tomorrow. and probably pretty early on morning joe. >> okay, let this sink in for a second. today started with the outgoing president, joe biden, who's still president at the time, obviously preemptively pardoning the people who investigated the january 6th attack on the capitol and the officers who defended the capitol that day. now, just a few hours later, the person who incited that attack took the oath of office for the second time in the very same building, the capitol where the attack took place. and just moments ago, literally in the last 15 minutes in the oval office,

which is a choice, trump issued pardons for approximately 1500 people convicted of crimes related to that attack and commuted the sentences of six others as well. and we're going to spend a lot of time talking about that through the course of this evening with a lot of people who know a lot about it, but but i want to catch you up just in case you're just tuning into what happened today, because it was not exactly a normal inauguration day in any way. senator adam schiff, who played a key role in investigating the insurrection and who was there for the recipient of one of those pardons i mentioned from president biden, is going to join me in just a moment. he was also at the capitol today where he watched the man who has threatened him repeatedly be sworn in as president once again. and some of those truly mind bending dynamics i've just gone through, there were moments today that, bizarrely, seemed kind of normal on the surface, and that was by design. president joe biden and doctor jill biden greeting the trumps before hosting them for tea.

that must have been quite a tea. biden and trump also rowed over from the white house to the capitol, as outgoing and incoming presidents have for generations. that was between all of these pardons. but some of the visuals were also very different than what we are used to through democrats and republicans, who have been inaugurated. for one, the inauguration was held inside and that meant the audience was much smaller and far more exclusive. i mean, the room was filled with a very strange intermingling of incoming cabinet nominees and family members. and yeah, billionaire tech ceos. you can see mark zuckerberg there. you can see the president, tim cook of apple. they're all standing right behind trump all together in a happy little jolly band. it also meant that most of the 200,000 people who had tickets to the inauguration were left lining up to get into the capital one arena in downtown d.c. to watch the proceedings on a jumbotron. it also meant there wasn't the typical inaugural

parade, when past presidents like jimmy carter took the opportunity to walk the full route, see people who voted for him, who were there out supporting him, or when barack obama, in about the temperature in the 20s with high wind chill, hopped out to greet thousands of supporters on pennsylvania avenue on the route. today, there was none of that. in other words, it wasn't really an inauguration for the people. the people who had sent trump to office again. instead, it was in many ways an inauguration for the powerful, including trump himself. and that was also true for the speech itself. i mean, typically the inaugural address, again, whether you're a democrat or republican, is not really a political speech. of course, it's a moment in politics. i mean, it's the results. you're being inaugurated because you won an election, but it's often a time where politics kind of suspends itself for a moment. it's a time where president doesn't discuss themselves or their political victory, or where they won or lost. instead, they discuss the country where

it is, where it needs to go. oftentimes, that means discussing a crisis. their country always has some sort of crisis going on, and how the country can get through it together. 16 years ago, for barack obama, that was the financial crisis. just four years ago for joe biden, that was the covid pandemic. but today for donald trump, his focus was very much on himself. i don't think it's an overstatement to say for anybody who watched this, this is not only perhaps the most political, politicized inaugural address in history, but also the most self-involved. i mean, he said in the speech he was tested and challenged more than any president. he said he was, quote, this is a quote, saved by god to make america great again. he said many people thought it was impossible for him to stage a historic political comeback. but here i am. there's a whole lot of me, myself and i, not a whole lot of us as a country.

and remember, that was teleprompter trump. that was scripted. donald trump, less than an hour after that inaugural address, in a second set of remarks at the capitol today, we got an even clearer picture of what was really on his mind. >> i did have a couple of things here not to say that were extremely controversial, and between jade and melania and anybody else that had please, sir, it's such a beautiful, unifying speech. please, sir, don't say these things. i was going to talk about the j6 hostages, but you'll be happy because you know it's action, not words that count. now he's going to talk about the things that joe did today with the pardons of people that were very, very guilty of very bad crimes, like the unselect committee of political thugs. i was going to talk about that. they said, please don't bring

