From now. Well see. Thank you. For a second night in a row, people are peacefully demonstrating against the election of donald trump in cities across the country, including his hometown, new york city. Milwaukee, baltimore, and just moments ago, the president elect returned to twitter in classic form to lie about these protests. He called the thousands of people who spontaneously have risen up against them, he referred to them, as, quote, professional protests. That is, of course, a lie. And today, donald trump visited the oval office, where he met president obama for the first time, and also apparently for the first time he did not insult president obama. Why do bad things happen to good people . You finally have the answer. The Electoral College. More people in this country voted for clinton, not trump. So once again, donald trump benefits from a [ bleep ] college. It was a great honor being with you. Surreal to watch, knowing the history of the two of them. It is important for all of us to now come together, work together, to deal with the many challenges that we face. That doesnt mean that he agrees with donald trump. It doesnt mean all the concerns he raised no longer apply. Which donald trump are we working with . If its the same donald trump that has shown himself throughout the campaign, then i dont want any parts of it. It looked to me as if he was starting to realize the weight of the job. Youre probably looking at the map of the United States, and thinking, wait, how long has this wall got to be . I have learned how difficult politics can be, but that doesnt mean you run away. Get with us, oppose trump when he is wrong. Pick yourself up, as the president said, and you fight even harder for our country, because its ours. Its ours the peaceful transition of power ritual that was begun at the white house today is performed as much for the world as it is for this country. We take for granted the transition of power, but many countries do not. The president and president elect played their parts publicly, with a version of the oval Office Script that has now been used for generations. I want to emphasize to you, mr. President elect that we now are going to want to do everything we can to help you succeed, because if you succeed then the country succeeds. I very much look forward to dealing with the president in the future, including counsel. It was a great honor being with you, and i look forward to be being with you many, many more times in the future. There was a moment there we will show you later in our discussion where donald trump said i respect, and you would have expected him to say president obama, but he didnt. It wasnt at all clear what he respected. He just couldnt finish the sentence that way, because Trump Supporters are not quite ready to hear that, if ever. Well have a full discussion and analysis of what we saw today. But first, in the coverage of todays ritual, there was an important historical fact that was lost. She won. She won the popular vote. Hillary clinton got more votes than donald trump did. She won the president ial election held on election day, but thats not enough to win the presidency, because we dont elect a president on election day. The Electoral College elects a president. When they meet on the first monday after the second wednesday in doecember. Now you know youre deep in the world of ritual when your meeting must occur on the first monday after the second wednesday in december. It sounds like youre deep into the world of cultish superstition. Those words are actually written in law to specify when the Electoral College meets many of the and just by reading them, just by saying them, you can feel the absurdity of the Electoral College, how outdated it is. The Electoral College is one of the most enduring mistakes of the Founding Fathers. And the two men who designed the Electoral College would be horrified at what it has become. They believed that the way it operates today was unconstitutional. A serious violation of the spirit of the constitution. The constitution was written by men who did not trust voters. They didnt trust them completely. In the federal government, they allowed voters to elect only members of the how long of representatives. The constitution said senators would be elected by state legislators. That want changed until 1913. The Founding Fathers clearly thought that the job of senator was too important to be decided by the man on the street. And that was back when most people couldnt vote. No women were allowed to vote. No slaves were allowed to vote. And only certain kinds of men were allowed to vote. In some areas, you had to own property to vote, indicating that you were a man of substance, a man of judgment, thats what the lelectors in th Electoral College were supposed to be, because in Alexander Hamiltons words, they needed to be men who possessed the information and discernment to make that decision. The Electoral College was designed by Alexander Hamilton and james madison. Their idea was that on election day, voters would vote not for the president but for an elector. Someone smarter than themselves who then would vote for president of the United States when the Electoral College met at a later date. That date was formalized in law in 1887 as the first monday after the second wednesday in december. In madison and hamiltons view, the electors were free to vote for whoever they wanted to vote for for president. They believed that back then, new york states is 12 electors each, could and should make up their own mind as to who the next president should be. New york might produce four votes for one candidate, three for another