Transcript
Ted Danson (0:00)
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Rachel Maddow (0:46)
Thanks to IT for joining us. Joining us this hour. Really happy to have you here. You know, I just want I'm going to speak a little bit bluntly this evening and I hope you will understand where this is coming from. But I think it is worth being blunt about the fact that it would be hard to run a presidential transition that could be worse than the last one. The last presidential transition was the worst one in American history by a long mile. The last one included the outgoing president inciting his followers to riot and storm the Capitol to try to keep him in power. That's a bad transition, right? I mean, the last inauguration had to have thousands of National Guard troops on hand to protect the proceedings from the threat of more violence from his followers. At the last presidential transition, the outgoing president didn't even show up for his successors swearing in. That's a bad transition. The last transition Donald Trump was part of was the worst presidential transition in the history of the country. And given how disastrously he performed in that last transition, I mean, you have to just assume that this one inherently will be better. It has to be right. But I think it is worth being blunt about the fact that it might be close because this too is a terrible, terrible presidential transition. And I think it ought to be more central to the way that we are talking about what's going on in politics and in our country and in government at this moment. Because this is the transition where the President elect throughout the presidential transition period has continued to sell his junk, right? His self branded watches and sneakers and Bibles. He put out a new Inauguration Day edition of his special branded bible. He's still selling boots. Now he's selling Trump boots and his new crypto, whatever it is, and his commemorative coins and his commemorative guitars. He's selling this stuff while he is the president elect. Nothing like that has ever happened before. Nothing that classless and tacky has ever happened to the US Presidency before. This is the transition where he said at a press conference that it might have been Hezbollah that did the January 6th attack. Really, Hezbollah did it. He also said at that same press conference that he's going to pardon the people who did the January 6th attack. Well, I'm sure Hezbollah will be delighted. This is the transition where he made unprovoked threats to seize territory from three other nations. Three other nations with whom we are allied. And that is, of course, inexplicable to those countries. It's inexplicable to most Americans, but it's also equally very exciting to the dictators of Russia and China who actually have been either seizing territory from other countries or planning to. And now, whether or not Trump actually follows through on these weird threats, those two dictators will have Trump's words during the transition to throw back at the United States of America if the US Ever again bothers to object to big countries like theirs stomping on small countries and seizing their land. Right. Welcome back to the 19th century. Sorry, no, there's no penicillin. This is the presidential transition where the president elect officially became a 34 times convicted felon 10 days before he was sworn in. This is the presidential transition when that same president elect named a convicted felon, one of his relatives to be ambassador to France. This is the transition where he picked his son's ex girlfriend to be ambassador to Greece, and he insisted that his other son's wife should be made a US Senator until that effort embarrassingly collapsed. This is the transition where he picked his son in law's college roommate to be the hostages envoy for the United States. That same son in law then announced that he'd received another $1.5 billion from government controlled funds in Qatar and Abu Dhabi on top of the billions of dollars he already got from government controlled funds in Saudi ar Because you know how Republicans are very sensitive to the ethics of any presidential son doing any kind of international business. This is the transition where the president elect appears to have just randomly picked people off the TV for almost every imaginable government job. He picked a syndicated daytime TV doctor to run Medicare, the one who says your horoscope is very important to understanding your health. Like literally, what's your sign, baby, that determines your health. He picked Fox News contributors or Fox News hosts or their relatives for Secretary of Transportation, national security adviser, FDA commissioner, Counterterrorism director, Ambassador to Israel, Surgeon General, ambassador to the Dominican Republic, border czar, Ukraine envoy, and did I mention Defense Secretary all of those people he just picked off the tv, he just picked them off of Fox News. He tried to pick someone for Attorney general who was actively under investigation for statutory rape and prostitution. And that one had to collapse because of course it did. But not before he and the Vice President elect went so far out on a limb for that guy that they made multiple Republican senators publicly promise to vote for that guy, despite the statutory rape and prostitution investigation and all the rest of it. Those Republican senators, are they going to get their dignity or their political capital back? If so, is there like a window where they check in for that? This is a shambolic presidential transition. It is a ridiculously bad, poorly run presidential transition, which ought to be the subject of some discussion in our country. It is not going well. And while the President Elect has already had to withdraw that disastrous Attorney General nomination, and he had to withdraw his nomination for someone to run the DEA as well, that one lasted like three days. And then they had to take back whatever that effort was to try to make his daughter