e-mails. and then the letters comey sent to the hill, one saying we found more e-mails on anthony weiner s laptop that could be pertinent to our investigation, we need to look at those, and then his follow-up letter a few days before the election in which he said, we ve done that review and we haven t had anything. hillary clinton herself has said she thinks that first letter in late october changed the course of the election. so, the inspector general is going to look at that and a couple of ancillary things. there have been allegations that an fbi deputy director should have taken himself off part of this case because of some connections to the campaign or his wife s connections to the political to politics in virginia. some allegations that an assistant attorney general for legislative affairs passed information along to the clinton campaign, and other employees disclosed nonpublic information. the foeklecal point is the two actions by the fbi director, the letter to the hill in late october and november. thanks so much. former clinton campaign senior adviser joel benenson weighing in on today s news of the inspector general review. here s what he told my colleague katie can tur a few minutes ago. the real question here, is it appropriate for the fbi and the fbi watchdog to investigate behavior they think violated fbi practices in the course of conducting investigations and engaging in public conversation about that? i think that s appropriate. no one s trying to get a do-over in the election. that s not going to happen. nobody says it s going to happen. but when public officials abuse or potentially abuse their authority and their office, that investigation there s not a statute of limitations that says when the election is over we re not going to go back and look at the behavior of a prosecutor who was advised not to do this 11 days out, who was criticized by former fbi professionals from both parties for doing so, to look into that. for more on all this, i want to bring in stanley pottenger, former civil rights attorney at the department of justice. thank you for coming in in a hurry. i know you had to rush to get here. let s talk about the reaction. we just heard joel benenson. we actually heard from republican congressman jason chaffetz say he supports this investigation. you served at the justice department. first of all, are you surprised the inspector general would get involved or does this seem seem, in your view, an appropriate use of time? yes, it s unusual. but the entire episode he s investigating is unusual. the thing pete williams talked about is the thing to keep in mind. are you investigating the substance and the prosecutorial, the answer is no, apparently. or are you talking about how it was handled, the publication of documents. that is appropriate for the i.g., the inspector general to use. apparently, that s what he s going to focus on. what he s focused in part on carefully. i would not be surprised if you find that james comey defends his position pretty effectively. the inspector general right now, i don t know if you know him, a man named michael horowitz, started as assistant attorney in new york, moved to the department of justice. many years in doj. in 2012 he becomes the i.g. he s appointed by the president, president obama. it s my understanding, is it a ten-year term for the inspector general? i think that s right. it may be. i know there s a ten-year term for the director of the fbi. typically there are very few ten-year terms. this could be. we ll check that. my question was going to be, what happens now? so, donald trump, takes office next week. he can replace this inspector general or is he going to continue with this investigation no matter what? if he has a ten-year term, he can only be replaced for cause. there s no indication there is cause. if he doesn t have a ten-year term, he will be replaced. the new attorney general, presumably jeff sessions, will have to decide, does he continue it with the existing staff, shut it down or change it? that s why we have more questions right now than answers. in terms of how quickly all of this could play out and whether let s assume he stays on this investigation, the inspector general, what he does, what are the possibilities in terms of reprimand, punishment? i mean, what can happen with an i.g. report? that s a really good question. the answer is very little because the he s investigating the people who actually do the prosecuting. it isn t likely they re going to turn around and prosecute themselves if he recommended there was something. the truth is, i don t think he s looking a prosecutal crime. he s looking as who the department and then presumably the public and press what happened. that means what he s doing is basically a report to the public about what happened, but not something that will involve criminal prosecution. joel benenson said last hour that he doesn t think any of this will impact what happened. i mean, the past is past. the election is over. i want to play some sound, though, if i can, from hillary clinton. this is at a party with donors. she was talking about the impact she believes that comey s letter made right before the elections. take a listen. . don t take it from me, take it from independent analysts, take it from the trump campaign, take it from nate silver who s point out that swing state voters made their decisions in the final days breaking against me because of the fbi letter from director comey, and nate silver believes, i happen to believe this, that that letter most likely made the difference in the outcome. again, this investigation does not look at that. pete williams said it s not going to look at whether everything that happened impacted the election or not. in your view, as former assistant attorney general, do you think it? you said the election s over. apparently it s not over. everybody is talking about it. until the 20th, news will start to turn to events instead of speculation. don t think it will make much difference. i was sorry she cited nate silver. i like him. i read it. he missed it. he missed this elections. he missed brexit. he doesn t have a record right now that says his polling is hitting the buttons. i m want sure that helped her make that claim. now, do i make her for making that claim? not at all. you know, she s handling this as well as she can having lost a surprisingly lost the election n her view. i don t think it will make a difference by the time this is over. in terms of the new investigation? yeah. i think we ll learn something more but we have this big flip-flop. you remember in the summer everyone was singing the praises of jim comey because he had exonerated republicans. republicans were mad. excuse me, democrats. democrats were singing praises. right. then when he lost, democrats were furious with him. i think the american public understands that to some extent our perspective is warped by the results we want. that s true for both sides, democrats and republicans. thank you for your analysis. thank you for coming in quickly, former assistant attorney general. almost promoted you. in the civil rights division of the department of justice. nice to have you. turning now to the current commander in chief, president obama and a parting tribute for vice president joe biden scheduled for this hour. nbc news senior white house correspondent chris jansing is live at the white house. chris, i said the words, so now we can say this is happening, but all day we ve been waiting because it seemed like it was a bit of a surprise for joe biden? reporter: yeah it s supposed to be a secret, is what we re told. it s hard to imagine how within those walls and given the small number of people who were involved in the planning of this that joe biden doesn t suspect something. already people are gathering there. we are told that those seats are being reserved for family, for friends. chris dodd, the former senator from connecticut has been spotted. you can bet there will be dignitaries there as well as as well, not the least of whom will be the president, mrs. obama and, of course, vice president biden and his wife jill. this is something that is sort of a story many people have found to be tremendously unexpected. these two men who would seem to be so very different, who came so very close over the course of the last eight years when they have served together. they ran against each other in 2007. generations apart. first-term senator from illinois and a senator for, i think, it was, seven terms, six youngest when he came in in 1972, joe biden was from delaware. he left to be the fourth most senior senator. when he said he would do this. when he said, i ll become your vice president. the only ask he this is i wanted to be the last guy in the room. he didn t want to be one of those vice presidents who was merely ceremonial. and pretty much, he says, the president kept his word. he relied on him pretty heavily, we re told, for that first term for his foreign policy expertise. he was chairman of the foreign relations committee for a time, he was chairman for a time of the senate judiciary committee. but it s not just policy where we have seen all those pictures of them huddled in the oval office. they have become just really good friends. in fact, the way time magazine put it was, the great american broman krechlt. not just a bromance, but the great american bromance. there have been plenty of photos and videos of them, everything from running down the halls of the white house. no one quite knew what they were running to, to some of the most emotional times they ve ever had. it was the president who delivered the eulogy at the funeral of joe biden s son, beau. they were together in the rose garden when joe biden announced he would not run against hillary clinton for president of the united states. a very close friendship, not just between these two men, but between their families as well. they ve spent a tremendous amount of personal time together. in is a time for the president to say thank you, to say more about what vie presidece presid meant to him. he had a chance to start that at the farewell address, calling out the scrappy kid from scranton who became delaware s favorite son and drawing who is familiar who follows joe biden, that air gun he gave in that moment, but we re expecting a tribute and an emotional time for everyone who was involved, as we have seen many members of the white house staff and the president and first lady, vice president and dr. jill biden as well acknowledging that it s become much more emotional to them as their last days near. chris, if anyone saw that andrea mitchell interview a couple hours ago on her program, the emotion was right there, as joe biden she spoke with joe biden and the vice president expressed his love, he called it love, for president obama. again, what we re waiting for right now is we think a surprise for the vice president. although hard to know if he really could if it could be kept quiet in the white house. but it is president obama who will be basically hosting a farewell for vice president biden. if i can ask, we know a little bit i know a little bit has been reported about joe biden s next move and his plans after the white house, after being vice president. i read he ll be working with a couple universities. what more do we know? reporter: he said he s been made a lot of different ofrsz. it s interesting. he seems to be in the same head space as a lot of the senior staff. i know people don t necessarily believe this, that the president, the first lady, the vice president, all these members of the senior staff, jill biden as well, haven t had a tremendous amount of time to lay down in stone exactly what they re going to do. obviously, when you have come from this stage, the world is your oyster. joe biden is very open about this, his goal for many, many years, for decades, really, was to become president of the united states. that does seem to be behind him at age 73 now, but he is going to do some teaching. as he and others have said, they re going to do a little bit of sleeping. something they are very much looking forward to do. spending time with his family. you know, he did go back throw himself back into work after the death of his son, beau. he was out for a while but has been really key for a lot of the issues that have come up in this last year or so of this administration. he s continued to work very hard. so, there s some time for him to spend with his family, with jill biden. you know, when you think about where he came from, again, you know, for somebody with a long career in the senate and how different they were, somebody with that experience coming into politics as opposed to barack obama, who comparatively was a relative newcomer and people who seemed to have very different approaches to things. the fact they have become so close, i would not rule out i ve had some conversations about this, but i would not rule out the possibility you will see him and barack obama working together on some of the initiatives that eventually are decided upon by this president, where he wants to have influence moving forward. it s not as if a key is going to turn, another family will move into the white house and these folks are going to scatter to the wind. many of the senior officials will continue to work with obama, either on private staff or as part of his library foundation. those things haven t been announced yet but they will happen. i think there s going to be a long time for joe biden to continue in some way in a different kind of public service, kate. chris, stay there. don t move. i want to bring in also lynn sweet, washington bureau chief at the chicago sun times, that being the president s sort of adopted hometown newspaper. nice to see you. how are you? good afternoon. good afternoon. as we wait and look at this room where we expect the president to come out, and we re not quite sure what to expect, but we have been told by the pool note that it will be in honor of joe biden. talk about lynn, talk about their relationship and talk about what you think we might hear out of the president. well, the relationship really started in iowa when they were running against each other in that democratic primary. and it was not a hard decision in the end for the obama team to select biden as vice presidential candidate. the announcement was made in springfield, illinois, where obama had kicked off his campaign. and the relationship not only between the president and vice president, but between dr. jill biden and first lady michelle obama has also rypiened through the years, too. they ve worked on their joining forces initiative. i m sure they will chris kroris all four of them, throughout their lives. not only with biden with his cancer moonwalk and the various enterprises. i would bet there will be a lot of humor, a little ribbing, a little, you know, this isn t a towel snap sort of joking, but those two right, chris, they have a little bit of a schtick when they re together? chris, we haven t gotten any word on timing. we were told 3:00. but there was a lot of secrecy around this whole event. reporter: then we got 15 minutes late. i don t know what s going on behind the scenes. i keep checking my iphone. there is this sort of ribbing that goes on. when you look at some of the memes of them together, the pictures of them together, there are a lot of pictures that pete sousa and other white house photographers have taken where it seems like they re holding hands, where they re laughing. they love to laugh together. they ve had a lot of light moments ago. and they re also both can, as we ve seen, you mentioned the andrea mitchell interview with vice president biden and the president in chicago, they can also get emotional. we ll watch for that. very clearly, you know, the yin and yang, mr. cool and mr. emotional, that s been fascinating to see how that goes because joe biden is someone who wraps someone he barely knows into a bear hug. when you think of it, we couldn t have we couldn t have done a formula of two men who have gotten along better. i think the age difference has helped, too. i think the idea that biden knows what it takes to run for president and he knows the senate and he knows foreign policy. so, he came in with the skill set, very helpful to the president. thank you, both, for waiting with us here. i apologize. i thought my mike was down and i was speaking over you guys. apologies for that. i want to take a quick break, ask lynn and chris jansing to stand by with us. the white house running a little behind schedule. we re waiting for this big event for joe biden, to honor joe biden, being led, we understand, by president obama. so, as we wait for that, we ll take a break. want to bring you one little piece of news before we go to break. the senate, the full senate has just voted to allow a waiver for mattis, general mattis, who has now been nominated, of course, for department of defense secretary. he had to get a waiver because it s so recently he left the military, the senate had to approve of him having the potential for being department of defense secretary so soon after leaving the military. that has just happened. that vote just took place in the senate. it was approved. it doesn t mean he s now the secretary. it means he can be. and they can vote on that later. we ll take a quick break and we ll be right back. everything your family