candidate, three for another then two for another. They didnt want new york states electors to get together and make a political deal to all vote for the same candidate. Madison and hamilton became alarmed when they saw electors in some states realizing that they could do that, that they could get together and choose a candidate. The electors in certain states then all banded together and voted for the same person so that their candidate would be more likely to win, and hamilton hated that. And he hated even more the idea that some of the electors would be prepledged to vote for a certain candidate for president. He didnt want electors who werent going to think about who the best president would be. He didnt want electors who were pledged to a candidate and won votes from voters by pledging themselves to a candidate, which is exactly what we have right now. Hamilton said that the point of choosing electors was to make sure that the president would be chosen, quote, by men most capable of analyzing the qualities that a president should have. Hamilton didnt want robots in his Electoral College. He thought that would be a violation of the constitutional description of how the Electoral College should work. When he saw that the Electoral College was being abused, hamilton actually wrote an amendment to the constitution to try to correct it, an amendment that was never passed. And so you win the presidency now, not by winning the most votes. You win the presidency by winning the most robots in the Electoral College, an antidemocratic idea, an idea so antidemocratic that no democracy designed after ours has adopted the Electoral College. Our democracy has been a model for centuries for many developing democracies around the world, but none of them chose the Electoral College. No one wants that. Real democracies actually allow people to vote directly for the president. She won the popular vote. Thats what you hear. The popular vote. A phrase that exists only in the United States of america. You know what they call the popular vote in the rest of the world . The vote. You win the vote, you win the office. And that is true for every Elective Office in the United States from School Committee to town council to alderman to mayor, to state legislator to congress, every single elected office in the United States except the most important one, and of course, votes in the Electoral College are not democratically distributed throughout the country, they are not fairly distributed according to population, wyoming only gets three electoral votes. Thats the least that any state can have. North dakota and south dakota get three votes. But wyoming has 586,000 people. South dakota has 300,000 more people than that, but it doesnt get one more electoral vote than wyoming. It doesnt get anymore electoral votes than wyoming. It just gets those three. So south dakota voters are not fairly represented in the Electoral College as wyoming voters are. But california has 39 million people, and it only gets 55 electors in the Electoral College. If california voters got equal representation in the Electoral College, california would get 1 t 99 electors. That is how this is. The Electoral College was designed when california was still mexico. It was designed when the variation in population from state to state was nothing like the extremes that we see today. Todays population numbers and the patterns of settlement across the continent were unimaginable to the men who designed the Electoral College, but were stuck with it. This archaic device designed by men who did not trust voters. It would fatake a constitutiona amendment to change it. Which means we are stuck with it for the unimaginable future. If we observed a foreign country using it when we go there to Foreign Countries as election observers, we would say, oh, no, no, no, you cant do that. Cant do that. Ive been an election observer in foreign country on election day. Watching people vote ma. And no one called it the popular vote. They called it the vote. No one said im going to have to come back on the first monday after the second wednesday to watch a small group make the final decision about who the president should be. In any real democracy today, the president today would be Hillary Clinton. But this is the country where you can win the presidency through a political card trick called the Electoral College. She got more votes. More people voted for Hillary Clinton than voted for donald trump. And we are now 48 hours into the discussion of what Hillary Clinton didnt understand about america. What she didnt understand about the voters she had to appeal to, 48 hours into the discussion of what the democrats have to do now to change their message. 48 hours into the discussion of what the party and the candidate who got the most votes must do. To get more votes. In order to actually win. Only in america. That is a discussion that can happen only in america. Where winning the election is not enough to win the office of the presidency. Winning the most votes, not enough. Thats what winning the election is in a real democracy, winning the most votes. The world knows this. We have embarrassed ourselves to the world once again. With the world watching, twice in 16 years now, the winner of the vote was not sworn in as president of the United States. Do not expect the world to understand that. Do not expect the world to admire our democracy. Alexander hamilton would be horrified to see the perversion that his Electoral College has become, and he would surely be horrified to see the kind of man who sat beside president obama today, thanks entirely to alexander hamiltohamiltons ele