Rachel Maddow (3:25)
Tonight we carbo load on Andrew Young's story of strategy and discipline and the personal experience of being part of a big nonviolent protest movement that went up against tremendous odds in this country and won. His story of his time at Martin Luther King's right hand in the civil rights movement and his career and what he went through as a builder and architect and a behind the scenes, dirty work grunt work guy in that movement. You get that tonight. And then tomorrow, you and everybody you know makes a handmade sign or puts on an inflatable unicorn suit or grabs the grandparents or grabs the grandkids or grabs all the roommates or the friends from work or the neighbors. And tomorrow everybody heads out to protest again. The timing is a little bit uncanny, I will admit, but the film tonight starts right here at nine at the top of the hour. And then tomorrow, all day long, tomorrow, live here on msnbc, we will have comp comprehensive coverage of the nationwide no Kings protests and this moment of what's expected to be very large scale protests against President Trump tomorrow. I think in terms of thinking about the point of those protests and the effectiveness of those protests and how these protests fit into this moment in American history, I think it is worth being very real about the fact that, that these likely massive protests tomorrow are coming at a time of pronounced weakness for him and his administration. And I think the mainstream media doesn't always talk about this. I think one of Trump's great geniuses, sort of one of the things he's actually truly great at is getting the media to cover things he wants them to cover. Even if he can't always cover, he can't always get the kinds of coverage that he wants he can almost always get the topics covered that he wants. And so because of that, I think some of the ways in which he is at a profound moment of weakness in his presidency have just kind of slipped by and not made the headlines. But I think if you're being real and you take a wide aperture look at what's going on with him right now, that's the pretty obvious bottom line. I mean, here's just one piece of that. So today's Friday. Usually every Thursday, we get the jobs numbers, right? We get the jobless claims data. That usually happens every Thursday. On the first Friday of every month, we're supposed to get the data on the number of new jobs created in unemployment. We're not getting that now, apparently because of the government shutdown. The first Friday after the shutdown started, they reportedly had that jobs report ready to go and they could have released it, but they didn't. For some reason. That's not exactly a sign of strength. Private sector job indicators around the same time payroll data and stuff indicated that the jobs numbers right at the start of the shutdown might actually be horrific numbers. And so who knows, maybe that influenced Trump's decision about not allowing that data to be released, even though they had it right at the start of the shutdown. We'll never know. Right before the shutdown, Trump fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics when the jobs numbers started looking really bad. Well, now Trump has quietly withdrawn the nomination of the guy he picked to replace Trump, the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. He's withdrawn that nomination and nobody new has been named for that job. Trump has also quietly just withdrawn his nomination for the person he wanted to put in charge of veterans benefits at the va. That nomination has been pulled as well. Trump has also quietly just withdrawn his nominee for a senior oversight position at hud. That nomination's been pulled as well. Trump has quietly just withdrawn his nomination for the person he wanted to be ambassador to Serbia. That's gone now, too. Trump has quietly just withdrawn his nomination to lead the cftc, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. That nominee then posted online about Trump donors telling him to, quote, rectify, meaning spike a CFTC case against them against the Trump donors. He says he refused to do that and he says that's why his nomination was polled. Trump's deputy White House chief of staff just quit and left. The chief of staff to Attorney General Pam Bondi just quit and left. They just removed the 25 year old fox News producer they put in charge of the commission that's supposed to run the America's 250th birthday celebration. How come all these people are being polled? How come all these nominations, controversial for one reason or another, are all just being yanked? Can't stand the bad press, can no longer take it. Political capital wise to have unpopular or problematic nominees pushed through the news cycle. Don't feel strong enough to bear that brunt anymore the way you used to. Today this was a large protest on the lawn at the main campus quad at the University of Virginia. This is the protest there today with students and faculty and staff telling the UVA administration that they should refuse to sign this deal with the Devil Compact with the Trump administration to supposedly get special preferences in federal funding if you agree to Trump's ideological strictures on your academic freedom. This was the protest today at uva, telling the UVA administration, don't you dare. Do not sell us out. Don't you sign that thing. This was today and then this tonight was the statement in fact released by UVA's president saying, okay, okay, we're not doing it. We have told the Trump administration no. Remember when it was just Harvard standing up and all the other universities were too intimidated to say no, to say no. Well, now, even the ones that caved before