touches sticks with them. make sure the germs they bring home don t stick around. use clorox disinfecting products. because no one kills germs better than clorox. trubiotics a probiotic from one a day. naturally helps support both your digestive and immune health. feel a difference in two weeks or your money back. take the trubiotics 2 week challenge. so, let me first ask, any reaction at all from the trump cache ca camp to this? nothing yet. i just checked his twitter feed during the break sure. wouldn t be surprised if he would react later today. we reached out to transition officials and yet to hear from them. we ll pass that on as soon as we get it. bottom line, in the waning weeks before the election, before this case was, in effect, revisited by the fbi, before that announcement on october 28th, donald trump basically said he wants to investigate the investigation. he called it collusion and corruption of the highest order. said it was a disgrace. of course, his position changed late in october. i was with him just as that announcement was made. he was in manchester, new hampshire, at the time. it was almost as if the cork on a bottle of champagne just popped. the room went nuts when he said it. he started his remarks saying there was critical breaking news he wanted to announce. in the days, he s part of the way he recast his view of fbi director james comey. take a listen. i have to give the fbi credit. that was so bad what happened originally. it took guts for director comey to make the move that he made in light of the kind of opposition he had where they re trying to protect her from criminal prosecution. you know that. it took a lot of guts. i really disagreed with him. i was not his fan. i tell you what, he brought back his reputation. he brought it back. he s got to hang tough because there s a lot of a lot of people want him to do the wrong thing. what he did was the right thing. bottom line is we ve heard nothing new from donald trump about the inspector general from the doj saying they re going to open up a review into the handling of this situation here. what s notable is in the days after he was elected, donald trump on 60 minutes and elsewhere was asked whether or not he thought james comey should keep that position, whether he would ask him to resign his position as director of fbi and he said he hadn t made up his mind yet on that issue. pete alexander following that for us. thank you so much. president-elect trump s pick for cia director, mike pompeo, was on the hill today for his confirmation hearing. one of three hearings that happened today. nbc news intelligence reporter joins us for more on that. we had simultaneously three hearings going on. what were the fireworks? what were the headlines out of pompeo? pompeo was very polished. kind of a love fest. he s a former trial lawyer, former army officer. he did very well. but he, without hesitation, endorsed the findings by the u.s. intelligence community that russia was behind the hacking, which trump has had trouble doing, president-elect trump. and he said that if ordered to engage in torture, he would refuse such an order. he s one of several nominees who have said that, even though donald trump during the campaign talked about wanting to waterboard. none of the people who work for him say that s legal. that s interesting. potentially a split with his own boss. exactly. in terms of other headlines out of it or anything i moon, you said it was it went fairly well for him. is there a sense this committee will approve him or was there any glaring, obvious senator saying, i ve got concerns? no, nobody expressing concerns about his nomination. he was asked about this dossier that everyone s asking about. you know, unverified information damaging to donald trump. if there was something worth investigating, would he follow those leads? would the cia under mike pompeo investigate those things? he promised, yes, they would. thank you so much. appreciate it. we re continuing to wait that that shot in the bottom right corner of your screen is the white house. that is the state dining room. that s where we expect president obama, we expected him about 15 minutes ago, with some sort of a potentially surprise event, although now we re talking about it on tv, so i don t know how much of a surprise it will be. but a tribute to vice president joe biden, his good bud y his friend. we ll bring you that as soon as it starts. back after a quick break. be the you who doesn t cover your moderate to severe plaque psoriasis. be the you who shows up in that dress. who hugs a friend. who is done with treatments that don t give you clearer skin. be the you who controls your psoriasis with stelara® just 4 doses a year after 2 starter doses. stelara® may lower your ability to fight infections and may increase your risk of infections and cancer. some serious infections require hospitalization. before treatment, get tested for tuberculosis. before starting stelara® tell your doctor if you think you have an infection or have symptoms such as: fever, sweats, chills, muscle aches or cough. always tell your doctor if you have any signs of infection, have had cancer, if you develop any new skin growths or if anyone in your house needs or has recently received a vaccine. alert your doctor of new or worsening problems, including headaches, seizures, confusion and vision problems these may be signs of a rare, potentially fatal brain condition. some serious allergic reactions can occur. do not take stelara® if you are allergic to stelara® or any of its ingredients. most people using stelara® saw 75% clearer skin and the majority were rated as cleared or minimal at 12 weeks. be the you who talks to your dermatologist about stelara®. ltry align probiotic.n your digestive system? for a non-stop, sweet treat goodness, hold on to your tiara kind of day. get 24/7 digestive support, with align. the #1 doctor recommended probiotic brand. now in kids chewables. hei don t want one that s hadch a bunch of ownersd car? just say, show me cars with only one owner find the cars you want, avoid the ones you don t plus you get a free carfax® report with every listing it s perfect. start your used car search at carfax.com we continue to wait for this live event at the white house. that s a picture from inside the state dining room. we re expecting the president, the first lady and joe biden, the vice president, and dr. jill biden, to be in that room in what is billed as a tribute for vice president biden. earlier we were told was a surprise to him. not quite sure what the holdup is. they re running a little late. we ll bring that to you soon. meantime, as the vice president prepares to leave, earlier today my colleague andrea mitchell had a chance to have a wide-ranging, fascinating interview with him. here s a portion of that. reporter: looking back now, president obama said that he could have defeated donald trump. could joe biden have defeated donald trump? oh, i don t know. i don t know. i don t want to speculate on that. reporter: in your heart of hearts, the criticism is there was a lack of an economic message. that s your ballpark. pennsylvania, the rust belt. look, i don t reporter: regrets? no, no. look, i you re i m about to hurt your reputation, you re a friend. but i know my family. you know of my relationships with my family. and i just wasn t prepared to do it after i lost my son. and so, i i have no regret in the sense that did i make the wrong decision. i made the right decision. and but do i regret that my point of view is not going to be reflected in the next administration because we have mr. trump? yeah, i do regret that. one of the big issues is, he said, drain the swamp. now, he is yesterday he repeated that he is not going to release his taxes ever and says he doesn t need a blind trust. he s going to just turn it over to the sons. has he done enough, the government of ethics, which is nonpartisan, says what he s done is meaningless. i don t think he s done enough and he may sink in the swamp. if you don t drain it, you sink in it. look reporter: look, you re one of the with all due respects, sir, one of the poorest guy to ever emerge, got a house, i don t know what other assets you have. can you he said he could run his business as well as run the government. the laws no doubt that he could, but you shouldn t run both. are you going to be president or are you going to be a businessman? you don t do both. he ran for the most coveted office in the world. the most important office in the world. the thing that the american public looks to most for their security, opportunity, guarantees, focus on your job. that s the job. i found it bizarre to talk about, well, i could have made a $2 billion deal, i could have done both, but i decided not to. as if you re doing me a favor mean, the country a favor. i just think it s look, this is a place where the public s going to decide whether or not the failure to divest, the failure to meet what were considered to be the basic minimum ethical standards of disclosure, and if the public turns around and 50% say, no problem, or if 80% say, this is a big problem, that s the only thing that will alter the outcome. andrea mitchell joins me now. andre andrea, congratulations. it covered so much ground, i don t know where to begin, as we wait for this event to start at the white house. i thought some of the most touching moments of the interview was towards the end when you asked him to reflect back on his career and how he got started. and you know, the terrible hardship he suffered as he was starting his senate career. the fact when he start his senate career, he had not been sworn in. when his wife and child were killed in a car crash, his two boys were injured as toddlers, and he was bereft, deciding to stay home with his children in delaware and not be sworn in. he said he was surrounded by the support of republican and democratic leaders, mike mansfield was one, i know, who persuaded him he had to do this and his sister, frankly, stepped in and mothered the children and he commuted for his entire career, commuting daily back to delaware, you know, the amtrak senator. but the fact is, this is a long career and one with a lot of ups and downs, and obviously the tragedy of beau biden. he said he had no regrets about the decision not to run for president. the fact was he knew with his family that that was the right decision for him at the time. he wouldn t discuss whether he could have defeated donald trump as president obama opined that he could have defeated trump. obviously, a reflection on hillary clinton. he wasn t going to go there. but he did talk a lot, defending the intelligence community, saying that what they had been told by the intelligence community was that they included that basically unvetted smear campaign, the opposition research, the two-page synopsis of that as a separate item in the briefing materials for both the president, the vice president and also for donald trump, controversily, that they did it they told he said, we asked them, why did they do it? i m not sure if you played that part of it. he said they told them that they thought they would have been derelict in their duties since it was in the press, bei ining circulated. a lot of people in washington had seen it, as well as abroad. there could be impacts on foreign policy if that information came out unvetted. we did not have a chance to air that part of it just now. to me, that sounded like some of the most newsy part of the interview, andrea, because we hadn t had anyone plain why that wasn t included in the briefing to begin with. i think that s likely what general clapper, what the dni clapper said to donald trump last night in that conversation. right. let me ask about his future. and this idea of a cancer moonshot. i know you asked him about that. what s your sense is he going to ease into retirement and dabble into that or is he full is he going to be working full overtime on that? he s all in. he said he is going to be doing foreign policy at the university of pennsylvania. there hasn t been a formal announcement but it was overheard saying that on c-span and teaching at university of delaware, his alma mater. he has a lot to look forward to. it is the end of this chapter of public service at his age. you saw the younger generation, cory can booker in what he did at an unprecedented way, a lot of people in washington are saying that s the opening of of the 2020 democratic primary campaign. so, you ve got the next generation already looking at what comes next. but there is going to be a lot more from joe biden. as from president obama, he said, i m going to be with you every day. i ll be with you as citizen in his farewell address. i asked him how president obama had described joe biden as his brother and he said, i don t just like the guy, i love the guy. we are family. and then he said that michelle obama is the finest first lady in american history. now, there s obviously you know, he said, we ve had a lot of fine first ladies but she is the greatest one in history, which obviously that is a reflection on the other first lady who just ran for president. as we watch this room, i can t help but wondering what was happening behind closed doors because this was supposed to be a surprise that was supposed to happen about 40 minutes. the white house state dining room where we think we ll see president obama come out and deliver some kind of tribute to joe biden. as we wait, if we have a couple more minutes because we haven t gotten any guidance from the white house, can i ask you about the news breaking. about the inspector general who says he s going to launch an investigation into parts of the way that the clinton e-mail investigation was handled by the fbi and by the department of justice. you covered the clinton campaign. we ve had a couple of clinton former aides on with us saying they welcome this decision. they must be elated that at least someone s looking at what happened. elated but, of course, there s still a lot of anger and resentment. they, of course, hillary and bill clinton do blame fbi director james comey for the timing of that letter, both letters. the one reopening the issue 11 days before the election and the one two days before the election, clearing her. not really reopening the investigation. in fact, it was technically never reopened. just reopening the issue. and they do blame him. but this is also going to be looking into what loretta lynch did with bill clinton and trying to clear up that 35-minute conversation on a plane in phoenix. she regrets it. she thought it was going to be a hello. once bill clinton sat down, they claim about golf and grandchildren, nobody substantive, it did mean she was recusing himself, taking herself out of the operational decision-making about the clinton investigation. that gave james comey a great deal more prominence, leverage, decision-making. all of this will be looked at by the independent watchdog, the i.g. depending on the findings, and obviously it s too soon to discuss what the findings r but nothing was going to change the election. that s a done deal. is there are legal implications and ethical implications and there could be a slap on the wrist if anyone behaved badly or even more strongly if there is something behind the scenes that we don t know about. but this would be the first inquiry into what happened. for the clintons to be blaming comey and all of that is controversial because there s a lot of other issues out there. other democrats saying, you can t pin it on just one thing. was it vladimir putin? was it wikileaks? you know, the hacking. was it original the decision to have a private server, which clouded the first months of her campaign and then all the way through? her response to that decision rather than dealing with it quickly and not apologizing from march until september. we didn t hear her say she was sorry about it. so, all of that could have had an impact, the lack of an economic message, some have said, the failure to go to wisconsin, failure to campaign more aggressively in other parts of michigan and in pennsylvania. other decisions that they made, polling and speechwriting decisions, spending so much time on debate preparation rather than on retail politics. the fact that the news media, as joe biden said to me today, focused so intensively on things that sounded a lot more exciting, like, you know, whether someone had been groped rather than on hillary clinton s college tuition plan, you know, the failure to cover issues substantively in a lot of media, the access that donald trump had during the primaries to, you know, live coverage of his rallies that other candidates didn t can, so many factors went into, it i don t think we ll know what influenced the campaign. andrea mitchell on such a busy hat. i appreciate that. we got word while andrea was talking, we got word from the white house that any minute president obama is expected to appear in that room. we were going to try to fit in a commercial, but we re not going to do that because we re afraid we ll miss it if we go to break. sasha and malia, obama, i understand, just walked in and have been seated in the room. we believe michelle obama will be there as well as dr. jill biden. again, this, if you re just joining us, is billed as a tribute to joe biden, led by the president. we have been guided earlier that this might be a surprise for