in law a senator again, whatever that effort was. While all of those falling rocks have already fallen onto the proverbial road, here now, we're one week out from the end of the transition. We're one week out from the inauguration. And in this last week, we are about to enter into the part of this very poorly run transition where the confirmation hearings are going to start, and specifically where the confirmation hearings are apparently going to start falling apart. And I say that because tomorrow was supposed to be the confirmation hearing for Trump's nominee to run the VA to run Veterans Affairs. Now, most people could not pick that nominee, Doug Collins, out of a lineup as a nominee to run the va. He is a bit of a walking scandal. The only thing he's known for when it comes to the VA is his stated desire to get rid of it, to privatize it, to no longer have a VA that takes care of our veterans. So scandal enough in the nomination. But that said, Collins, confirmation hearing is supposed to be tomorrow, but today they announced it's not going to be. And why have they canceled the confirmation hearing for Doug Collins? It's because they haven't finished the paperwork and background checks necessary to start his hearings. Oops. The day before that one is supposed to happen. That one is now not happening. Tomorrow is also supposed to be the confirmation hearing for Trump's nominee for Interior Secretary, Doug Burgum. Not a familiar name, I know, but you might remember him as the obscure Republican presidential candidate who had to pay his way into the Debates. There was a provision in the Republican primary debate rules where you had to get a certain number of people to become donors to your campaign in order for you to get into the debates. Doug Burgum was nowhere near the sufficient number of donors that he would need to get him into the debate. So he literally paid people to donate to him. He would give you money, he would give you $20 if you turn around and gave him $1 as a donation. And apparently that was legal. But that is how Doug Burgum got into the Republican presidential debates, which, if you don't live in North Dakota, that's the only thing you know him from. Now Trump wants him to run the Department of the Interior, because, sure, why not? Doug Burgum's confirmation hearing was also supposed to be tomorrow, but it also now has been called off because, like, with the guy they want to abolish, I mean, lead the va. The Trump transition was also just unable to get the paperwork together for the Doug Berman Doug Burgum nomination. So now Doug Burgum can't have his confirmation hearing tomorrow either. Both of them called off the day before the hearings were supposed to happen. And now here's word of another, and this one is for the Trump nominee, who I think is probably the least confirmable of any of them. This is the Trump nominee, who I would argue might even be less confirmable than Matt Gaetz would have been if they had left him as the nominee for Attorney General. I'm speaking, of course, of. Of Trump's choice for Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard. This is the choice when. When this nomination was announced. Russian state TV reacted to this announcement like it was the Kremlin's biggest international victory since they launched Sputnik. A source at the Senate Intelligence Committee told us last week that Republicans were hoping the confirmation hearing for Tulsi Gabbard was going to be this Friday, January 17th. So that was the date we had penciled in for Tulsi Gabbard, but it's not happening. Amid multiple reports of yet more trouble getting the paperwork together. Tulsi Gabbard's confirmation hearing is not on the calendar for this week. It has still not been scheduled at all. And this is one to watch just to see if it ever gets scheduled, ever. They have already had to pull two of their botched nominations. They had to pull the botched nomination for Attorney General and also the botched nomination for dea. Watch this Gabbard nomination as well. Given what's emerged just in public reporting on Tulsi Gabbard's background public reporting more recently on how poorly she has been doing in her meetings with senators. Also, we're all listening very attentively to the conspicuous silence from Capitol Hill in terms of whether or not there is going to be sufficient support for her to even make it through committee. It has been a deafening silence. So if anybody is next to be pulled, it might be. Well, there's a bunch. It might be. But Tulsi Gabbard's one to watch. And for me to be able to say that with a week left in the transition before anybody's confirmation hearings have even started sort of tells you all you need to know about this transition being a botched. But there is so much more from all the way at the top, right? I mean, Trump himself went on Meet the Press with Kristen Walker and told her that he won the election because of grocery prices. I won on groceries. Then he went to Time magazine and said, yeah, I don't think I'm going to be able to bring down grocery prices. It's really hard to do. Did you know Trump said that he was going to end Russia's war in Ukraine in one day? And he didn't even say he'd do it one day after he was sworn in. He said he'd do it one day after he was elected back in November. Well, gee, that didn't happen. Now his Ukraine envoy says maybe we'll need a hundred days. Trump says, I think we'll try for six months in this transition. Trump explicitly and out loud and in public told the Republicans in Congress to shut down the government unless and until they abolished the debt ceiling. Republicans in Congress did not shut down the government, nor did they abolish the debt ceiling. Trump put eccentric right wing billionaire Elon Musk in charge of enacting this radical austerity plan for the United States. He said he would cut at least, at least $2 trillion from U.S. spending. At least $2 trillion is going to cut. Now Musk himself is saying, maybe we'll get to 1 trillion.