that up right now. you can bring it up tomorrow. >> i was going to talk about that, but they said, please don't bring it up. just saying a little quiet part out loud there. he also did the same thing in capital one arena a little bit later. now, i think it's important to take a little bit of a step back and talk about why he's still so fixated on this and why he pardoned the people who perpetrated that attack just in the last hour. what is really signaling with these pardons is that if you commit a crime in my name, it's not really a crime. that's how he sees his own power. it's how he sees his new job as the president of the united states. we saw that basically throughout the day today, and we should expect we may continue to see it in the hours and days and months to come. i mean, one of the executive orders he just signed moments ago is one that will end birthright citizenship, which flies in the face of the constitution and is explicitly protected under the 14th amendment. can't really just end birthright citizenship, but he's telling us that he thinks he should be able to. he told us what he thinks of his power in

that speech. definitely. god sent him here, saved him. apparently. he still also told us with the visuals of that inaugural ceremony, and he's telling us with these executive orders, too. he's telling the country that crimes committed on his behalf are not really crimes that he knows better than the constitution. but it's crucial to remember that just because he thinks that doesn't make it true. and the great tension moving forward for this country from this day, one that we're still in through the next four years, is going to be between how he sees power and what he can actually do. and it's incumbent upon all of us to talk about that. joining me now is democratic senator adam schiff of california. he received a preemptive pardon from president biden today. he also attended tonight's today's inauguration. there is so much i want to get to you to get to with you, senator schiff. i just have to start. i mean, in the last hour, donald trump was in the oval office, which i see as a choice and just pardoned 1500 people

convicted for the attack on our capitol. you did so much important work on the january 6th committee. you have never held back in talking about the impact of this on our country. what what is going through your head right now? >> it's obscene. >> it's a grotesque display of his new power as president to pardon these 15 or 1600 people, which i have to imagine includes people that committed violent assaults on law enforcement. it certainly includes, apparently, one of the leaders of the proud boys, rather fitting, sadly, that among his very first acts in office is to give a pardon to a white nationalist leader like that. so hard to imagine that we were sitting in the capitol, the site of that attack, and hours later, the man who incited that attack pardons the people who participated in that attack. it really is a terrible way to begin, but not a surprising way

to begin the new administration. >> i think it's so important, and i suspect you would agree with me that we not get numb to this as a number. it is a big number, but there are so many people here and in this group who committed acts of violence, committed crimes against our country, that you investigated this attack as closely as anyone. what kinds of crimes just remind us? did people or people essentially getting off the hook for? >> well, they beat police officers with flagpoles. they beat them with metal barricades. they bear sprayed them. they gouged them. they crushed one of them in a revolving door. it was a violent, violent assault. they desecrated the capitol. they were trying to find mike pence to hang him. they were ransacking nancy pelosi's office, looking to do harm to her as well. while her staff were hiding in a conference roo, listening to the sounds of those

attackers inside the building, it was chaos. and but for these brave capitol police officers, there would have been, i think, much greater loss of life. as it was, many people died. and to, on a blanket basis give a pardon like that to call them political prisoners is just abhorrent. it also brings to mind pam bodine's testimony, frankly, where i pressed her on the prospect of these pardons, and she was quite adamant about how she was going to go one by one through all of the pardon requests and make a factual basis to the president. well, we saw how long that commitment lasted. >> what does that tell you about her ability to do her job independently? >> well, either she advised the president not to do this, which i sincerely doubt, or she has no influence over the president because it was clear that he was not going over these one by one

to make a mass grant of a pardon like this. it was his, you know, way of trying to once again rewrite history. but history will not be rewritten. notwithstanding these pardons, notwithstanding all the big lies, he continues to propagate. and he was in the capital again propagating lies about nancy pelosi. we're going to continue to push back against those falsehoods. but this is part of that effort that he is making to absolve himself of the responsibility for the first since the civil war, the first effort to interfere with the peaceful transfer of power. >> the lawyer for former proud boys chairman enrique tarrio, who we've heard a lot about, we've talked a lot about, told nbc news his client is already being processed for release from federal prison because of clemency for trump. he was sentenced in 2023 after being convicted of seditious conspiracy in one of the highest profile january 6th prosecutions. you know well, you spent a lot of time investigating him. i mean, we