or that signed deals before with Trump, places like Brown University, even those schools have now learned that maybe signing deals with Trump is not a good idea. Trying to appease him, you know, trying to stay on his good side is folly. It just shows weakness. It invites him to come back and bully you some more. And so in quick succession, we have seen MIT and Brown and Penn and USC and now UVA as well. They've all told the Trump White House, no, we're not doing it. We're not signing on to your little compact to restrict our academic freedom and our ideological freedom of movement in order to try to keep you happy. No, we are not doing it. We have learned our lesson. Forget it. The Pentagon press corps, all the real reporters at the Pentagon, even the ones from Fox News this week, all walked out in unison telling Trump, no, we're not going to do it either. We're not going to agree to just write down what you tell us instead of doing actual journalism. No, we are not doing it. They walked out in unison, en masse. They told him no. In Chicago, we're seeing spontaneous protests in every city, neighborhood and in every suburb against Trump's apparently untrained, totally out of their depth, paramilitary dress up immigration agents, who among other things, are now regularly tear gassing Chicago police officers. A federal judge has now ordered Trump's federal agents from the bench. Quote, you can't deploy tear gas, you can't use flashbang grenades, you can't drive a car through a crowd. You can't shoot them in the head with pepper balls. The judge has ordered that Trump's federal agents in Chicago must not only change their ridiculous tactics, they must now wear body cameras and they must have them turned on. A different federal judge had ruled that the National Guard cannot be deployed to Illinois. That ruling has now been upheld by a unanimous three judge panel of a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C. where Trump installed yet another Fox News host to be U.S. attorney in that city. They tried once, they tried twice, they tried three times to convince a grand jury to bring a felony criminal indictment against one D.C. resident who was part of a protest there. All three times, the grand jury refused to move ahead with those felony charges. Jeanine Pirro's office then instead finally charged this young woman with a misdemeanor for which they put her on trial for that was yesterday. The jury laughed them out of the courtroom and acquitted her yesterday afternoon after about a nanosecond of deliberation. As Trump continues to personally order up criminal indictments against people he doesn't like. James Comey. Tish James. Now, John Bolton. Tonight, two more veteran prosecutors have reportedly been fired after refusing to bring what they believe to be a baseless prosecution against New York Attorney General Tish James. Yesterday, in that district, in the Eastern District of Virginia, a judge who is Trump appointed took a moment, a dramatic moment from the bench at the conclusion of a big national security case. Took a moment from the bench to praise James Comey's son in law, who recently resigned as a prosecutor in the Eastern District of Virginia when that office charged his father in law, James Comey. The judge praised the prosecutor from the bench, saying, quote, how saddened he was that I will, quote, not have the privilege of him appearing in my courtroom again. He said he was disheartened to know that the Department of Justice and our nation will be deprived of his obvious talents and integrity going forward. He said, quote, lawyers who stand up for the rule of law provide an essential contribution to the cause of freedom. The judge said, quote, what makes our country great is that we are a free country and our great nation serves as a beacon for freedom around the world. But freedom and the rule of law necessarily go hand in hand. You cannot have one without the other. Again, a Trump appointed judge making very pointed comments from the bench at the conclusion of a national security case in Edva that comes in the wake of another Trump appointed federal judge issuing just a rip snorting opinion, not only blocking Trump from sending troops to Portland, but really eviscerating him in very sharp language for even having the temerity to try it. New AP polling has Donald Trump 24 points underwater in his job approval rating. People disapprove of Donald Trump as president more than they approve of him by a 24 point margin. The Republican controlled House of Representatives announced today that they will take a fifth straight week of previously unplanned vacation next week. Now, to be clear, there is nothing about the government shutdown that requires Congress to be out of session. They're supposed to be in session. But for a fifth straight week, they are calling in sick, canceling class, refusing to convene the House, and perhaps not incidentally, refusing to swear in the new member of Congress from Arizona, Adelita Grijalva, who won a special election last month. But they won't allow her to be sworn in and they won't say why, but Democrats will say why they think it is. And it's because she would be the 218th and therefore the deciding vote to force a release of the Epstein files in which President Trump himself reportedly plays a fairly starring role. Trump's Attorney General has reportedly told him his name appears in the Epstein files multiple times. Trump, perhaps unsurprisingly, is refusing to release those files. But once Adelita Grialva is sworn in, they may no longer legally be able to refuse the release of those files any longer. And so we are now heading into a fifth straight week of Republicans refusing to convene the