joe biden. we re not quite sure what we re going to see here, but that makes it even more fun. chris jansing remains with us on the white house lawn. chris, if we see the president coming, we ll pause. any guidance at all about why today and what this marks? reporter: no. we asked the question repeatedly, but clearly this is something that is highly unusual but really speaks to the relationship between these two men that is far beyond professional but personal. the fact sasha and malia are there. they don t do a lot of public events. they ve become friendly not just with the bidens but their children and grandchildren. when they talk about family, they mean it. and thunk aboink about in the f his farewell speech in chicago on tuesday, the president mentioned only by name his immediate family and joe biden. think about the moments when you think about that iconic picture in the situation room when osama bin laden was gotten, who was sitting next to the president of the united states, joe biden. so, this tribute to him is something special. we don t know that obviously, he knows there is something going to happen. maybe it is something within this event, we were speculating s there some sort of special award that could be given to him. will there be surprises in terms of the people who are there. i can tell you this white house has kept a very tight lid on it. you were mentioning lynn sweet it-s with us in washington but she s with the chicago tribune sun-times . forgive me. we ll talk with you right after the event. let s observe what happens here. [ applause ] ladies and gentlemen, the president and vice president of the united states. [ applause ] [ applause ] [ applause ] don t want to embarrass the guy. welcome to the white house, everybody. as i have already delivered my farewell address, i will try to be relatively brief. but i just wanted get some folks together to pay tribute to somebody who has not only been by my side for the duration of this amazing journey but somebody who has devoted his entire professional life to service to this country. the best vice president america has ever had, mr. joe biden. [ applause ] this also gives the internet one last chance to talk about our bromance. [ laughter ] this has been quite a ride. it was eight and a half years ago that i chose joe to be my vice president. this is somebody the people of delaware sent to the senate as quickly as they possibly could. elected at age 29. for more than a dozen years apiece, he served as chair or ranking member of the judiciary and foreign relations committees. domestically championed landmark legislation to make our communities safer, to protect our women from violence. internationally his wisdom and capacity to build relationships has shaped our nation s response to the fall of the berlin wall and the iron curtain. to counter-terrorism, iraq, afghanistan. and for the past eight years he could not have been a more devoted or effective partner in the progress that we have made. he fought to make college more affordable and revitalize american manufacturing as the head of our middle-class task force. he suited up for our cancer moon shot, giving home to millions of americans touched by this disease. he led our efforts to combat gun violence, and he rooted out any possible misappropriations that might have occurred, and as a consequence, the recovery act worked as well as just about any large-scale stimulus project has ever worked in this country. he visited college after college and made friends with lady gaga for our it s on us campaign against campus sexual assault. when the pope visited joe was even kind enough to let me talk to the holiness as well. [ laughter ] behind the scenes, joe s candid, honest counsel has made me a better president and a better commander in chief. from the situation room to our weekly lunches to our huddles after everybody else has cleared out of the room, he has been unafraid to give it to me straight, even if we disagree. in fact, especially when we disagree. and all of this makes him, i believe, the finest vice president we have ever seen. and i also think he has been a lion of american history. the best part is, he is nowhere close to finished. in the years ahead, as a citizen, he will continue to build on that legacy internationally and domestically. he has got a voice of vision and reason and optimism and love for people, and we re going to need that spirit and that vision as we continue to try to make our world safer, and to make sure that everybody has got a fair shot in this country. so, all told, that s a pretty remarkable legacy. an amazing career in public service. it is, as joe once said, a big deal. [ laughter ] [ applause ] it is! [ applause ] but, we all know that, on its own, his work, this list of accomplishments, the amazing resume, does not capture of the full measure of joe biden. i have not mentioned amtrak yet or aviators, literally. [ laughter ] folks don t just feel like they know joe the politician, they feel like they know the person. what makes him laugh, what he believes, what he cares about, where he came from. pretty much every time he speaks, he treats us to some wisdom from the nuns who have taught him in grade school or an old senate colleague, but of course most frequently cited, catherine and joseph sr., his mom and dad. no one is better than you, but you re better than nobody! bravery resides in every heart and yours is fierce and clear. when you get knocked down, joey, get up! get up! [ laughter ] get up! [ applause ] that s where he got those broad shoulders and that biden heart. through his life, through trial after trial, he has never once forgotten the values and the moral fiber that made him who he is. that s what steels his faith in god and in america and in his friends and in all of us. when joe talks to auto workers whose livelihoods he helped save we hear the son of a man who once knew the pain of telling his kids he lost his job. when joe talks about hope and opportunity for our children, we heard the father who rode the rails home every night to talk his kids into bed. when he sticks up for the little guy we hear the young boy who stood in front of the mirror. studying the muscles in his face determined to advantavanquish t stutter. we hear a kindred spirit, another father of an american veteran, someone whose faith has been tested and has been forced to wander through the darkness himself and who knows who to lean on to find the light. so that s joe biden, a resilient and loyal and humble servant. and a patriot. but most of all a family man. starts with jill. captain of the vice squad. [ laughter ] the only the second lady in our history to keep her regular day job. [ cheers and applause ] jill says teaching isn t what she does, it s who she is. a few days after joe and i were inaugurated in 2009 she was back in the classroom teaching. that s why, when our administration worked to strengthen community colleges, we looked to jill to lead the way. she has also travelled the world to boost education and empowerment for women, and as a blue star mom, her work with michelle to honor our military families will go down in history as one of the most lasting and powerful efforts of this administration. of course, like joe, jill s work is only part of the story. she just seems to walk this earth so lightly, spreads her joy so freely. she reminds us that, although we are in a serious business, we don t have to take ourselves too seriously. she is quick with a laugh or practical joke, disguising herself as a server at a party she once hosted to lighten the mood. she once hid in the overhead compartment of air force two to scare the senior staff. [ laughter ] because why not! she seems to have a sixth sense of when to send a note of encouragement to a friend or a staffer, a simple thank you or a box of macaroons. she is one of the best, most genuine people i ve met not just in politics but in my entire life. she is grounded. generous, caring and funny. that s why joe is proud to introduce himself as jill biden s husband. to see them together is to see what real love looks like. through thick and thin, good times and bad. it s an all-american love story.
and we know how that turned out. god, you may want to intervene here. i want to just pray for arnold, if we can, for those ratings. i m not worried about arnold s ratings. i m worried about what are we going to do about iran. i m in favor of additional sanctions against iran. nothing is off the table. reporter: officials in the u.s. military raising major concerns over president trump s hastily approved ground strike in yemen. he doesn t make executions like that glibly. he did make the call at dinner, right? i can t reveal where he made the call. president trump s enemies within the administration continue an unprecedented level of leaking for a presidency that is not yet two weeks old. there are new leaks tonight about the president s role in launching a mission in yemen in which u.s. navy s.e.a.l. william owens became the first american killed in yemen. counsel of different people. there were other people around the table including his secretaries and generals. so he did make the call at dinner, right? i can t reveal where he made the call. as commander in chief he takes the job very seriously and executes on that as appropriate. all of this leaking comes the day after the administration leaked excerpts of donald trump s combative phone calls with the prime minister of australia and the president of mexico, two of our closest allies. dold trump decided is morning that the national prayer breakfast was the perfect place to say something about that. when you hear about the tough phone calls i m having, don t worry about it. just don t worry about it. they re tough. we have to be tough. it s time we re going to be a little tough, folks. we re taken advantage of by every nation in the world, virtually. it s not going to happen anymore. it s not going to happen anymore. today john mccain released this statement in response to the president s phone call with the australian prime minister. i called australia s ambassador to the united states to express my unwavering support for the u.s.-australia alliance. i asked ambassador hockey to convey to the people of australia that their american brothers and sisters our historic alliance, honor the sacrifice of the australians who have served and are serving by our side. this afternoon a white house official confirmed to nbc news that australia s ambassador to the u.s. met with steve bannon and reince priebus at the white house. politico reports that the stream of leaks from the white house and federal agencies stems from the fact that, quote, a feeling of distrust has taken hold in the west wing of donald trump s white house and beyond as his aides view each other and officials across the federal government and on capitol hill with suspicion. joining us know, john heilemann, co-author of game change and the ecutive producer of the documentar trumped, premiering tomorrow night. and eli stokols. eli, we ve seen, of course, white house leaking before. we ve never seen it this fast. i can t think of a significant leak that came out of a white house in its first two weeks. this is nothing like anything we ve seen before. no, and i mean, it s downright nixonian. the competing power centers in the campaign is something that he s always been sort of a part of his managerial style. we re seeing it now in the white house. the problem now of course is that the consequences are far greater than just, you know, what matters to his political campaign. the entire country is invested in this. behind that you have this broader sort of intrinsic disregard for experts and for institutional knowledge. you see that with trump putting his loyalist political appointees on the national security council. you see it when they sort of reject the input of a person at the state department who has studied the holocaust, they don t want their input when they re putting out a statement for holocaust remembrance day. it s big things and little things. this is an administration that controls things very tightly. the executive order on vetting on friday, even in the west wing there were a lot of people that didn t know it was coming. they held that close to the vest because they were trying to prevent the leaks. the problem there is that people in the federal government, whether they were lawyers who needed to make sure that the thing held muster legally or whether they were people at the agencies who were going to be implementing this thing, they hadn t seen it. widespread dysfunction we ve seen from the west wing in the what you are a master of. so john, the master, what s going on here? i think one of the key things to understanding what the psychology is of the leakers, part of problem that trump is suffering from is there are a variety of people with different kinds of motivations to want to leak. one set of people, and i think there s a large group of these, especially people like kellyanne conway, i m not accusing her of leaking, but the way to temper trump s behavior, the way to get him to understand a point, is if he sees it on television. she has essentially said that publicly. yes, she has. again, not accusing her of leaking. but saying others around him know that if you want to get through to him, you don t write him a memo, you don t try to talk to him about it. you try to get people on television to try to talk about him. so there are those leaking who are trying to get his behavior to be better. others, people who are more institutionally aligned, people who are part of the washington establishment who are now in the administration, people who are maybe part of the permanent government who are alarmed by trump s behavior, they re not speaking to trump. they re speaking to the outside world and trying to make it clear to everyone in america and democrats and other republicans and all of us, just how alarming some of the behavior that they see is, at least in their eyes. and when you are caught in that crossfire, you have people leaking who think they re trying to help you and people leaking to hurt you, that is a bad place be. and you know the one thing that s going on right now, it is making donald trump mental right now. mental. yes. because he s the control freak, obviously. all presidents want this control. and his is out of control. i want to go to one of the issues that has been leaked about, which is this phone call to the prime minister of australia. and let s listen to what donald trump said about that today. i have a lot of respect for australia. i love australia as a country. but we had a problem where for whatever reason, president obama said that they were going to take probably well over a thousand illegal immigrants who were in prisons. and they were going to bring them and take them into this country. i just said, why? a previous administration does something, you have to respect that. but you can also say, why are we doing this? that s why we re in the jams we re in. eli, a stunning statement. for one thing, he s finally gotten the number down to what it really is, which is down around 1200, he has been saying over 2,000, so someone got him to say the right thing. but then it s outright lies, the notion that refugees are illegal immigrants, the notion that they re in prisons. australia is holding them on these islands, trying to figure out what to do with them. australia would like a little help from other countries like the united states, which is a reasonable thing to ask for. and that s why this deal was done. and also, the executive order on immigration includes a provision for this exact deal. and here s donald trump, who signed that order, pretending he didn t know anything about it. he signed an executive order that incorporated it. well, the contradictions come pretty quick with this administration. so you have to be ready for those. and i think, you know, nobody is shocked at this point after some of the other threats he s made to other foreign leaders in the first two weeks. i mean, it s shocking that he would pick a fight seemingly with australia, one of the country s closest allies, going back decades. but this is donald trump. he s unpredictable. this melodrama is sort of reminiscent of what he staged throughout the campaign. instead of megyn kelly, you have australia, one of our closest allies. you have the feud, then the makeup session, today the australian ambassador is at the white house, people are sort of hysterical. steve bannon believes these sort of media freakouts, the constant hysteria, has the effect of numbing the public to what they re doing and sort of people get uncalibrated, where they can t tell anymore whether it s a scandal that really matters or whether it s just the sort of melodrama of the day. and i think even if this looks crazy to a lot of us who observe this and have never seen anything like this before, some of the dysfunction and the chaos coming from the white house may in fact be by design. and john, there s a fascinating thing that s helped in white house damage control that you now see senator mccain, elliott engel, the house of representatives, leading democrat on the foreign relations committee, they are doing damage control for america. yes. with foreign countries. yes. the president says something crazy about australia or about mexico, and there s john mccain calling the ambassador, elliott engel did the same thing, called the ambassador of australia saying, please don t hold this against us. and no doubt making some private comments about, we ve got a crazy man in the white house, don t listen to him. more than that, not just trying to apologize on america s behalf. mccain is speaking for america. he s saying, please tell australians that american and americans are still on their side. he s basically acting like a proxy president. there s really supposed to be one person in our system of government who speaks for the american people to foreign entities, and that is the president of the united states, not a senior senatorrom the republican party. i have toause on this australia and the mexican president s leak, the australian prime minister s leak. i ve never seen anything like that in more than 25 years covering national politics. the number of people with access to those calls and access to transcripts of those calls is very small. so when kellyanne conway says no one inside the white house, no one in the west wing is doing this, that s just wrong. she may not know who the person is who s doing it but there are not a lot of people outside the west wing with cessiaccess to t phone calls, who sees transcripts of them. those people fall into that first category, people who are genuinely saying the only way to get trump to tone this down is if we embarrass him to the press. and man, we re not two weeks in, and that s where we are. john heilemann, who knows a thing or two about trafficking in leaks. eli stokols, thanks for joining us tonight. coming up, new questions about the military raid in yemen. joe biden s national security adviser will join us. and a special personal rewrite about what donald trump got wrong about harley-davidson today. and of course, to make that point, i m just going to have to show you pictures of my harleys. vehicles out here. that has everything to do with the people in here. their training is developed by the same company who designed, engineered, and built the cars. they ve got the parts, tools, and know-how to help keep your ford running strong. 