just heard from his mother. we haven't confirmed it independently, but talk about him a little bit. what is your reaction to the prospect of ontario being released? >> well, he was one of the leadership of one of these white nationalist groups that participated that came to january 6th, well equipped with the vests and the, you know, plastic handcuffs and other things that they used or intended to use on that day and to pardon him, i think, is very symbolic of where the president is coming from. it, to me, harkens back to his statement vis a vis the proud boys years earlier, where he said, stand back and stand by or something along those lines. well, apparently he had their back after all, as we see in this most offensive of pardons, he also commuted the sentence of stewart rhodes, who was sentenced just to remind everyone to 18 years for seditious conspiracy. >> i'm asking you this because i want to remind people of who

these people are, and you know them very who who they are very well. talk about stewart rhodes role in what happened on january 6th, and what you may think it means that he was on the list. >> well, these are, you know, two of what i would consider ringleaders of this seditious conspiracy is one of the most serious charges that the prosecutors would bring. it's not something that is easily proven. it's not something that is frequently charged. it's very seldom been charged in our history. so these were people that the justice department considered most complicit in the violence of that day, in the planning of it, and the conspiring to make it happen. january 6th didn't come by all by itself. it wasn't spontaneous. a lot of it was planned. so these are some of the ringleaders that are now being given this pardon in the president's first day. and if this is just the first day of the second term, imagine what there is to come. >> it's an important warning. it seems like this didn't all happen in one day, but i started

out the show by talking about all the things that happened today, and one of them was the issuing by president biden of preemptive pardons for people who worked on the january 6th committee. were some of those who were included, including you were one of them. you called you called this decision unwise because of the precedent you said it sets. but you also said you understood why he did it. which which i think is a is a balance of how a lot of people may be thinking about it. but as you weigh all the factors, would you have preferred he didn't issue those pardons or how do you feel about it? >> i would have preferred that he didn't. not to the committee, not to members of his family. the reason why i understand why he did what he did is, you know, the cause of all of this is donald trump pledging to go after his enemies, his picking an attorney general nominee who is committed to prosecuting the prosecutor. so these are folks that have pledged retaliation against those who held him

accountable. so that never should have been done by president trump. that's quite obvious. so this is a reaction to that. but nevertheless, i'm concerned about the precedent that it sets. and we see, of course, with trump, he doesn't really need a precedent to essentially abuse the powers of his office. regardless, i think of what president biden did, he was going to go forward with the pardoning of these these january 6th attackers and insurrectionists. what does concern me, too, though, about the pardon of president biden's own family members is we can now fully expect president trump will pardon his kids or any of his family on his way out the door, which basically tells his family members it's carte blanche for you for the next four years because you're going to get a jail, you know, get out of jail free card when you get out. and that is not the precedent i would have had president biden set. now, trump might have done it anyway. he

probably would have done it anyway. but nevertheless, that's my concern about these kind of precedent, the precedent he could take advantage of the precedent. >> sounds like it's part of your important point. i mentioned you attended the speech today, and i think i think this is interesting to me because trump has attacked you perhaps more than most people. i think we're all struggling with this question of how to return to norms and lift up democratic institutions, while not normalizing. why did you think it was important to go? >> i've always viewed the inauguration as about the office, not about the person who's being sworn in. so whether i voted for the person or i didn't vote, whether i think highly of them or i don't, i thought it was important for me to be there. now i understand others feel differently and i appreciate that. i respect that, but from my point of view, it's important for me to be there. as difficult as it is, frankly, to be back in that space, in that

capital. and i think even more than on january 6th of this year, today, i was even more conscious of the violence that took place in that building, maybe because he was also there, and maybe because i knew that there was a prospect that he would pardon the people responsible for that attack. but it was surreal to sit there, to listen to the man who incited that attack, and to imagine that he was now taking the oath of office again, and how he might use the powers of that office so much revolving around that building and the importance of that building and what it represents, a lot of it came, came, came to focus today. >> senator adam schiff, thank you so much for taking the time. really appreciate it, hillary. we have a lot more to talk about. from pardons for january 6th insurrectionists to a slew of executive orders. claire mccaskill is a former u.s. senator from missouri. preet bharara is the former u.s. attorney in the southern district of new york. they're both standing by and they join

