussion. we might have talked a little bit about nfl playoff games. i thought that was a safe area to have discussion. the vikings, you know, didn't fare as well as i wanted. but we had

some discussions about that. we talked about inaugurations and overall it was very cordial. and you know, i especially appreciated the fact that there was some discussion about the cease fire and the work that had been done on that while we were at the white house, and there were a lot of things to talk about. and i hope that those discussions between president biden and president trump will continue, even while president trump is in the white house, because president biden clearly had information to share, as did vice president harris. >> you mentioned the january 6th pardons. did you hear those discussed between the outgoing and incoming presidents? >> no, i did not. and i actually have been critical of some of the pardons that president biden gave out. and i would like to see so much reform where we had a commission. i've been advocating for this way back for years, like some of the governors have, where they make recommendations regardless of the party of the president,

because this truly undermines these pardons. some of the biden pardons and the ones that we saw in a big way today, you couldn't have a more undermining of our justice system. i was there, as i noted, with vice president pence, i saw the faces, the cutout faces of the police officers, how they were maimed. as you know, a number of them took their own lives. later, i was able to see the destruction in the capitol. this was an assault on the capitol. and so many people, prosecutors that probably vote democrat and republican, took on these cases and did their jobs, as did the fbi. and to just like that, just pull down justice in that way, to me, does great damage to our justice system in the future. and also, as you point out, the rule of law going forward. >> senator amy klobuchar, thank you for being here after a marathon day. i know this was a long one and a weird one. i

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visits. visit spot pet com to get a free quote. >> for inauguration day to fall on the same day as the federal holiday honoring the late doctor martin luther king. it's pure coincidence that these things have happened at the same time. it is a sort of accident of the calendar, but it also today lent

a particular urgency to the annual celebration of doctor king's life today in atlanta at his historic ebenezer baptist church. this is from the atlanta journal constitution today. quote, for the first time in more than a decade, the program was brisk and to the point. the service, which usually labors into the early afternoon, saw fewer speakers and performances. doctor king's daughter, doctor bernice king, had planned for the event to run from 9 a.m. until about 11 a.m, because she wanted people to witness for themselves trump's inauguration speech at noon. joining us now is senator raphael warnock, democrat of georgia. reverend warnock is the senior pastor of martin luther king jr. s home church, ebenezer ebenezer baptist in atlanta. senator, it's really kind of you to be here tonight. thank you. >> thank you so much. always good to be with you, rachel. >> can i get your take on this split screen celebration and commemoration that we had today at the start of donald trump's second term on the federal holiday that honors the legacy of doctor king.

>> well, you know, it is a strange irony, to be sure. but for me, in a real sense, it is a summoning to this moral moment. i think that unfortunately, we americans sometimes often, in fact, tell ourselves a very simple story about doctor king's work and about the civil rights movement, because we're on the other side of that history. we speak about it as if it were inevitable. the progress that is. but if you think about it, the victories that doctor king and those who fought alongside him won were quite improbable. and he had more than a few setbacks along the way. you know, even even that day when rosa parks sat down, that had been that was the culmination of a struggle that had been going on for quite some time. doctor king didn't do too well with his campaign in albany, georgia. there was a sheriff there who had studied his tactics and really didn't do well there. he

had setbacks in chicago. and yet he kept pressing on. he took the long view. and so in this moment, when it seems that there is a wholesale effort to turn the clock back, we cannot be discouraged. he often said that the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. there are days when that arc seems longer than others, but we have to keep bending the arc towards truth. >> i feel like one of the reasons that we have effectively canonized doctor king is not only because of his aims, but because of his means, because of the legacy of nonviolent direct action and its moral call to our conscience. and that as a tactic was effective as a political tactic. but it was also effective for us as a country in recognizing the truth and the dignity in what he was asking, offering and demanding the

nonviolent core of his tactical brilliance. is part of why he's something more than his moment. that said, we have had his holiday today, on the day that we've had 1500 january 6th defendants, including those who were very, very violent, those who were convicted of violence against others, including violence against police officers in particular, all pardoned. having had their records expunged and now being celebrated as heroes by the president of the united states. i worry about the next steps in political violence in our country, and i wonder how you are thinking about that today. >> well, there's no question that doctor king, who was not only a civil rights leader but a baptist preacher, was engaged in soul work, remember? that was the mantra and the motto of his southern christian leadership conference to redeem the soul of america. so while he was engaged in, in doing the policy work,

changing policies, passing the civil rights movement, the voting rights bill into law, he was concerned about the soul of the country, and i'm concerned about the soul of the country, as you point out. on a day, ironically, when donald trump participated in the nonviolent transfer of power, he then goes within hours later and rewards those who engage in political violence. it is a grave disservice to our justice system. it is a slap in the face to the police officers who did their job that day, as these violent actors were trying to literally disenfranchize millions of american voters, some even from my state of georgia, as they had picked joe biden to be the president of the united states. and so we have to be vigilant. we have to condemn

this. but at the same time, you know, we've seen that the executive power of clemency can be used for good. over the last few days. and there's not been enough coverage of this. joe biden used that incredible power to give those who were given incredibly long sentences for nonviolent drug related offenses, an issue particularly of racial equity, for decades in our country. he literally liberated thousands of people, hundreds of people over the last few days. >> georgia senator raphael warnock, thank you for making time for us tonight. i know it's a complex time. a lot of demands on your time. thank you for being here. >> it's great to be with you. happy king day. happy king day. >> tamra, izzy and emma... they respond to emails with phone-calls... and they don't "circle back" they're already there. they wear business sneakers and pad their keyboards with something

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