joining me now is ben rhodes, former deputy national security advisor in the obama administration andod to see you, ben. it seems to me that the criteria for whether or not these people are qualified is not whether they actually have any actual experience doing the job, it is loyalty. this is what the associated press, the trump team apparently is questioning. even civil servants who just currently work at the national security council about whether they're committed to his agenda. trump's pick for national security adviser matt walsh in recent days publicly signaled his intention to get rid of all nonpolitical appointees and career intelligence officials serving on the nsc. msnbc by inauguration day to ensure the council is staffed with those who support trump's agenda. so if that's what the civil servants are going through, why should we expect any of these people to be asked about their qualifications by republicans? >> yeah, i mean, that's right, joy. this is what they foreshadowed with project 2025. i mean, that's what this is, quite literally. so whatever trump said to distance

ben rhodes, an excellent op ed in the new york times. thank you for your time tonight, my friend. >> thanks, alex. >> we have much more to get to tonight, including republicans playing politics with disaster aid as the southern california fires continue to rage. but first, how many of you have ever shown up to work drunk? that was a real question that a real united states senator asked his colleagues today in defense of donald trump's pick to lead the department of defense. we're going to have more on the rise of maga masculinity coming up next. >> here you go. >> is there any way to get a better price on this? >> have you checked single care? >> whenever my customers ask how to get a better price on their meds, i tell them about single care. >> it's a free app accepted at pharmacies nationwide. before i pick up my prescription, i always check the single care price. >> it's quick, easy, and totally free to use. >> single care can literally beat my insurance copay. >> you just search for your prescription and show your single care coupon

ben rhodes, an excellent op ed in the new york times. thank you for your time tonight, my friend. thanks, alex. we have much more to get to tonight, including republicans playing politics with disaster aid. as the southern california fires continue to rage. but first, how many of you have ever shown up to work drunk? that was a real question that a real united states senator asked his colleagues today in defense of donald trump's pick to lead the department of defense. we're going to have more on the rise of maga masculinity coming up of maga masculinity coming up nwhen you really need to sleep. you reach for the really good stuff. zzzquil ultra helps you sleep better and longer when you need it most. its non-habit forming and powered by the makers of nyquil. >> university of maryland global campus is a school for real life, one that values the successes you've already achieved. earn up to 90 undergraduate credits for relevant experience and get the support you need from your first day to graduation day and beyond. what will your next success be? to look. trivago compares hotel pr

ben rhodes, an excellent op ed in the new york times. thank you for your time tonight, my friend.hanks, alex. we have much more to get to tonight, including republicans playing politics with disaster aid as the southern california fires continue to rage. but first, how many of you have ever shown up to work drunk? that was a real question that a real united states senator asked his colleagues today in defense of donald trump's pick to lead the department of defense. we're going to have more on the rise of maga masculinity coming up next. >> machine learning is advancing, but businesses wonder if some machines can keep up. >> let's welcome our new coworker, jeff. >> copier has a great idea. >> i wonder if it's the same idea as yesterday. >> it's a performance issue. really. i know people push your buttons, but you still have to deliver. >> anything can change the world >> anything can change the world of work. adp [monologue] i got somebody for that! ♪♪ i got somebody for that. ♪♪ i got somebody for that! you guys got somebody for peyronie's disease? ♪♪ there's hope for the estimat

so ben rhodes, that is true. trump won.n pick whomever he wants. but just explain who these people are that the ap is reporting on. >> yeah, i mean, so the national security council, which is the white house coordinating function for all foreign and national security policies, is actually comprised of a majority of career officials. so what does this mean? it means that when somebody wins, they usually bring in the senior members of that body the national security advisor, the deputy security advisor, the people leading responsibility for different policies. >> but most of the people that work at the nsc, they're career foreign service officers, they're career military officers, they're career intelligence professionals who are detailed, they're essentially loaned from their home agency to the national security council for periods of 1 or 2 years. and so when i came in in 2009, we had a lot of people from the bush nsc who stayed on. >> that was critical because those people knew what was happening. >> they knew what was goi

let me bring in ben rhodes, former deputy national security advisor. you know, a little bit about negotiations. so i wonder how you read this. should we not be surprised that there might be some last minute wrangling given, as raf just pointed out, the devilishly complex nature of everything that came before? or do you sense a little nervousness, perhaps with several items yet to be finalized? in the words of bibi netanyahu, well, i think we should not be surprised. >> i mean, part of what is so both simple and complicated about this, chris, is that this is essentially the same deal that has been on the table since the spring. but there are these issues, like the philadelphia corridor, that have kind of constantly been the back and forth in the negotiation, as well as just the general willingness by both hamas and the israeli government to take the leap into an agreement. and so i think part of this is just the difficulty of nailing down the precise details of something like what an idf military deployment might look like in the philadelphia corridor.