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a built in health monitor to let you know if your cat is experiencing a potential health issue. is it pretty? litter.com? >> okay, the breaking news this hour is that donald trump just pardoned 1500 people convicted for their roles in the january 6th insurrection. 1500 people. and he commuted the sentences of several more, including stewart rhodes, the leader of the extremist right wing militia group the oath keepers, who was convicted of seditious conspiracy. additionally, an attorney for enrique, enrique tarrio, the leader of the proud boys, also told nbc news on monday that his client was being processed for release. donald trump also signed a slew of executive orders that i think we should pay close attention to. among them is one called, quote, ending the weaponization of government, a phrase we've heard a lot from trump and his allies over the past few years. now, this order might just seem like more of the same trump portraying himself and the hundreds of his followers who were prosecuted for the january 6th capitol riot as victims. he loves to portray himself as a victim, but it also might contain the seeds of something

more nefarious, which is important to understand because it directs the attorney general in consultation with the heads of all departments and agencies of the united states, shall take appropriate action to review the activities of all departments and agencies exercising civil or criminal enforcement authority of the united states over the last four years. it also ordered the director of national intelligence to undertake the same kind of review of departments and agencies in the intelligence community, and it requires those reviews to include recommendations for appropriate remedial actions to be taken to fulfill the purposes and policies of this order. this just raises the question, is this trump trying to start the process by which to investigate and prosecute jack smith, merrick garland, and others and others you may not even have heard of in the d.o.j, the fbi, intelligence agencies and other federal agencies. that's one of the questions i have. claire mccaskill is a former democratic senator from missouri. preet bharara is the former u.s. attorney for the southern district of new york. and both join me now. there's a lot to get through. and but i and i

want to talk about the pardons we just saw, but i just want to start with that executive order, because sometimes you're both lawyers. the legal ease numbs people, and they don't know that it's something to be concerned about. that executive order that i just outlined. how concerned are you about that, that it could give the ability to go after civil servants and investigate some of the people trump wants to go after. >> so thanks for having me on. it's been a long day for both of you. i know i've been watching you all day. it's a very ironic, orwellian executive order right on its face, i think we can all say we're against the weaponization of the justice department. all of us here can be in agreement on that. everyone in america could be in agreement on that. the weird thing about it is, given what you've suggested, is that can this document and this executive order be the basis for the weaponization of the department by by this administration, when it's styled as something against the weaponization, the

weaponization of the justice department against but by the prior administration? i will say that i don't think that the trump administration, white house, justice department needs any papering to decide that executive order. they don't need it. you know, steve bannon and other allies of his, including donald trump himself, have by name mentioned people that they think should be behind bars today. you know, after his quote unquote unity speech, donald trump started talking about people who should be in prison and should be arrested for corruption. in his words, that's without this executive order. so, you know, it's a nice piece of paper. i don't think it means much substantively. i don't think it means much rhetorically. and it's ironic in the extreme, claire, you're you're you're like an all around athlete. >> you're a legal expert, a lawyer. >> you're i was a real prosecutor. as a state prosecutor, you're a state prosecutor. we enter 911 calls. well, there you go. >> well, you guys can duel about prosecutorial ability later, but

what do you think about that executive order? >> listen, i think preet will agree with me on this. the one thing that they have to have to go after anybody is evidence. it is very hard to make up evidence in our system. and remember, once a case is filed, the department of justice doesn't have control over what happens to that case. the control goes to the court who manages the case, decides what evidence is admissible and not admissible, and then ultimately to a jury that is selected by both sides to that criminal, that criminal case. so it's a little bit like what senator schiff, which is so weird to call him that it's great. but it's a little bit what senator schiff was talking about in that people who have done nothing wrong should have nothing to fear, other than the abusive nature of an investigation. and trust me, they can be very abusive, very disruptive to someone's life, very expensive. so it's not