35,000 specialists all across america. no one knows your ford better than ford. and ford service. right now, get the works! a synthetic blend oil change, tire rotation, brake inspection and more for $29.95 or less. when i was too busy with the kids to get a repair estimate. i just snapped a photo and got an estimate in 24 hours. my insurance company definitely doesn t have that. you can leave worry behind when liberty stands with you™ liberty mutual insurance youthat s why you drink ensure. sidelined. with 9 grams of protein and 26 vitamins and minerals. for the strength and energy to get back to doing. .what you love. ensure. always be you. did you know slow internet can actually hold your business back? say goodbye to slow downloads, slow backups, slow everything. comcast business offers blazing fast and reliable internet that s over 6 times faster than slow internet from the phone company. say hello to internet speeds up to 250 mbps. and add phone and tv for only $34.90 more a month. call today. comcast business. built for business. protests against president trump s policies continue around the country, including this one in brooklyn, new york. hundreds of business owners shut down their delis, grocery stores, and bodegas to protest president trump s travel plan. one protesters said he closed his deli because his wife and baby are stuck in yemen after almost completing a four-year process to get a green card. up next, the controversy around donald trump s first military order. joe biden s national security adviser will join us. (vo) maybe it was here, when you hit 300,000 miles. or here, when you walked away without a scratch. maybe it was the day your baby came home. or maybe the day you realized your baby was not a baby anymore. every subaru is built to earn your trust. because we know what you re trusting us with. subaru. kelley blue book s most trusted brand. and best overall brand. love. it s what makes a subaru, a subaru. tonight the white house is defending the president s role in launching a mission which resulted in america s first combat casualty during the trump administration. chief petty officer william ryan owens. that s a great example of him conferring with all the powers that be, the generals, the secretaries, his vice president, other people who are in the know with respect to that operation. and then, again, weighing the consequences, listening to the recommendations, the intelligence, and then ultimately executing on it. it was a very successful operation. white house press secretary sean spicer defended t msion by saying the plan was developed by the obama administration. on november 7th, centcom submitted the plan to dod, clearly that was under the last administration. legal teams were involved immediately when it was submitted to dod. on december 19th, the plan was approved by the department of defense and recommended that it be moved ahead. joining us now, colin call, former national security adviser to vice president joe biden. mr. karl, what is your understanding about how this mission was first discussed in the obama administration and how you saw it proceed to execution? a number of weeks before the end of the obama administration, the pentagon came forward with a proposal that we looked at in what we call the interagency, the various agencies and departments, up to the deputy s level. it wasn t for any particular raid. it was for an expanded set of authorities to allow raids like this to happen. we made the recommendation that we not go forward with this but instead leave it and defer it to the next administration so they could do a careful review. the president agreed with that recommendation and basically said that the trump team should take a careful look at this because this was a major escalation that could have significant risks involved. so they had to carefully vet this option before moving forward. this particular raid never came before the previous president of the united states. what s your reading of the administration s reaction to what has been publicly revealed so far about how this decision was made? well, i mean, obviously the raid didn t go as planned. we had a navy s.e.a.l. killed. there were civilians caught in the crossfire. our military demonstrates incredible professionalism and care but things sometimes go wrong, which is why you have to have a deliberate process leading up to this. my uerstanding based on what i ve read and heard from folks still in the government is that in essence general mattis and the new secretary of defense and general dumford briefed president trump over dinner on this on wednesday and it was approved without any interagency process. with the consequence that it probably wasn t vetted with the care it deserved. tell us what would be missing without the so-called interagency process. so usually this happens at different levels. first at like the assistant secretary level then at the deputy secretary level then at the cabinet level. then it goes to the president. at each level, the questions are asked, is the intelligence good enough, do we understand who is present there, what are the risks to civilians, what s the potential political blowback or the blowback in the region. this thing gets vetted not just by the pentagon, who is great at what they do, but they don t have all the information and can t necessarily see all the angles. so the state department matters, the intelligence community matters. and having the conversation oftentimes surfaces concerns. and that conversation does not appear to have happened in this instance. colin karl, thank you very much for joining us, i really appreciate it. thank you. coming up, the president was forced to meet with the leaders of harley-davidson at the white house today instead of in wisconsin with a big rally audience, because the white house was afraid more protesters would show up in wisconsin than supporters. (vo) do not go gentle into that good night, old age should burn and rave at close of day; rage, rage against the dying of the light. do not go gentle into that good night. did you know 90% of couples disagree onress fir? fortunately there s a bed where you both get what you want every night. enter sleep number and the ultimate sleep number event, going on now. sleepiq technology tells you how well you slept and what adjustments you can make. she likes the bed soft. he s more hardcore. so your sleep goes from good to great to wow! only at a sleep number store. and right now save 50% on the ultimate limited edition bed. go to sleepnumber.com for a store near you. so with our ally cashback credit card, you get rewarded for buying stuff. like what? like a second bee helmet with protective netting. or like a balm? you know? or a cooling ointment for the skin. how about a motorcycle? or some bee repellant. i m just spit-balling here. nothing stops us from doing right by our customers. ally. do it right. told you not to swat em. little pandering that could be captured on tv cameras and maybe convince some religious people that the president was religious. so dwight eisenhower was the first president to attend the national prayer breakfast service. and every president since has followed in his footsteps. a collection of speeches from the national prayer breakfast is a collection of some of the worst speeches given by american presidents. and now we have a clear winner for worst presidential speech ever given at the national prayer breakfast, delivered by the man who says he was raised in a churched home. thank you as well to senate chaplain barry black for his moving words. i don t know, chaplain, whether or not that s an appointed position. is that an appointed position? i don t even know if you re a democrat or a republican. but i m appointing you for another year, the hell with it. his handlers forgot to tell him, don t say the hell with it. a minimally polite atheist would not have stood up there and said the hell with it. mark burnett is the owner/operator of the tv show that donald trump starred in. he is therefore the custodian of all the video recorded for that show tt was never seen on that show, video rumored to contain some prett horrible things said by donald trump. and thanks to mark burnett, none of that video has ever been seen. and so of course the president of the united states is very, very grateful to mark burnett. we had tremendous success on the apprentice. and when i ran for president, i had to leave the show. that s when i knew for sure i was doing it. and they hired a big, big movie star, arnold schwarzenegger, to take my place. and we know how that turned out. the ratings went right down the tubes. it s been a total disaster. and mark will never, ever bet against trump again. and i want to just pray for arnold, if we can, for those ratings, okay? of course the president of the united states is still an executive producer of that tv show. and he knows that any time he mentions that tv show, positively or negatively, it s brand awareness for that show. he s very good at making senator lindsey graham uncomfortable. and his ridiculous comments about praying for ratings today did it again. the bottom line is, he s new at the job. that made me feel uncomfortable. i m not worried about arnold s ratings. i m not thinking about his old show. i m worried about what are we going to do about iran. the president would of course prefer us to talk about his silliness at the prayer breakfast or arnold schwarzenegger s ratings. but senator graham is right. we should be talking about iran. tonight, two u.s. officials confirmed to nbc news that the u.s. could impose new sanctions on iran as early as tomorrow in response to iran s recent ballistic missile tests. when asked if military action is off the table in iran, the president said this. honestly, nothing is off the table. i haven t eased anything. phyllis benes, the author of understanding the u.s.-iran crisis, will join us next. what powers the digital world? 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[bullfighting music] [burke] billy-goat ruffians. seen it. covered it. we know a thing or two because we ve seen a thing or two. we are farmers. bum-pa-dum, bum-bum-bum-bum ltry align probiotic.n your digestive system? for a non-stop, sweet treat goodness, hold on to your tiara kind of day. get 24/7 digestive support, with align. the #1 doctor recommended probiotic brand. now in kids chewables. i would support the idea of new sanction but they should come through congress. the best way to do this is not executive action, in my view. it is to call up members of congress on both sides of it aisle and say now is the time to move. but i like the idea that they re going to push back. joining the discussion, phyllis bennis, the author of understanding the u.s.-iran crisis. phyllis, an interesting situation we are now poised with here because of these ballistic missile tests, senator graham saying let s take up the issue of sanctions in the congress. the president s white house indicating they might just do something by executive order. we re hearing some very reckless threats coming out particularly from the white house. we re hearing not only the possibility of sanctions but very overtly saying that the possibility of military force is not off the table, everything is on the table, being emphasized again. and this is certainly not helpful. there has been no claim by either the white house or anyone in congress that the missile tests violated the iran nuclear deal. and the notion that somehow any move by iran that the u.s. can respond with these kind of ratcheting up pressures is making the situation in the region as a whole far worse. it s even more dangerous because we re hearing these threats of military force. and this is not something to take lightly. when you have the president tweeting at 3:00 in the morning or whatever it was that iran is on notice in big capital letters, and with an unspecified threat, it raises the stakes very high. and this president is not one who is known for walking that back. so i think that we have to be very, very cautious. i don t think there will be a military strike from the u.s. on iran. but i think the possibility is very real that we may see an escalation in yemen, which would be viewed as a kind of proxy attack on iran, because of what is claimed to be iran s major support of the huthi rebels in yemen. it s a disastrous situation and it could get worse. the first attempt at possible escalation sadly did not go well. but phyllis, this white house does seem to think in the iran deal somewhere it says that iran cannot do any kind of ballistic missile testing, they don t seem to understand what s actually in that deal. and further, i would like to get your sense of how iran sees this new white house. you know, i don t think any governments around the world, including in tehran, have a full understanding of where this government is going to place itself, where it s going to position itself in global terms. is it going to be interventionist all around the world? is it going to be isolationist in some arenas and interventionist in others? the iranians more than most are in a position to know how this administration is acting towards them. and it s a very threatening mode. whatever someone in the white house may be telling the president, that this is a violation of the nuclear agreement, it isn t. there is nothing in the nuclear agreement about conventional weapons testing, which is what this was. so that notion simply isn going to fly. and this agreement, we have to remember, is not simply between the u.s. and iran. it s between six different countries. five of the other countries that are allies of the u.s. negotiated with the u.s. with iran. and in that context, it s not something that the u.s. can simply say, well, our definition is we think this is included, when every other country agrees that it s not. the danger again, i think, goes directly to using the possibility of using yemen as a proxy for attacking iran at a time when 80% of the population of yemen is food-insecure, basically doesn t know what they will feed their children tomorrow. massive amounts of malnutrition, people dying of famine conditions. the humanitarian conditions for food is one of the worst in the world right now. and the possibility of an escalation that would continue the closing of the ports which the saudi bombing backed by the united states has already happened, that s going to get worse. so i think we re in a very dangerous moment. iran may well treat that as an attack aimed at iran. but it will be the yemeni population that suffers. phyllis bennis, thank you very much for joining us. thank you. coming up, an important lesson on international trade and tariffs in the american motorcycle industry, which of course will be illustrated by photographs of pretty much all of my motorcycles. what s the best way to get xarelto® is selective. targeting one critical factor of your body s natural 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help protect yourself from a stroke, ask your doctor about xarelto®. insurance changes? xarelto® has you covered. hearing much from his old friend these days. i personally wish he had never run. i told him that. because i actually think this is something that it s going to be very detrimental