House of Representatives, a fifth Democrat straight week of unplanned vacation, apparently just to try to protect Trump from whatever is in those Epstein files about him. On day 17 of the government shutdown, government workers and military families are lining up at food pantries all over the country. Trump is apparently excited to have another crack at firing the people involved in keeping our nuclear weapons safe. They're citing the shutdown to go through with an 80% furlough of the National Nuclear Security Administration as of Monday morning. Remember, they accidentally fired all the national nuclear security people right at the beginning of Trump's term in office. And then they said, oops, we didn't mean to do that, and they brought them all back. Well, now they are furloughing all of them. These are the people who keep our nuclear weapons safe from, you know, theft or going off when they shouldn't. Yeah, who needs Them Democrats say their price for relenting on the shutdown is that Republicans need to reverse their changes to health insurance, their policy changes that are going to spike people's health insurance costs in very short order, almost by almost unbelievable amounts. And I will show you what I mean. States are now starting to release the actual numbers on what the Republicans policy changes have done to health insurance costs with this legislation that they've passed this year. This is what the Democrats have been making a stink about. You've heard like Democrats are concerned in the shutdown fight about health care costs and health insurance. And you think like, oh, Democrats are always concerned about health costs. That's nice. I care about health costs. I'm glad they're standing up for it. No, it's this specific thing. You want to know what the Democrats are making a stink about with the shutdown? You want to know what the Democratic side is of the fight over the shutdown? Look at these numbers from the New York Times tonight. Look at this. This is for the tens of millions of Americans who get their health insurance through the online marketplaces. Look. Based on the newly posted information, meaning the pricing information that's now being posted in multiple states, a family of4 making $130,000 in Maine. So you combine the family's income, everybody's salaries, you got up to $130,000. That family would face an increase in their annual health insurance premiums next year of $16,100. That's how much their health insurance premiums would go up. But maybe that's, you know, that sounds like it's a fairly well off family. And you think, oh, well, maybe that doesn't apply to me. I quite in that kind of a bracket. Well, imagine you're in a couple, you're each 60 years old and you put both your salaries together. Combined you make $85,000 a year. So maybe one of you is making $40,000 a year. Maybe one of you is making $45,000 a year. Combined, your couple's income is $85,000 a year. In Maryland, your insurance premium is going to go up by $13,700. In Minnesota, your insurance is going to go up by $15,500. In Nevada, it's going to go up by $18,100 in Kentucky. The increase for you guys as a couple will be that you are expected to pay an additional $23,700 per year. That is the amount of increase we are looking at in people's health insurance premiums. Can your family afford Just randomly, an additional charge of $24,000 for exactly what you're getting right now for $24,000 less than that. I mean, these are insane numbers. But this is what Republicans in their policy changes on health care, what they have done to health insurance costs. And this specifically is what Democrats have been screaming bloody murder about. This is what Democrats have been drawing the line about in this shutdown, telling Republicans that this is the thing they need to fix. Think they're gonna fix it? Think they will. President Trump doesn't appear real focused on it tonight. He has pardoned convicted Republican con man, former Republican Congressman George Santos and sprung him out of prison. So clearly that's a president operating from a position of strength. Right? This is what he wants to be known for. I mean, his only moves right now are big destruction moves. We're in day 17 of a government shutdown. He's refusing to release the jobs data or the inflation data about what he's doing to the country's economy. While all the private sector data that we have to look to to try to understand those things is terrible. His paramilitary and would be military assault on his own people in cities across the country is being pushed back not only on every street corner where he's trying it, but in every courtroom where he's trying to get away with it, including in front of judges he himself appointed. He is pulling out all the last stops he can to try desperately to avoid the Epstein disaster he is still mired in. He is quietly, quietly pulling his nominees and hoping no one notices and asks why the health care policy on which the Democrats are totally unified and taking their stand against him is about to be a full blown economic disaster for literally tens of millions of American families, the majority of them in Republican run states. He is 24 points underwater in his job approval. 24 points. And his big idea to change the subject is to free America's comedic poster child for compulsive lying and stealing. I mean, for a supposed strongman, this is all pretty weak, right? And on top of all of that, and perhaps because of all of that, tomorrow there may be the largest protests ever in this country in all 50 states, all against him. Couldn't happen at a better time. Happy no Kings Day America. By the way, you're already winning lots to get to tonight. Let's go.