without peril. but i feel so confident, like the people who biden proactively pardoned, that there's no evidence that anybody in the department of justice or any of the other government agencies were fabricating evidence against donald trump or any of his allies congressional investigations, as you. >> well, i mean, they could also make people's lives hellish, which any of these people who were preemptively pardoned could still be dragged there. >> and they likely will be. and they're probably more likely to be now, given the biden pardon. >> exactly. >> because the targets, the target may have been on their back anyway. yeah. let me ask you about i mean, i was just saying to senator schiff, 1500 people sounds like a lot, of course, because it is a lot. >> it is a lot. >> it's a lot put into perspective to us, for us, the size of that part and the scope of what those people were guilty of and prosecuted for. >> just as you heard the news in the last hour, i'm not going to do better, a better job of describing the scope of the

culpability of many of those people, including people at the top, than senator schiff did a few minutes ago. it's astonishing. and what i think is important to appreciate is that it's not a pro-law enforcement move. it's not a pro law move. it's not a pro rule of law move. donald trump is a political animal. he was a novice some years ago. now he's a pro. he's been elected twice to the presidency of the united states. after that violent insurrection happened at the capitol, he distanced himself from it. many, many people in his party thought it was abysmal and an abomination. his former vice president was sought for hanging at the capitol. and something has happened politically to allow donald trump a political immunity from engaging in this mass mass forgiveness with respect to many people who were violent at the capitol, as adam schiff described. so, yes, donald trump is a president, united states, he's the commander in chief. he signed

these pardons in a small number of commutations. but but the conditions precedent for him being able to do so, that blame is to be shared by a lot of people on his side of the aisle, because he wouldn't have done it had it been politically unpopular, and it would have been very politically unpopular four years ago. but there's been a change in the narrative in a way that's almost impossible to understand. how these violent folks, many of them, not all of them, but many of them extremely violent, extremely serious criminals have somehow become, in his lexicon, hostages now. so it's an indictment of not just his actions, but a lot of other people as well. >> yeah. and let me just say, i don't think we yet know how many of these pardons were people that had done something violent. i guarantee you the 14 that were commuted probably were. and that's why they were commuted and not pardoned. but we need to quit talking about the people who were violent against police officers as rioters or insurrectionists. they were american citizens who physically assaulted police officers. so we

have a convicted felon in the white house pardoning people who assaulted police officers or commuting sentences for people who assaulted police officers. that is not popular, jen. that's not popular. and that's why it wasn't in his speech. that's why he said they didn't want me to put it in the speech. that's why they kind of buried the fact that some of these folks actually physically attacked police officers and hurt them. so that's what we've got to suss out over the next few weeks and not let it go. because when you pardon somebody who attacks a police officer in the united states of america, that costs you votes and it will in the future for him, it's not protection of rule of law. >> no question. i was struck that this is a small thing relative to the whole pardoning, but he did do it in the oval office, which i did feel was a bit of an eye poke or more. what did you think of that choice? >> yeah, i mean, listen, this guy was on permanent gloat today. he. it was him and his billionaire buddies. he's now part of the club. he's always wanted to be part of the rich

guy's club. and today he was the guy in charge. and they were there to genuflect to him, and he won. now, here's what everybody has to remember. he didn't even get 50% of the popular vote. this was not a landslide. and we've got to push back on that hard. yes, he won the swing states, but he won many of them by a very small margin, a point or two. so this was not a landslide election. and a lot of the folks that voted for donald trump guess what? they don't like him either. they just thought he was a better choice for their families at this moment in time. so we have an opportunity over the next two years. the democrats do, if they're disciplined and stay on message to continue to point out how badly he is handling his responsibility to the american people, i could ask you both about every executive order, but we're running out of time. >> we're here. >> well, you're going to have to come back. yeah. i love this pairing. you can dole out who has more legal legal prowess. >> i let that one go. >> he did. >> he was very kind. he let me poke him and he didn't.