to his mental health too, because he wants to be liked. he wants to be loved. he wants people to cheer for him. if donald trump needs people to cheer for him to stay healthy, he s in big trouble. he s now trapped in the white house, afraid to venture out to those adoring crowds. the white house cancelled a trip to the harley-davidson office because they feared protesters. instead, harley-davidson came to the roosevelt room this morning. in the 1980s, and i remember this, you were victims of trading abuse, big trading abuse, where they were dumping all sorts of competitors all over the place. and ronald reagan stepped in and he put on large tariffs. and you wouldn t be talking about harley-davidson right now if he didn t do that. there s donald trump telling harl-davidson executives a lie about thr country s history. they know they didn t get in trouble in the 1980s because of dumping by japanese motorcycle manufacturers. dumping is when a company sells a product for less than it costs to manufacture it. the president rewrote harley-davidson s story to fit his false narratives about international trade. here is the truth of what happened to harley-davidson. beginning at the beginning. william harley and arthur davidson were childhood friends who work for a couple of years to build a motorcycle in milwaukee. their first design couldn t quite make it up hills. in 1906, they built their first factory. by 1920, harley-davidson was the largest motorcycle manufacturer in the world. by the 1980s, harley-davidson was the only motorcycle manufacturer left in the united states. most of the competition was pouring into the united states from japan. germany and the united kingdom were also significant exporters of motorcycles to the united states. harley-davidson sales were suffering not because the foreign competition was cheating, but because harley-davidson s machines were not as good as the imported machines. harley-davidson was making the worst motorcycle in the world. i preferred english motorcycles myself in those days. my first was this bsa. that was when i was in college. my second was a norton. and then i totalled that beautiful norton in a high speed accident and stayed away from motorcycles for a few years. and then when i went shopping for a motorcycle again, i looked at all the japanese bikes, the british bikes, the german bikes. then for the heck of it i stopped by the harley-davidson dealer in cape cod and never thought about foreign motorcycles again. the first was the sportster. i traded that in for a hetage softel. of course i got rid of that bulky windshield and the saddle bags. i don t like all that junk on a motorcycle. the reason i switched to harley is that they finally figured out how to make a motorcycle. when i was buying british bikes, brand-new harley-davidsons couldn t stop leaking oil. you had to be a mechanic to own a harley-davidson, to even get one started. the temporary tariff that ronald reagan imposed on japanese motorcycles gave harley-davidson the breathing room to figure out how to make a better motorcycle, which they did by going to japan and visiting japanese motorcycle factories, studying how the japanese did it. the competition from international competitors to harley-davidson made harley-davidson motorcycles better, much better. my first harley spent the winters as the most beautiful ornament in my living room, parked right beside my sofa in my manhattan apartment without ever dripping a drop of oil. i convinced friends of mine who had only ridden japanese bikes to buy harleys. harley-davidson requested that the protective five-year tariff be removed a year early because harley didn t need it anymore. after the tariff was removed, harley s ceo actually said, for years we tried to figure out why the japanese were beating us so badly. first we thought it was their culture. then we thought it was automation. then we thought it was dumping. finally we relialized the probl was us, not them. they had been making a terrible product and doing it in an inefficient way. in addition to designing and building a better motorcycle, harley-davidson also cut jobs, laid off workers, streamlined the assembly line. so harley-davidson doesn t fit the simplistic story donald trump wants to tell you about international trade. harley-davidson became a fat and lazy american company making a terrible product because it didn t have enough competition. and so, yes. one american company was saved by oneemporary tariff. and it worked because of the unique circumstances. the tariff was designed to protect only one small company. not an entire industry. that same strategy would never work for an entire industry like the american automobile industry, which has also been helped enormously by foreign competition. american cars are better tonight thanks to foreign competition forcing them to be better. the true story of harley-davidson is not the story that donald trump wants you to hear. when did mixing food, with not food, become food? thankfully at panera, 100% of our food is 100% clean. no artificial preservatives, sweeteners, flavors, or colors. panera. food as it should be. wiskin and nails you ll enjoy lustrous hair, vibrant skin, and healthy nails. so no matter what happens,. you ll still feel beautiful. nature s bounty hair, skin and nails. better off healthy. but we ve never been the type to just sit back. not when we ve got so much more to give when you have the right financial advisor, life can be brilliant. ameriprise when you hit 300,000 miles. or here, when you walked away without a scratch. maybe it was the day your baby came home. or maybe the day you realized your baby was not a baby anymore. every subaru is built to earn your trust. because we know what you re trusting us with. subaru. kelley blue book s most trusted brand. and best overall brand. love. it s what makes a subaru, a subaru. today the president said he wants to knock a big hole in the wall separating church and state. i will get rid of and totally destroy the johnson amendment and allow our representatives of faith to speak freely and without fear of retribution. i will do that. remember. freedom of religion is a sacred right. but it is also a right under threat all around us. the johnson amendment is of course named for lyndon johnson, which he introduced into a senate tax bill when he was a senator in 1954. that amendment bars churches and all tax exempt nonprofits from endorsing political candidates. the idea of doing away with the amendment also appears in a white house draft executive order that it says is about religious freedom. as first reported in the nation, that draft order also proposes giving individuals and groups wide discretion in denying services, employment, and benefits on the basis of their religious beliefs. joining us now is stewart milk, president of the harvey milk foundation and an lgbt activist. stewart, thank you for joining us. stewart, you ve seen this breast memo. it has been scaring people, it s been out a few days now. and then there s the president today at the prayer breakfast, telling an element that s in that memo and saying he definitely wants to get this done, and at the same time the white house seems to be giving signals saying, oh, no, no, don t take that memo too seriously. yeah, i mean, you know, we ve been on what seems like a whirlwind. it seems like we ve been at this now for months, and it s only been a few days. but we had the president say or the white house say that they were keeping president obama s executive order that bans discrimination on employment in the federal government and with contractors for the lgbt community. that s great. but at the same time, we see these executive orders, draft executive orders being circulated that basically take the hull out of that boat of protection. so the executive order that president obama put into place is really a boat of protection for the lgbt from discrimination and these executive orders would actually gut that. you would be left with a boat with sides and nothing to prevent you from drowng. don t forget, donald trump also said that ted cruz s discriminatory amendment that would allow people to called the fada, that he would sign that, that s also something that would gut protections for lgbt people and give people license to discriminate. and the ability to allow religious organizations to participate in the political system with their tax exempt status, you know, if you listened at the prayer breakfast, he didn t even get that big round of applause from that, because most of the religious community i don t think really want to go back to those days. they don t want to be involved where they may be clearinghouses for people, for billionaires and companies to avoid the checks and balances that we have in political contributions. so, you know, in many ways we re exhausted from what seems to be a ping-pong ball. and unfortunately we re not the only community, the lgbt community is not the only community that s part of that ping-pong ball. i do have to point out, lawrence, when the president says that he is going to protect the lgbt community as he did at the convention, well, let me make it perfectly clear that if you attack refugees, then you are attacking the lgbt community. if you re attacking the muslim community, you re attacking lgbt people. if you re taking away rights of women, you are attacking lgbt people. if you re attacking people of color, you are attacking lgbt people. this divide and conquer, this whirlwind that we re on, has just got to stop. and people have to be able to rise up and say enough. i think we re all exhausted from this carousel that we ve been on. and, you know, if these things like draft executive orders don t have any weight, then someone s got to come out there and stop it. someone s got to close the door on these type of things that are coming from the white house. and we ve got to be able to shut down things like fada, the ted cruz amendment. hopefully there will be enough republicans who will realize this is legalized state sanctioned discrimination. let s listen to what sean spicer said about this today. people should be able to practice their religion, express their religion, express areas of their faith without reprisal. i think that pendulum sometimes swings the other way in the name of political correctness. there s clearly a lot of evidence in the last couple of years of the government coming in with regulations and policies that have frankly denied people the ability to live according to their faith. stuart, what did you hear in that answer? you know, again, this is the ringer. i mean, what he s basically saying is that we re going to support some form of discrimination and call it religious liberty. and it s actually antithetical to liberty, to be you know, it s double talk and, you know, it s an attack on the on what our country is built on, which is our liberty and our individual pursuit of happiness.
say that you are the best msnbc host ever created by god. god created you, chris, to be here. thank you, michael. ec baldwin should be looking over his shoulder. no way. i was not lying, actually. that was me being nice. that is all in for this evening. the rachel maddow show starts right now. good evening, rachel. i don t take it personal at all. it was an impression. it was the voice of a certain hyperbolic character. i don t mind, doesn t bother me at all, which i m sure you can tell. thanks, my friend. thanks, michael. and thanks to you at home for joining us this hour. here s the story. in march of this past year there was an explosion in pasadena, texas. pasadena, texas, is about 11 miles outside of houston. there was a big explosion followed by a fire. smoke and flames could be seen for miles around. look at that. the whole neighborhood around this fire and explosion had to be evacuated. even the houston ship channel, the freeway onramp for all american oil, it had to be shut down, the whole ship channel. it was not exactly national news when this happened in pasadena, texas in march. it was a big deal. locally it was a really big deal. a plume of smoke and fire at the prsi refinery, serious enough to shut down the washburn tunnel and ship traffic on the channel for a time. serious enough to recommend a neighborhood nearby evacuate. from sky eye s perspective, the area of the refinery where the explosion and then fire happened, an operator in the area was injured. that was coverage from the local abc station in houston at the time of this refinery explosion in march. thankfully it was only one person who was hurt in this blast but it was big enough, scary enough, you can see it fr this local coverage. wascary enough that it put a spotlight on that plant and not in a good way. part of what turned up in the local coverage of the aftermath of that explosion and fire was the bad record at that plant. they had a bad safety record. in 2015, 17 plants in and around pasadena, texas, reported on their workplace injuries for the year, almost a third of all the workplace injuries for that year came from that one plant. out of 17 plants who were reporting. after that explosion and that fire in march, the houston chronicle further dug in. they found that on the day that explosion happened, that plant was not legally operating. it was its permit to operate under the clean air act expired. they were running the plant anyway on the day the plant blew up. all of that bad press, all of that, i m sure, very unwelcome scrutiny came amidst an even larger overarching scandal, actually an international scandal involving that plant and the company that owns it. you heard that local news clip described as the prsi refinery. it s actually run, its parent company, is a company called petrobras, petrobras bought that refinery from another oil company back in 2006. the interesting thing about them buying it, the scandal about them buying it, is that when they bought it they really, really overpaid. they obviously overpaid, they paid $1.2 billion for that refinery when nobody thought it was worth $1.2 billion. why would a company radically overpay for anything? why would an oil company radically overpay for this refinery plant in pasadena, texas. we ll take one guess. the company in question here, petrobras, it s a state-run company, the government of brazil owns petrobras. that has practical implications. are government owned country. saudia ramco, petrobras, pemex. that comes in very handy for those companies. it s particularly handy for corruption i mean efficiency. i mean, think about it, you need policy decision made to clear the way for you to, i don t know, buy an asset somewhere or make some sort of deal? you don t have to bother lobbying for it. if you are the oil company and you are also the government, what are you going to do, lobby yourself? don t bother, you are one in the same, just do it. they all pull in the same direction. having a government-run oil company is also a great way for particular politicians and particular governments to stay in power. that government-run oil company in mexico, again, second-largest company of any kind on that continent, they ve been accused of funneling hundreds of millions of dollars back to the ruling party, the governing party back in mexico. and why not? governing party is controlling the oil company, why wouldn t they arrange for the oil company to fund them? it s a nice system if you can get in on it. oil companies, particularly big oil companies, they mint money. if you re in charge of a government that has one of those, i mean, that s a great way to enrich yourself. that s a great way to pay off and reward people for doing what you want. sometimes you can even do it legally with your government-owned oil company. i mean, if you have something as big and rich and rosneft at your disposal where you get to control who s in charge of it and who gets what pieces of it and what that company does, frankly, you could make everybody you know as rich as you want to make them. rosneft becoming a massive cash machine at vladimir putin s dispos disposal, that explains as much as anything how he has held on to power for these past 17 years. you can see why governments, particularly corrupt or kleptocrat i cklept kleptocratic governments, you can see why they might find it handy to have a state-run oil company. you can also see why state-run oil companies are such a source of corrupt power and since state-run oil companies tend to get something approaching monopoly control over oil in these big countries, it s easy to see how all the biggest oil companies on the face of the earth end up being this kind of oil company. end up being these companies that are attached to a government. oil company that is state run. all of the biggest oil companies are earth are state-run companies. all of them. except for one. the biggest non-government owned oil company in the world, the biggest oil company on earth that s not part of one country s government well, today their ceo took a giant step toward becoming the secretary of state of our government in the united states. maybe. probably. but maybe. and here s one thing i think it s worth appreciating about why this is happening. exxonmobil is based in texas but obviously and famously they drill for oil all around the world. wall st journal did a ve useful profile on exxon a couple days ago that laid this out really nicely. it laid out exxon s global reach, where they are