ben rhodes, thank you for your time and wisdom this evening. ayman mohyeldin, it is always great to have you on to talk about these issues. ayman show, of course, airs weekend nights starting at 7 p.m. eastern, right here on msnbc. more ahead. this evening, including 2020 election denialism on full display today in the nomination hearing for trump's pick for attorney general. but first, president biden's farewell address to the nation was really just an ominous warning about our democracy. claire mccaskill and jonathan martin join me on that. coming up next. stay with us. >> hi, grandma. i played baseball today. oh that's great. >> what position did you play? >> first base. that's what grandpa used to play when our hearing wouldn't allow us to use a regular phone. >> it made us feel isolated. >> it became difficult to communicate with our friends and family. >> clear captions was an easy solution for us. >> clear captions provides captions on a phone, like captioning on your tv so you can see what the caller is saying live as they say it, makin

joining me is ben rhodes. he can help us.helps people understand america's place in the world on a weekly basishe'sl security advisor to president obama. he's msnbc political contributor. he's a co-host of the important podcast pod save the world. he's the author of the book after the fall the rise of authoritarianism in the world we've made. ben, good to see you. thank you for being with us this morning. what do you make of this whole thing? first of all, donald trump, you can like isolationists or not, but it's not really clear what donald trump is. is he an isolationist? is he expansionist, or is this just all transactional to him? >> well, i think it's all transactional. >> you know, i think, you know, isolationism, america first doesn't necessarily just mean isolationism, right? it kind of means a certain mentality, a certain worldview that is more transactional, that cares less about values based alliances or any kind of international order. donald trump doesn't care about an international order. we're just a big countr

ben rhodes, thank you for your time and wisdom this evening. ayman mohyeldin, it is always great to have you on to talk about these issues. ayman show, of course, airs weekend nights starting at 7 p.m. eastern right here on msnbc. more ahead. this evening, including 2020 election denialism on full display today in the nomination hearing for trump's pick for attorney general. but first, president biden's farewell address to the nation was really just an ominous warning about our democracy. claire mccaskill and jonathan martin join me on that. jonathan martin join me on that. coming up next. stay with us. let's monopoly go! hehe. chris! keke! ready tycoons? it's go time! cash grab! keke, i won again? ow! daddy will be back soon. [cries] -ha ha! -boom! we're swimming in it now. -rent's due. -toodle-oo! busted! nothing beats playing with friends, except bankrupting friends. —i have to find a babysitter. —i have a lot of questions. —when can they start? —today? now? —how about saturday? —are they background-checked? my wife and i haven't been out in

ben rhodes, thank you for your time and wisdom this evening. ayman mohyeldin, it is always great to have you on to talk about these issues. ayman show, of course, airs weekend nights starting at 7 p.m. eastern right here on msnbc. more ahead. this evening, including 2020 election denialism on full display today in the nomination hearing for trump's pick for attorney general. but first, president biden's farewell address to the nation was really just an ominous warning about our democracy. claire mccaskill and jonathan martin join me on that. jonathan martin join me on that. coming up next. stay with us. the average dog only lives to be ten. at the farmer's dog, we don't think that's long enough. that's why our food comes in personalized portions. because a dog at a healthy weight could live a longer, happier life. oh, let me place. >> but replacing your windshield doesn't have to be. go to safelite. com and schedule a replacement today. >> woo! it's a season of suffering for so many animals. >> animals across this country who are abused, abando

and this is, you know, clearly decided on, you know, ben rhodes called at the blog, you can call it the deep state, you can call it the permanent bureaucracy. but these are the real people that decide us for and in military policy. and they are not elected and they don't go away, certainly not very easily. victoria newland is no longer part of the administration, but she has almost certainly a key constituent part of the blog and her husband kagan just reminded us of that with an article, the cry, trump position on ukraine going forward. so i think that actually this is probably going to consume a great deal of the trump presidency over the next few years as he tries to book that foreign policy orthodoxy that deep states, they are going to resist, that they are going to try to manipulate him and if manipulation fails, it will become outright warfare. and we saw what happened to the last president who promised the scatter, the c i a to the wins he's a, shall we say, quickly exited the presidential scene. so i've often described trump as a chaos, bob and it's all a kind of like a bouncing

we're going to talk with former obama administration national security adviser ben rhodes in the 3 p.m. eastern hour. and as we look forward to the big week ahead for senate confirmations and hearings, it appears that the jury is still out among republicans on the nomination of tulsi gabbard for director of national intelligence. >> i do hope, though, that we won't see anyone questioning her patriotism. you know, hillary clinton has basically called her a traitor in the past. this is a woman who served more than 20 years in our nation's army. she's passed five different background checks. i reviewed the latest one. it's clean as a whistle. >> can you. >> say right now, are you a. >> yes on tulsi gabbard? >> i'm going. >> to see how the hearing goes. >> i'm inclined to be yes on everybody, but there are some questions she will be. asked that i want to hear the answers to. >> so you're. >> a we'll see. not a yes. we'll see. okay. >> and new this hour, nbc news is reporting that white house officials are warning republicans of consequences if they do not get behind the president's nominee

obama had moved his foreign policy apparatus basically into his chief of staff, denis mcdonough and ben rhodesten it was kerry flying around the world trying to get direction, trying to get guidance, trying to get inside to, to have influence. and kerry, like many other secretaries of the state, recently just found themselves on the outside looking in. >> so as the world has gotten more complicated power over foreign policy, power over the interagency as people in government always like to call it, meaning the cia, commerce, all the other departments has shifted to the white house. the national security adviser has played an increasingly decisive role. going back to, i'll be frank, to the days of mika's dad, zbigniew brzezinski, who was a very powerful, centralizing national security adviser who clashed often with his secretary of state, cyrus vance. that friction continues. it was a feature of the biden administration. tony blinken and jake sullivan were always nice to each other in public, but there was an underlying tension about how foreign policy would be directed. and in the world we liv