>> that's right. he did very, very chivalrous. >> preet bharara, claire mccaskill, thank you both so much for joining us. coming up, we're going to talk more about the executive orders donald trump just signed in the oval office. we're also going to talk about trump taking the oath of office today, surrounded by his new tech billionaire bros. i'll share some of my thoughts and talk about it with senator chris murphy, who has a lot of thoughts, too. when we come back. >> he was only 47. >> aneurysm. >> did he have life insurance? do you know? >> you got to get on it. >> check out selectquote. trust me. the peace of mind. >> it's worth it. >> life insurance is too important to put off another day. that's why selectquote makes getting coverage you need easy for less than a dollar a day. now get up to a $2 million policy with no medical exam and same day coverage. >> visit selectquote. com we shop, you save certain this is going to work. >> nothing to it for imprint. >> certain certainty matters for

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what we saw today was not a normal inauguration of an american president. i mean, standing in the building where just four years prior, his lie fueled attempt to steal the 2020 resulted in bloodshed, donald trump took the oath of office as the 47th president of the united states, and among those placed in seats of honor on the dais surrounding trump were not just former presidents. some were there, or members of congress or his family or his cabinet nominees. but there was also a small handful of wealthy tech billionaires. and to be clear, that seating arrangement doesn't happen by accident. it's really hard to imagine a scenario where the trump inaugural team didn't get to decide who, outside of some members of congress was invited to attend the smaller speech indoors, and they definitely decided who sat on the dais behind them. plenty of seats for tech billionaires, no seats for tens of thousands of other ticket holders who were left watching on a jumbotron. and that choice kind of speaks volumes. now, you might remember many of those same tech

billionaires actually condemned trump and his lies just four years ago. so they've clearly been making their own new calculations. we've seen them all parading down to mar a lago to get face time with trump. they poured millions of dollars into his inaugural fund. some have cut deals with his family members, and some have changed their platforms to make them more friendly to trump his allies. and the conspiracies and talking points they pump out to flood our information systems. taken altogether, this feels like a pretty overt transaction, best illustrated by trump's relationship with the richest man in the world, elon musk, during the campaign. remember trump? i mean, musk, sorry, donated a quarter of $1 billion to trump's reelection effort. that was a little bit of a slip there and slip and used the reach of his social media platform to amplify trump's message. now, musk, who runs multiple companies with federal contracts and has long complained about federal regulations, will lead an agency board that will give recommendations on government spending and regulations from an office on the white house

complex. this is not normal. trump is giving influence and policy preference to basically whatever billionaire is willing to pay. he's prioritizing the wealthy and obsequious few. and in a brief moment during his inaugural address, trump made that priority fairly clear. >> los angeles, where we are watching fires still tragically burn from weeks ago without even a token of defense there raging through the houses and communities, even affecting some of the wealthiest and most powerful individuals in our country, some of whom are sitting here right now. they don't have a home any longer. that's interesting. >> to be clear, more than 100,000 people have lost their homes from those wildfires, and yet it's the wealthiest and the most powerful that trump chose to mention. look, the rich and powerful have always had an outsized influence in our society. but what we are seeing coalesce openly around trump now

appears to be something different. and democratic senator chris murphy has a clear definition of what we are witnessing. in a new piece out today, he writes, what you are watching is the construction of an oligarchy, where a handful of crazy, rich, self-interested billionaires work with an elected leader to grab power so that the government works to enrich the small cabal of wealthy insiders and no one else. it's quite chilling. joining me now is democratic senator chris murphy of connecticut. that's a pretty chilling statement, and it's important for people to hear, i agree with you, but for folks kind of just tuning into this threat, tell us more about what concerns you the most. >> yeah, i mean, oligarchy is a big word. >> it's an old word, but it exists because it describes lots of civilizations. there are lots of nations over the years that have been run by a strong leader in league with the richest men of that country, and they do

favors for each other. the oligarchs, the rich men protect the leader. the leader, in turn, enriches to a greater extent the rich men. and it's not a coincidence that the rich men that you saw up there on that stage today, the billionaires, people making ungodly amounts of money, are also running the nation's information infrastructure because those men can do a specific favor for donald trump. they can tilt the balance of information in this country towards donald trump and away from his opposition. what can donald trump do for them? every single one of those guys on stage today have interests before the government. tim cook doesn't want apple's iphones to be subject to trump's tariffs. meta facebook has a pending case that the ftc has brought against it that trump could dismiss. of course, elon musk is a billionaire because of federal contracts that he gets. so it's a pretty old fashioned, time