already invested, where they have spent exxon money in the hopes those investments will pay off because they ll be able to get oil out of the ground in those countries. and exxon s interests span the globe. so, for example, papua, new guinea, which is like as far away from here as you can get, righ right? papua new guinea, a very remote country, very inaccessible in terms of its infrastructure. exxon has the rights to drill about 1.1 million acres of land in papua, new guinea. exxon has rights to drill another 1.1 million acres in nigeria. they also have a bunch of rights now in places you might not expect. you wouldn t think of as oil-producing companies, but in the netherlands exxon has the rights to drill about 1.5 million acres. another million and a half acres in australia. in germany, of all places, they have the rights to drill on just under five million acres in germany. in canada they ve got a bunch. canada just under seven million acres. they ve got rights to drill tons of acreage here in the united states. look at this. this is according to the wall street journal this week. exxon has rights to drill on roughly 14 million acres in the united states. that s a lot. that s, like, two marylands, almost two marylands. it s more than two vermonts, though, i did the math. that s a lot of acreage exxon has a right to drill in the united states and look at how much it outpaces all of exxon s other worldwide holdings right now. interesting, right? huge, right? until you see this. yeah. kind of an ah-ha moment, right? that line at the top there? that s exxon s holdings in russia compared to their other holdings all over the world. that s the number of acres they have right to drill in russia. and here s the really, really important part. do you want to know where exxon is not able to drill? they are not able to drill, despite those holdings, they are not able to drill in russia. this is also from the wall street journal. this is the number of wells exxon was actually able to drill in 2015 in all the places where they ve got these international rights. mostly, as you can see, the big dot there, they were able to drill in the united states, they were able to drill lots of wells in canada as well. that s the next-biggest dot there. but look at russia. can you not see it? put on your glasses. it s red and to the left of the united states. look at the number of wells they were actually able to drill in russia in 2015 compared to their drilling rights in that country. you want to know why they can t drill in russia despite the rights they have purchased to drill in russia? the reason they can t freaking drill them, the reason they can t get their money out of their huge investment they ve made in that country is because in our country the government is not the same thing as the biggest oil company in our country. in the united states we do not have an integrated oil company and federal government the way they do in brazil and mexico and saudi arabia and kuwait and the way we got all the other biggest oil companies in the world. and exxon can t get its return on its investment. they can t get their money out of russia. right? they can t cash in on what they ve invested in russia because the u.s. government made a determination that it was in the national interest, the national security interest of our country to put sanctions on russia that preclude doing that kind of business. when our government made the decision to sanction russia, that really, really cramp it had style of exxon. that really threw a huge wrench in their works because look at their investment in russia compared to other countries around the world in terms of where they have rights to drill. this is how they set themselves up under ceo rex tillerson. under ceo rex tillerson they made a half trillion dollar deal in russia to drill the arctic. it was going to be a partnership with the russian state-owned kremlin-controlled oil company rosneft. half trillion dollar deal. that was going to make exxon and russia and vladimir putin specifically hundreds of millions of dollars. perhaps hundreds of billions of dollars. they signed that deal in 2011. they actually struck oil in the arctic in 2014. just in time for the u.s. government to say nope, you re out. we re kiboshing the deal, we re putting a halt to all of it because we re putting these sanctions on russia for their behavior. russia loves exxon. exxon partnering with russia s state-run oil company, that s what brought their state-run oil company into the 21st century. that s what made russia s state-run oil company technologically capable. exxon is who taught them how to drill oil in hard-to-reach places because russia s oil is in hard-to-reach places. exxon partnering with russia s state-run oil company made that state-run oil company very effective and very rich. so russia loves exxon. exxon loves russia back because common bet on russia in a huge way under rex tillerson in terms of where they are planning on drilling their oil for the foreseeable decades. what they did under tillerson a few year ago was the biggest oil deal in the history of the world. and it got stopped by a policy decision made by the united states government. exxon needs the united states government to change that policy decision. exxon needs the united states government to change america s position overall about russia. simply so exxon can freaking drill over there. so they can recoup their giant investment in that country which outweighs what they are doing anywhere else in the world. they made a huge bet and they re going to lose it unless they get this change from the u.s. government. this is trillion-dollar math that all depends on the u.s. government getting in line with what exxon needs to do. and so exxon is now on the verge of installing its ceo as the head of foreign policy in the united states. so, i think you can probably understand, mr. tillerson, why some of us are very concerned about the president-elect s statements praising vladimir putin s leadership, his intelligence, including after being reminded of his ruthless persecution of political enemies and after receiving compelling information that russia has interfered with our elections. so do you think now is the right time to lift sanctions against russia? i think it s important that we keep the status quo until we are able to develop what our approach is going to be. that it will be all part of the approach. what do you think the approach is going to be? exxon ceo rex tillerson facing questioning today from new hampshire democratic senator jean jean shaheen. the big political news out of this hearing today was not necessarily the tough questioning that rex tillerson got from democrats. the big political news out of the hearing was the contentious back-and-forth that happened between exxon ceo rex tillerson and a republican senator by the name of marco rubio. the democrats gave tillerson tons of hard questions today but the reason it s so important that he also fought today with republican senator marco rubio is that if a republican decides to vote against tillerson, that conceivably would be enough to stop his nomination. that s the math on the committee, as long as all the other democrats, as long as all the democrats voted no as well, one republican no vote could stop him. reporter: have you decided how you re going to vote? did he answer your questions adequately about russia in particular? many of his answers were concerning to me. but there s a chance now to submit some questions in writing which we ll do as well. i ll consider everything and read through it and i ll make a decision here very soon. reporter: are you leaning one way or another? i wouldn t characterize it that way quite yet. it s clear i m concerned about some of his answers and i recognize the split on the committee and what it would mean so i have to make sure that i m 100% behind whatever decision i make, because once i make it reporter: because if you make the decision and vote against him you could stall this nomination. are you prepared to be the one republican to vote no? i m prepared to do what s right. if marco rubio does vote no on putting the ceo of exxon in charge of the state department, and if all the democrats on that committee voted no as well, rex tillerson s nomination presumably would be over. and that would be a very dramatic development. it would not be quite as dramatic as the u.s. government merging in a large way with our nation s largest oil company, but it would be pretty dramatic on its own terms. so we ve got eyes on that tonight. imagine the lobbying that marco rubio is being subjected to right now as we speak. there were incredibly dramatic developments in that story today. there were dramatic developments today on ethics as well, including the office of government ethics coming out on his own terms and making a pronouncement about the president-elect that nobody saw coming. we also got a health scare in the capitol tonight. one member of congress reportedly collapsing and being taken out of the capitol on a stretcher and being hospitalized. we ve got the latest details on that. there s a lot to come tonight. this is not a time to stop paying attention. stay with us. americans - 83% try to eat healthy. yet up 90% fall short in getting key nutrients from food alone. let s do more. add one a day men s complete with key nutrients we may need. plus heart-health support with b vitamins. one a day men s in gummies and tablets. it s not just a car. it s your daily retreat. go ahead, spoil yourself. the es and es hybrid. this is the pursuit of perfection. tadirectv now. stream all your entertainment! anywhere! anytime! can we lose the all . there s no cbs and we don t have a ton of sports. anywhere, any. let s lose the anywhere, anytime too. you can t download on-the-go, there s no dvr, yada yada yada. stream some stuff! somewhere! sometimes! you totally nailed that buddy. simple. don t let directv now limit your entertainment. only xfinity gives you more to stream to any screen. breaking news tonight from capitol hill and it s not good news. a congressman collapsed tonight in the capital. this is probably not a congressman you have heard of. he s a first term congressman named john rutherford from florida. he was just sworn in last week to start his first term in congress. you see him on the left with the mustache and red tie. apparently what happened is he was in the republican cloak room, that s the lounge and meeting area for republicans off the house floor, he was in the cloak room tonight and he collapsed. somebody called the authorities, congressman john rutherford was taken out of the capitol on a stretcher and taken to a nearby hospital. his dcampaign manager has been trying to keep people appraised. the campaign manager says congressman rutherford i in stable condition. as of about an hour ago we had word he was being evaluated in the emergency room. we will let you know more as you learn more. obviously everybody in the country is wishing john rutherford of florida a full recovery tonight. much more to come, stay with us. us. >much more to come, stay wit us. >much more to come, stay wit us. much more to come, stay with us. is there an elk in your bed? and voluntary. they say she ll be back to work soon but that s important for senator feinstein. we wish senator feinstein the best as she prefires come back to work. it also happens at a crucial time the other person behind senator feinstein who was notay absent was jeff sessions himself. little known fact, nominees are not required to be present at their confirmation hearings and today was maybe a good day for senator sessions to rearrange the paper clips on his desk instead of being there in the hearing room while this testimony was presented today. we were beaten, tear gassed, left bloody, some of us unconscious. some of us had concussions. some of us almost died on that bridge. it doesn t matter how senator sessions may smile, how friendly he may be, how he may speak to you. those two are committed to equal justice and our society wonders whether senator sessions calls for law and order will mean today what it meant in alabama when i was coming up back then. congressman john lewis today. he grew up in alabama not far from where jeff sessions is from. he was nearly beaten to death in alabama for marching for voting rights. congressman lewis advocated for a no vote for senator sessions to be attorney general on the basis of what he said was senator session s hostility to voting rights in general and in the south in particular. also testifying today was the national legal director of the american civil liberties union, david cole. this is interesting, the aclu wouldn t usually testify in a confirmation hearing like this but today mr. coal, in additile to taking issue with jeff sessions record on civil rights, he brought up a little known case that is following senator sessions like a string to a can on it tied to his bumper. in that case, he charged a local company with defrauding its customers and suppliers. his office indicted the company on 222 counts. his office touted the case as being of the most magnitude that the attorney general s office has undertaken in the last 25 years. case turned out to be a dud, though. the court not only through the case out. the judge in the case raised sharp questions about senator sessions now senator sessions and how he handled that case at the time. questions about whether he took the case as a favor to one of his campaign donors, whether he was misusing his office to basically help his campaign donors attack their business competitors using his attorney general s office as their weapon. the judge accused the alabama attorney general s office of serious and wholesale prosecutor misconduct while jeff sessions was in charge. the court finds even having been given every benefit of the doubt, the misconduct of the attorney general, jeff sessions, in this case far surpasses in both extensiveness and measure the totality of any prosecutorial misconduct ever previously presented to or witness bid this court. never seen anything like that. i would not have known about that before david cole testified from the aclu. joining us is david cole, national legal director of the aclu. thank you for being with us. thanks for having me, rachel. am i right in seeing the aclu wouldn t normally as a matter of course testify at a con dpir mission hearing for a nominee like this? it s been decades. we have a long standing policy of neither supporting nor opposing nominees for office and we didn t support or oppose senator sessions, we presented our concerns and our concerns are wide ranging and deep and our position is the senate should not confirm him until it gets satisfactory answers to those concerns. so many of the objections that have been raised to senator sessions nomination and the concerns that have been raised in terms what have the vetting process for him should be like have been about his record on civil rights. you talked about that today but you did also bring up this case that i realize it s been discussed and hashed through since he s been nominated but it s not as widely known. i wonder if you brought that up because you re worried that his previous experience as an attorney general at the state level, if that sort of alleged misconduct at the state level was extrapolated to the national level that that could be a particular kind of crisis that we might not be expecting from jeff sessions even as we do look at his civil rights stuff? well, absolutely. i think you ve got two things to look at with senator sessions. he was a prosecutor for a fairly extensive period of time and how did he exercise that power? and we find that he exercised in the a very, very disturbing way. this case was seen by the judge as the worst case of prosecutorial misconduct he d ever seen in his life on the bench. steven gillers, a professor of legal ethics at nyu who s been doing this business for 40 years says it s the worst case he s seen in 40 years. so are we now going to give to a person who abused his office in this way on behalf of campaign contributors a case that was completely baseless and all 222 counts were thrown out on prosecutorial misconduct grounds. are we going to give him the most powerful prosecutorial post in the nation? that raises serious questions and they don t just go to his ideology, they go to his exercise of this incredible power. david cole, aclu national legal director, appreciate both the magnitude of this decision to make that testimony today but also appreciate you sort of making it a national story. i think a lot of people wouldn t know about this had you not front paged it. thank you for being with us today. thank you. much more ahead. a very busy news day, busy news night. stay with us. c mon in, pop pop! happy birthday! i survived a heart attack. i m doing all i can to keep from having another one. and i m taking brilinta. for people who ve been hospitalized for a heart attack. i take brilinta with a baby aspirin. no more than one hundred milligrams as it affects how well it works. brilinta helps keep my platelets from sticking together and forming a clot. brilinta reduced the chance of another heart attack. or dying from one. it worked better than plavix. don t stop taking brilinta without talking to your doctor since stopping it too soon increases your risk of clots in your stent, heart attack, stroke, and even death. brilinta may cause bruising or bleeding more easily, or serious, sometimes fatal bleeding. don t take brilinta if you have bleeding, like stomach ulcers, a history of bleeding in the brain, or severe liver problems. tell your doctor about bleeding, new or unexpected shortness of breath, any planned surgery, and all medicines you take. talk to your doctor about brilinta. i m doing all i can. that includes brilinta. if you can t afford your medication, astra zeneca may be able to help. life. is unpredictable. life is deaths. and births. sickness and health. love and heartbreak. and covered california is there for it all. not just to help keep you well. but to make sure the cost of being unwell doesn t ruin this whole life thing. because it s more than just health care. it s life care. if you re going to run a marathon, you generally do not sprint the whole darn thing. but a marathon getting started at a sprinter s pace, that is basically the story right now in d.c. all day hearings on cabinet nominees yesterday and today and tomorrow. in addition to that the senate at this hour right now is engaged in an extended series of lightning votes on what honest ly are generally grandstanding and meaningless amendments but are also the first votes to repeal obamacare. they re doing this series of a zillion votes. they call it a vote-a-rama, not kidding. this vote-a-rama started three hours ago, it s still going right now. that s a live shot. it s due to keep going until 4:00 a.m. is our latest advice. but somewhere in this combination marathon and sprint is a guest of ours tonight. senator cory booker of new jersey is due to join us tonight live just as soon as he breaks free from the vote-a-rama, senator cory booker coming up. i hope. when you re close to the people you love, does psoriasis ever get in the way of a touching moment? 