college. Coming up, president obama and donald trump. In the oval office, meeting for the first time. [ sneezes ] i have a big meeting when we land, but im so stuffed up, i cant rest. Nyquil cold and flu liquid gels dont unstuff your nose. They dont . Alkaseltzer plus night liquid gels fights your worst cold symptoms. Plus, unstuffs your nose. Oh, what a relief it is. Are my teeth yellow . Have you tried the tissue test . Ugh yellow. What do you use . Crest whitestrps. Crest 3d whitestrips whiten 25 times better than a leading whitening toothpaste i passed the tissue test. Oh yeah. Crest whitestrips are the way to whiten. Keeping the power lines clear,my job to protect public safety, while also protecting the environment. The Natural World is a beautiful thing, the work that we do helps us protect it. Public education is definitely a big part of our job, to teach our customers about the best type of trees to plant around the power lines. We want to keep the power on for our customers. We want to keep our community safe. This is our community, this is where we live. We need to make sure that we have a beautiful place for our children to live. Together, were building a better california. The next president of the United States got his twitter machine back, and hes already complaining about peaceful protests against his election, and lying about those protests, saying that they are professional protests. The one in new york city is taking place, as you see there, right in front of his home and office building, trump tower. Up next, we will have reaction to what happened today in the oval office. [burke] hot dog. Seen it. Covered it. We know a thing or two because weve seen a thing or two. We are farmers. Bumpadum, bumbumbumbum we had never met each other. I have Great Respect. The meeting lasted for almost an hour and a half. And it could have, as far as im concerned, it could have gone on for a lot longer. Joining us now, msnbc political analyst, and april ryan with american urban radio networks. And april, for me, a most fascinating home in there was when donald trump said i have Great Respect, and he kpdidnt say, there was no word, there was no object, as they say, in that sentence, because i think he realized that if he were to say, as would logically make sense in the words he was saying there, i have Great Respect for president obama, that would be instantly horrifying to all of his supporters who heard exactly the opposite from him for oh, over five years now. Yeah. Well, lawrence, you know, and i picked up on that as well, but when i walked into, i was part of the pool that walked into the oval office today, and just that sight alone was, was stunning. To see these two men who have been fighting for a while and the crescendo moments have happened in the last couple days, the accusations and the namecalling and things back and forth, and then election day happened, and they called for their better selves, and today we saw both of them calling on their better selves to sit here for the greater good of the country. And what struck me, lawrence, is when i heard donald trump say he would look to president obama for counsel. Yes, yep. Because i had to do a double take when i was in the oval office, he said wait a minute, did he say that . He did. And we pressed josh earnest. I asked him, how does that look . What is the construct of that, talk to us about how that happens. And he said something, josh earnest said something on how president obama has called on george h. W. Bush on occasions. I talked to bill clinton a couple years ago, he said he had actually talked to george w. Bush about some issues to include, trying to work out the pricing for drugs for those in africa, with hiv and malaria and things of that nature. So it really struck me. I dont know if it was surreal, but it was a re severy serious for the good of the country. Both men had not agreed before, but they are doing it for the good of the country. And it seemed like a real moment. An hour and a half is not a short time for the president of the United States and for this president elect. So jonathan alter, it turns out donald trump went beyond the known maximum of his Attention Span and went to 90 minutes. But what we know with absolute certainty is today was the day in Donald Trumps life where he spoke to the wisest man he has ever spoken to about government. I think he may have realized that. That was the look on trumps face, kind of like i got a little more than i bargained for here, and i better learn from the president about how to be president , which could be very productive and helpful for the country. Obama, as i found out when i was researching my first book about him, was very appreciative of george h. W. Bush or george w. Bushs help in the transition, so he wants to be really helpful to trump, but he can also get something out of that, which is maybe a little bit of trumps time when it comes to deciding which of those executive orders to repeal. Remember, trump has committed to repealing some, but not all, of obamas executive orders. Obama is very concerned, rightly, with his legacy. If he can help trump become president , be, you know, a successful president in his early days, maybe in exchange, because trump is a deal maker, trump, whos not an ideological guy, will not repeal everything that obama did. My personal bet is he probably, the thing the president probably stressed the most is do not try to undo this iran deal, but lets listen to what Elizabeth Warren just said to rachel in the last hour. Lets listen. Donald trump did not get the majority of americans voting for him. They did not. Thats not how it worked in this electi