tested, fundamental corruption. the richest people in the country get into business with the leader. they scratch each other's back and poof, before you know it, democracy is gone. and this is the last thing to say. oligarchy stands in contrast to democracy, because once the richest people start doing deals with the leader, then they can rig the rules of governance so that there's really no choice left in elections. and that's how it's how it becomes permanent. >> oligarchy is also just basically a bunch of really rich guys who have way too much influence. and that's what we're seeing literally on the dais today at the inauguration, you also said something. i mean, this is, i think hopefully one of the wake up calls for anybody who is concerned about the threats to our democracy that the left needs to do more to build their own information environment. there's no question about that. but what does that exactly look like to you? is there anything you're seeing out there right now that feels

promising? >> yeah, absolutely. like we need to understand that when the right starts saying something like when they started claiming that haitians were eating cats and dogs in ohio within hours, maybe within days it becomes amplified very quickly amongst the online right. that's because the right has consciously built an infrastructure all around this country. content makers and producers, people who disseminate ideas, some of it's organic, but a lot of it is intentional and paid for. the left has to do the same thing. we've got some really great innovators right now who are creating content, who are helping progressives amplify pro-democracy messages, and instead of just sort of feeding money to the ad makers who essentially rent space every four years, giving money often to facebook and sinclair media,

opponents of the left, we should be building that kind of permanent infrastructure. so i hope that that's the mission that the democratic party undertakes in the next few years. we don't have to copy what they do, but we can't be operating in an information vacuum. >> it's also probably going to require other senators and elected officials, prominent ones like yourself, recognizing the value of that and not relying only on more old school means of communicating. there's so much that happened today. to state the obvious, i've been talking about it all show. i talked to your colleague, senator schiff, about it, but i do want to ask you a couple of things we just saw in the oval office, including pardons for 1500, january 6th insurrectionists. trump even commuted the sentence of stewart rhodes, the leader of the oath keepers, who was convicted of seditious conspiracy. what was your reaction as you watched that happen in the oval office? >> i mean, this is the most unconscionable act of the day. it could go down as the most unconscionable act of this year. listen, we are a democracy. we are a peaceful democracy, the

bedrock that has kept us standing for 240 years is that we don't endorse violence as a means to grab power. that's what those protesters, that's what those rioters were doing. they were storming the capitol, beating police officers over the head with flagpoles in order to seize power for their leader, and by endorsing, endorsing and celebrating their actions today by making sure that they won't be accountable for what they did, it guarantees that it will happen again. and by the way, it might not be at a national level. trump is now basically said, if you carry out acts of violence to try to put your favorite leader in power, there's a good chance you will never, ever be held accountable for it. remember, gretchen whitmer almost lost her life in michigan because another group of vigilantes had a plan to kidnap her and kill her, right? so this puts elected leaders all across the country, maybe today on the left, but down the line

on the right and left in jeopardy because political violence just got mainstreamed. it's a it's a cowardly and unconscionable thing that donald trump has done zero consequences for these people, which is really remarkable, unbelievable, horrifying. >> he signed a number of executive orders today, and there's so much for us to dive into. i feel like we're all trying to digest it. one of them was an executive order giving tiktok a 75 day extension. i know you've said you'd rather see congress tackle legislation that protects children online, rather than focus on banning one social media platform. totally fair. but but where does this go from here, do you think? >> well, i don't know that tiktok is really interested in selling, but what has been clear over the last 48 hours is they're really interested in getting in good with donald trump, and that may become may be because tiktok is ultimately answerable to the chinese government. and so they're trying to cut a favorable deal with trump so that he'll give

china a pass on the issue of trade, or give them a pass on taiwan. what trump said the other day is that he wants the federal government to take a 50% stake in tiktok. that means donald trump gets to run tiktok. well, donald trump jr gets to run twitter once again. you're seeing the trump administration try assiduously to take control of the country's information infrastructure, to have state run, state controlled media. that's another way that democracy goes down the drain. >> you know, where there's state run controlled media, you know, well, senator, china, russia, a lot of those countries out there, we certainly don't want to model. thank you so much for joining me, senator murphy. always love talking to you. coming up, president trump signed a number of executive orders related to immigration today, including one that declared a national emergency at the border. jacob soboroff has spent years covering trump's immigration policy. he is near