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you knew this was unprecedented. you knew it would put you in the history books and probably attract the ire of a lot of your colleagues, how hard a call was this for you? it wasn t that hard of a call. these are issues that have been at a core of my work since i ve first gotten to public life, issues of civil rights, issues of equal rights, protecting vulnerable people. i m here because of strident lawyers who stood up and fought for my rights when it wasn t comfortable or convenient so this was a case with especially with the extreme views where jeff sessions doesn t even line up with the majority of his republican colleagues on things like criminal justice reform this was a case where i thought there was a clear threat to many people in our country and silence in that case is unacceptable. i had to speak up at every opportunity i had. you mentioned criminal justice reform there. you also said today if confirmed senator sessions will be required to pursue justice for women, his record indicate he is won t. he will be expected to defend v voting rights but his record indicates he won t. i feel like that s a powerful argument, i feel like the entire confirmation process thus far has been him trying to rebut that, trying to say i am not who you think i am, you have concerns about me on civil rights and equal protection and discrimination, don t have them, i don t deserve that nomination. have you been at all persuaded by the arguments he has made portraying himself very differently than he s behaved in the senate all these years? no, because he has a 40-year career of serving and many levels of law enforcement and as a united states senator. he has openly criticized the department of justice for doing the very things i talked about, criticized them for holding cities accountable for police treatment of citizens, criticized the department of justice guidance that was give on the stop bullying against gay and lesbian kids, criticized the department of justice for getting involved as a party to cases taking on states for suppressing votes. so here s somebody who has told us, shown us who he is. his whole career from his days of using his office to try to stop a group of lgbt young people from meeting on a college campus, this has been a consistent person and you have to give him this, for consistency in the things he s been doing and saying for all these years and you can t just somehow declare that you re going to be doing things differently suddenly now that you re up for this position. the unspoken rule that you violated today is one of these long-standing traditions of the senate in terms of the way that senators defer to one another and treat one other, the collegiality of that body. one of the consequences of those traditions is that everybody thinks that well, not everybody, a lot of people believe that jeff sessions, despite these concerns, that he will be confirmed, that he has almost an unbreachable advantage simply by being a united states senator who is being confirmed with the u.s. senate. if he is confirmed, if the odds are with him, are you worried about retaliation? about him getting his revenge on you, on your constituents or on the democratic conference? well, look, that s a profoundly powerful position and my concern is not the well-being of me or other electeds, this is a person that is in a position where he can defend or not or even make the lives more difficult of some of the most vulnerable people in america and so this isn t about what could happen in the realm of politics or even in the realm of my life. this is a real threat to those folks that i got into politics to try to do something for and with and try to make this america real for everybody. so i am i have a heaviness, a sadness from the day that donald trump announced this appointment, this has been weighing on me and my heart and i think most people don t understand the power of the justice department. nor do they appreciate how the obama administration through the justice department has been doing extraordinary things on mandatory minimums, on mass incarceration. this has been a great justice department that has been affirming the rights of the marginalized in our country and i think that s about to come to a horrible end and an about-face and it s going to necessitate more people speaking up, standing up, resisting and fighting. senator cory booker of new jersey joining us on a very, very busy night in the senate after what was a really remarkable day. senator, thank you, we ll look forward to having you back soon. thank you very much, rachel. senator cory booker joining us. you saw him there, he was in the u.s. capitol. that explains some of the statuary behind him. as i mentioned, the united states senate is involved in a series of lightning votes on amendments important and not important tonight but those are expected to go until 4:00 in the morning. we ll keep an eye on what happens in washington throughout the evening. stay with us. no sir, no sir, some nincompoop stole all my wool sweaters, smart tv and gaming system. luckily, the geico insurance agency recently helped baa baa with renters insurance. everything stolen was replaced. and the hooligan who lives down the lane was caught selling the stolen goods online. visit geico.com and see how easy it is to switch and save on renters insurance. government ethics, an independent non-partisan office that tries to stop conflicts of interest among high-ranking public officials. the head of that agency is a political appointee but the terms of the director of that office are staggered so stagger. so incoming presidents don t get to replace the head of that office the replace the heads of other offices. the current director of the ethics office started working there under president george w. bush. he became director under president obama. he will be the head of that office until midway through this next presidential term. his name is walter schaub. walter schaub has no reason to fear being thrown out of office by donald trump. donald trump is not supposed to be able to do that. well, today after the incoming president announced that he would not really be divesting from his business interests. walter made a remarkable public statement. he gave his blunt and passionate and patriotic assessment of what trump is offering. it s important to understand that the president is now entering a world of public service. he is going to be asking his own appointees to make sacrifices. he is going to be asking our men and women in uniform to risk their lives in conflicts around the world. so no, i don t think divestiture is too high a price to pay to be the president of the united states america. you see the lines being drawn now in d.c. we know donald trump on one side and democrats on the other. but this fight over ethics, this fight is something else. this is the incoming president versus ethics. and that fight has only just started apparently. th directv a, stream live tv anywhere data-free. join directv today starting at $35/month. no extra monthly fees. only xfinity gives you more to stream to any screen. you are the problem. you are the problem. can i ask you something? no, no. out of all of the candidates, name one who had a million dollar judgment against him for hiring name one. donald trump did. so you like rich people who buy politicians. where is your goldman sachs jacket at? where is your goldman sachs jacket at? you re losing an argument or don t want to have one, never a bad idea to yell out goldman sachs as an epithet. those pro trump protesters in indiana during the republican primary, they threw goldman sachs as an epithet at ted cruz because that s what donald trump had been doing to ted cruz. look. goldman sachs owns him. he will do anything they demand. he is in bed with wall street. he is funded by goldman sachs. he talks about how he is going to get well goldman sachs i know the guys at goldman sachs. they have total, total, total control over him. just like they have total control over hillary clinton. they have total. but they have no control, they have no control over donald trump. today the trump administration announced its fifth straight high profile hire from goldman sachs. just keeping track. the senior strategist at the white house, goldman sachs. the nominee to be treasury secretary, goldman sachs. the head of the national economic council, the president of goldman sachs. the head of the s.e.c., which is the top cop that polices wall street firms like goldman sachs. that will be a former lawyer for goldman sachs. and now today some new adviser job they created at the white house will be going to another partner at goldman sachs. anybody who told you definitely shouldn t vote for hillary clinton because look, goldman sachs. yeah you got suckered. today the incoming administration made one other big personnel announcement. they announced finally who they have chosen to run the veteran s administration. to the surprise of a lot of people, including apparently the man who was chosen himself. he had no idea it was coming. the nominee who was pickford the job is this guy. his name is david shullkin. he is the undersecretary for health at the v.a. he is there now. he is an obama appointee who is already running health at the v.a. during the campaign, the incoming president of course trashed the v.a. every chance he got, particularly its health care. he called v.a. and v.a. health a fraudulent enterprise. he said it was the most corrupt agency in the united states. he railed how how illegal aliens got better health care than the vets. but now apparently he is going to keep the guy in charge of v.a. health, and he is not only going to keep him on, he is going to put him in charge of the whole v.a. veterans organizations had feared that the trump administration would put somebody in the top of the v.a. who was bent on privatizing it and dismantling the whole agency. some of those groups sound a little bit relieved by this choice. am vets announced that they were pleasantly surprised with this choice. iraq and afghanistan veterans of america said they were optimistic about david shulkin, called him, quote, our best hope among the candidates reported in the media. that said, the pick is not without controversy. not only is he an obama appointee and currently there, he is not a veteran himself. if confirmed, the v.a. would be led by a nonveteran for the first time in its history. still, david shulkin was confirmed unanimously for his current job at the v.a. he is very much involved in running the v.a. right now. and for all those reasons and many others, he is expected to sail to confirmation. we ll of course keep you posted. stay with us. yes, we can. first of all, how you holding up? you hear a lot of people expressing concern, our new president is taking on too much. what exactly would you have me give up? this is where we monitored how the operation was going. we are done. how good is that? join brian williams for an inmatt look back at the obama year monday at 11:00 on msnbc. thanks for loading, sweetie. .oh, baked-on alfredo? .gotta rinse that. nope. no way. nada. really? dish issues? throw it all in. cascade platinum powers through. your toughest stuck-on food. nice. cascade. why pause a spontaneous moment? cialis for daily use treats ed and the urinary symptoms of bph. tell your doctor about your medicines, and ask if your heart is healthy enough for sex. do not take cialis if you take nitrates for chest pain, or adempas® for pulmonary hypertension, as this may cause an unsafe drop in blood pressure. do not drink alcohol in excess. to avoid long-term injury, get medical help right away for an erection lasting more than four hours. if you have a sudden decrease or loss of hearing or vision, or an allergic reaction, stop taking cialis and get medical help right away. ask your doctor about cialis. bounty is more absorbent,mom per roll so the roll can last 50% longer than the leading ordinary brand. so you get more life per roll. bounty, the quicker picker upper here you go.picking up for kyle. you wouldn t put up with part of a pizza. um. something wrong? 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they ve already helped him make this pick and go through this process, but they are now going to get out there and work the roots for the votes, especially for the democratic votes he needs and the more conservative states out there. this is how you do a roll-out. whether you agree or disagree with something, and after the last few days, how can something like the travel ban be so rocky and so confusing where government agencies are not talking to each other, and they do this again. whether you like the judge or not or a president from a marketing and branding standpoint. that s perfect. this is the dividing line in the white house. the travel ban was ushered into being by steven miller and steve bannon who are disrupters by nature. they create this sort of environment of chaos as part of their governing philosophy, but the supreme court pick is a very conventional washington thing. this is a reince priebus operation. it was done by the book. it was contrary to what everybody thought it was a very conventional roll-out. just a standard press conference standing there with his wife. they brought in antonin scalia s widowed wife and his children. this is the white house. it s two camps. at this level two camps. the priebus camp, the bannon camp, and they re functioning on parallel plains, but you see a bipolar white house emerging out of all of this. the president scoring it day by day. i think the establishment camp or the traditional camp wins the last 48 hours. no, no, and this process for the supreme court nominee is kind of rinse and repeat. i mean, it is different players when it s a democratic president, but it s the same process. you have the sherpa, which now we know and we ve seen today, is the former senator from new hampshire, kelly ayotte, which she was brought in because she was obviously defeated, which is why she s not a current senator, but she does have good relationships across the aisle. okay. so you do that. you have the communications person in charge. ron. you have somebody who is the aide who is going to make sure that the nominee gets ready for the hearings. we know who that person is. and you bring in the groups. president obama had the same kind of thing, the same players when he had his nominees. this is something that is not hard to figure out. when you are doing something that has not been done before, at least in modern times, like a partial travel ban, travel restrictions, whatever you call it, and you want to do it fast, and you want to do it by executive order and you want to disrupt, as you say, that s a completely different thing, and we saw that there were big problems with that. i think what was most noticeable last night was how normal the roll-out was. the president introduced mr mr. gorsuch. didn t talk about himself at all. he just mentioned that the voters had a choice in november and they chose to go this route, but he didn t talk about his victory. he didn t talk about himself. he talked all about the nominee. that to me was fascinating. he also even though democrats didn t attend, he invited democratic leadership down to the white house for the roll-out. they chose not to attend. the one thing i thought, though, was interesting and why this worked well is that the white house didn t have to work with anybody really to do this. one of the things that we saw