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i mean, instead, he's focused on sweeping border and immigration policies, several of which he hasn't quite figured out how to implement. this morning, trump announced plans to declare a national emergency at the southern border, reinstate the remain in mexico policy and invoke the alien enemies act of 1798, a law that constitutional scholars have criticized as outdated and ripe for abuse. but the question floating over all of this is how exactly does he plan to pull this off? i mean, the alien enemies act seems to require the us to be at war, or at least be under invasion by a hostile foreign government. remain in mexico, depends on cooperation from mexico, which has already said it does not agree with bringing back the policy and has vowed to end birthright citizenship would actually require an amendment to the constitution. that said, some changes are already underway. just this evening, president trump rescinded an executive order from the biden administration that established a task force to reunite families deliberately separated at the border. that task force, according to my next guest, helped reunite as many as 1000

families. joining me now near the border in otay mesa, california, is nbc news correspondent jacob soboroff. he's an executive producer of the excellent film msnbc film separated, based on his best selling book about trump's state sponsored family separation policy. jacob, thank you so much for taking the time. i know you've been on tv all day. there's so much to unpack. as i as i noted, you're joining us from the us-mexico border. what was you were talking to people today. you've been doing a lot of reporting. what has been the reaction today after hearing trump's immigration promises, his executive orders and his plans? >> i think, jen, what so many of us have come to learn is that after covering and experiencing the first trump administration, is that when they say they're going to do something related to the border, they're going to do it. they said they were going to separate kids from their parents. they separated 5500. and what the republican appointed judge who stopped the policy called one of the most shameful chapters in the history of our country, government

sanctioned child abuse is what the american academy of pediatrics called it. torture is what physicians for human rights called it. they said they were going to build a wall along the border. and despite what some people say to score political talking points, what used to be vietnam era landing strip down here is now two walls, a primary and a secondary fence that replaced that. and there is virtually no migration across the border in this part of california. and i think that today, really what i heard from people, particularly people like lee gelernt, who is the lead lawyer at the aclu, who is the first one to step up and challenge that shutting down of the cbp. one app, the only way to get into the country legally for asylum seekers, which is now effectively dismantled and has been disbanded by the trump administration and president trump, is that now is the time to start pushing back on these policies in a court of law, because that is the only thing that stopped the family separation policy from happening. it was 5500 children deliberately harmed for life. it would have been 25 or 30,000 if it was up to stephen miller. and

those types of fights are beginning tonight here on the border and in the interior. >> you referenced that app. and just to note around, according to a former department of homeland security official, around 30,000 migrants had appointments to enter the united states through the app. as of monday morning. all of those existing appointments have now been canceled, which is kind of an immediate impact, as you just referenced. one of the things he also said. we haven't seen the language fully for it yet, but he also announced his intent to end birthright citizenship, which is, of course, in the constitution. it's a part of a 14th amendment in the constitution. i know you're just doing starting to do reporting on this. we're just learning more about it. but what would that process look like? what should people understand about how that looks moving forward? >> what does it mean to revoke someone's united states citizenship, or even if they're not doing it retroactively? what does it mean to take away something that ensures somebody's rights as a u.s. citizen? i mean, we have heard not just on this birthright citizenship issue, but the idea

with the largest mass deportation program in american history that both president trump and tom homan, his his border czar, have basically given people a choice, including u.s. citizens within the united states of america, to get out with their undocumented family members or risk some other form of family separation. i'm not so sure we know the details on how either that or the ending of birthright citizenship would actually work, and if it would be held up in a court of law. but but as i told you when they said in the first term they were going to do something, believe them. we don't know yet how they're going to execute on all of this. but but certainly if i've learned anything, is that that they intend to do what they're going to say, whether it's this birthright citizenship or the largest mass deportation program in american history that could affect 20 million people in the united states who live with an undocumented immigrant in their household. >> jacob soboroff so much more to understand. report about all of these immigration policies. thank you so much for joining us. we're going to be right

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more than nuts, but still the

website is just nuts.com. >> to understand more with msnbc. >> this show began and continues being the place to have the hard conversations, and today we're here to deliver a message. >> we're not going to take this lying down. 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 like 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