over the past week as they rolled out executive orders to do it right, it requires a lot more coordination with congress, especially because you need their help in selling this and a lot of coordination with the executive agencies that are charged with carrying out various executive orders. that s really where the trump administration tripped up. with this roll-out, it was strictly the president s decision. they were completely in charge of the roll-out, and i think that s one of the reasons this worked so much better. i m going to say that s a really good point. this doesn t prove that any of those problems have been solved, right? because this was a solo decision, all of those problems still exist. all of the worldwide problems and the problems with conservatives over the ban still exist. that hasn t gone away. that hasn t gotten any better, but what was most remarkable to me about the announcement last night was how relieved republicans were. they were still on tender hooks up to the last second. they thought maybe he is going to surprise us or disappoint us, even though we knew who the finalists were, even though in the end they ended up being extremely pleased and republicans and especially conservatives are ecstatic about this pick. they couldn t be sure that he was going to follow through on it until he actually did. and a republican rallying moment after days of even republicans mostly being polite in public, but some of them not only disagreeing with the travel ban, but how it happened. the heavy use of executive actions in the early days also alienating the congress. a rallying point there. if you missed it, let s go back into the east room. the president of the united states and his new choice to fill a seat on the supreme court. the qualifications of judge gorsuch are beyond dispute. he is the man of our country and a man who our country really needs and needs badly to insure the rule of law and the rule of justice. it is the role of judges to apply, not alter the work of the people s representatives. a judge who likes every outcome he reaches is very likely a bad judge. stretching for results he prefers rather than those the law demands. that s the judge last night and the president in the roll-out. everyone has mentioned how happy conservatives are. they view this as a younger, kinder, gentler in some ways, and that s not to criticize antonin scalia. he was more of a brazen, outgoing personality. this is a judge gorsuch in a case about federal power, executive power, was wrote the decision with other judges, but then he wrote his own consent to his own decision because he wanted to get more of his personal views. he had to have consensus in the opinion. republican administration. he might serve as a check on, you know, a strong executive power, which could be very important for democrats. and conservatives are hoping. it s the opposite that he is a former clerk to anthony kennedy, who is the swing vote on the court, and you have the more conservative guy, who is very close to justice kennedy. maybe he pulls him the other way in the decisions. let s unpack what we heard from the president at the top of the show. he talked about he wanted a dignified process. again, the senate will decide whether judge gorsuch gets confirmed. i want to give him some props here. for ten months judge merrick garland was waiting for a confirmation hearing. the republicans refused to get him. the first call judge gorsuch made was to call judge garland. clearly trying to say, look, i m sorry. that not my doing. it s a club. the judges are a club just like the congress and the senate. the last part, let mitch go nuclear if he wants. that s the president doesn t speak washington, which is probably one of the reasons he is president and got elected. the idea right now senate rules say you have to have 60 votes to break a filibuster. mitch mcconnell says that s his preference. he is an institutionalist. he has made clear and we ve seen other developments we re going to talk about in a minute where the republicans are getting a little frustrated, but he is willing to go that way if he has to. it is that where we re going to end up? probably not onlile only in that the 60 vote threshold is to for at least at the beginning is to allow a vote for the nominee, and we have seen little by little democrats come out, particularly those from red states, and even a democrat like dick durbin, who is not from a red state, and he is actually the leadership, but he says that it is his preference at least in the short-term, to vote to allow a vote. i know it sounds like, really, a vote to allow a vote? that s what you have to do in the united states senate. you do. if the democrats had enough that they could actually block the vote from even coming up. i think that that is the first. the answer is we re going to have to see what happens in his hearings. if he charms everybody, if he reassures people that he is not a big bad wolf and he is not going to, you know, blow the supreme court apart, then it s going to be hard really for democrats to filibuster him, and also, this is not something that mitch mcconnell wants to do. it s not just because he is a traditionalist. it s because they know from recent history the shoe is very quickly on the other foot, and there s a democrat in the white house and democrats in control of everybody hold that thought for a sec. the democratic strategy, more on the supreme court pick judge gorsuch making the rounds already. up next, though, democrats trying to stage a boycott today. republicans threw out the rules. a power play to confirm some of the president s cabinet picks. we ll be back in just a second. , with the help of the lowest taxes in decades, a talented workforce, and world-class innovations. like in plattsburgh, where the most advanced transportation is already en route. and in corning, where the future is materializing. let us help grow your company s tomorrow - today at esd.ny.gov and out of the hospital than a leading heart failure medicine. women who are pregnant must not take entresto. it can cause harm or death to an unborn baby. don t take entresto with an ace inhibitor or aliskiren. if you ve had angioedema while taking an ace or arb medicine, don t take entresto. the most serious side effects are angioedema, low blood pressure, kidney problems, or high potassium in your blood. tomorrow, i m gonna step out with my favorite girl. ask your doctor about entresto. and help make the gift of tomorrow possible. people confuse but they re different. nice tells you what you want to hear. but kind is honest. this bar is made with cranberries and almonds. so, guess what? we call it cranberry almond. give kind a try. think they can i don t think they can complain. my gosh, we ve used the rules. we have the rules to use, and they used the rules the way they thought they could use them, which are there s no excuse for what they did yesterday, and there s no excuse for them not coming today. we notified them, and they just plain they used a cheap political ploy. they should be ashamed. they should be ashamed. hatch also using the term idiots to describe the the power by republicans allows the president s nominees for to move to the full senate for a confirmation vote. now democrats say they have questions. they don t want to have that vote just yet. our senior congressional correspondent manu sfs raju, you are up there in a calm sea, manu. how are the ripples? well, it s pretty choppy right now, john. you know, the republicans indeed taking this pretty dramatic move, an unprecedented move. they said it was unprecedented for them to boycott that finance committee hearing this morning and yesterday to try to deny a quorum and deny a vote in that committee, taking matters in their own hands to try to push this through, change the rules to get tom price confirmed to hhs, and also to get steven manuchin confirmed to the treasury department. scott pruitt to head epa, they boycotted those proceedings this morning, but the chairman of that committee saying they re planning to take matters into their own hands and probably emulate what senator hatch just did and push their pruitt s nomination through to the floor of the senate. similarly, nick mulvaney to be the budget director, that vote was postponed this morning when the democrats wanted more time to review his fbi report, and there are questions about whether or not he would get support to pass that committee because of john mccain s concerns about nick mulvaney s views about the defense can i. ron johnson said no matter what happens in that committee, they re still going to try to push and jam the nomination through, take it directly to the floor of the senate. what you are seeing here, john, is a really concerted, aggressive effort by the republicans to do use the power of the majority to get their nominees for donald trump s cabinet confirmed. while it s taking a little longer than donald trump would like, he probably will get all of these nominees confirmed. no matter how much how many obstacles democrats put in their way, john. manu raju on capitol hill. president angle into the wake. angle into the wake in those rough waters. let s come back into the room. this is extraordinary. the town has been polarized a long time. we knew the democrats don t like this president. weren t going to like most of his picks. they say they have lenl i want questions about some of the financial dealings otherwise here. we are seeing this again. senator hatch schangz the rules. you move those two forward. out of the judiciary senator sessions comes out on a party line vote. every democrat voting no. every republican voting yes. what does it mean anything? is it just the partisan split that is washington? is this a new level of toxicity in the environment? i think this reflects where each party s base is. neither has any use or any desire to stick with senatorial courtesy or senate rules. what they want to see are results. for democrats they re kind of in a pinch because there s not really much they can do, and their base wants them to fight everything, and i think strategically that hurts them because they might do a better job and get more results if they focused in on a couple of trump s cabinet picks and put all the attention there. for republicans and understanding the democrats and republicans play this game and both feel like they ve been slighted unfairly, republicans are still smarting from senator reed s use of the nuclear option a couple of years ago when he changed the broke the rules to change the rules as we ve been discussing, and so they just don t care as much about following rules as they might have had that never happened. and i would even go further than you on the question of the democratic base. it s not just that they want results. sure, they would love results. they want to fight. they want their members to stand up and fight. i agree with you that it might not be in the long run the greatest strategy because there are some things that democrats can get done, and at what point does the cycle stop? we thought perhaps at the beginning that there was going to be a little bit of a give and take. stand up to the republican president and the republican leaders in congress when it mattered, and otherwise, don t. for the nominees, you know, which is traditionally unless there s a huge problem, something that you give to a president, the fact that they re standing up on this issue tells you a lot about the fact that the base is so rested and they re dying for their members. chuck schumer is a new leader. he is a known figure here in washingt washington, but as a democratic figure, he is a new leader. he voted against mitch mcconnell s wife. elaine chow was confirmed. she got 94 votes. 90 something votes. he voted against the other leader s wife. that is unheard of in the united states senate. what s funny about that is there were some democrats who worried that chuck schumer wouldn t be willing to fight enough. but, i mean, you know, given what dana and david are saying, we also have to remember that the precedent for this was set by republicans over the last eight years. democrats are just adapting a sort of tea party strategy in washington to deal with this new administration. it would be unprecedented if the last eight years hadn t happened, but because it did, i think the democratic base is saying republicans did this, and they were rewarded with the white house, the house, and the senate. it s hard to the sort of trade-off here is a little bit the calculus is different, and i think some democrats, you know they are looking at 2013 when republicans failed to show up at an e.p.a. confirmation hearing meeting for one of president obama s nominees. they refused or they delayed votes on the labor secretary nominees. these are all tactics that have been used before. so for somebody for somebody watching out there who is like, i got to get the kids to school or run a business or pay their bills, this sounds kind of fifth grade, though. it sounds like a bunch of pelty grievanc grievances. i m going to do this in this congress. is that right? this is payback, and then we escalate? you did that pretty well in the last congress? i m going to take you what you and do it even better. listen to this exchange here in the judiciary committee vote. al franken, democrat of minnesota, ted cruz of texas was not in the room. what al franken was saying is that ted cruz at the jeff sessions confirmation hearing where there were questions, he says he misrepresented his fact. ted cruz s senate colleagues not only his best friend, but his senate colleague jumps in to defend him. senator cruise did the very thing that senator cornyn is accusing me of doing. in my absence he misrepresented me, he misrepresented mr mrmr. mr. hebert. he personally went after me. he personally you didn t object then, did you? i m not sure i was here, and i m want sure i wasn t here either. let me continue. it would be a decent and honorable thing to do it in the senator s presence and not well, get him here, but he will have a tape. it s good theater, and clearly some of them don t like each other or some of them maybe some of them like each other just fine and they re performing. my question is does this affect what does the president get for a tax reform plan? does the president get his isis strategy through congress? what happens to repeeling and replacing obama care? when it comes to specific policies, and the ones he needs democrats on, replacing obama care, an infrastructure plan. is this just for show, or does it affect what this president is going to get a week, a month, a year from now? i think you re absolutely right. this is not just about process. this is about results. it s a reminder that when there are things that the republican president and republican congress all agree on, they can make them happen. with the cabinet, you have the republican congress wanting to show support for president trump. the white house has been quite anguished and annoyed and frustrated that it has taken them longer than it took president obama in a lot of cases to get the cabinet through. this is something that the republican congress can all agree to do for him. it will be different when they don t agree with him. either when he proposes something that republicans in congress can t agree on or that they don t support and so that s going to be a completely different kettle of fish. trump benefits to the extent that senators do look like a bunch of fifth graders squabbling in a sandbox, right? that s very much the sort of they might sue you for sland are wresh. second graders, excuse me. even my second grader is more mature than that. you know, to the degree to which, you know, he was elected by saying these guys are all a bunch of fools, and i can overpower them, that helps him. let s keep in mind that the insurgent conservative tactics that republicans used in the obama years were not successful at all, and where democrats may perceive the democrats having profit from that by winning the white house, they won for other reasons. it was always the leadership in the establishment that had to come in and save the their bacon when these tactics failed and went down in flames. the democrats seem to be enjoying trying at the moment. we ll see. up next, the democrats call it a stolen seat, but do they have a plan to deny the president his pick? but then i realized there was. so, i finally broke the silence with my doctor about what i was experiencing. he said humira is for people like me who have tried other medications but still experience the symptoms of moderate to severe crohn s disease. in clinical studies, the majority of patients on humira saw significant symptom relief. and many achieved remission. humira can lower your ability to fight infections, including tuberculosis. serious, sometimes fatal infections and cancers, including lymphoma, have happened; as have blood, liver, and nervous system problems, serious allergic reactions, and new or worsening heart failure. before treatment, get tested for tb. tell your doctor if you ve been to areas where certain fungal infections are common, and if you ve had tb, hepatitis b, are prone to infections, or have flu-like symptoms or sores. don t start humira if you have an infection. if you re still just managing your symptoms, talk with your gastroenterologist about humira. with humira, remission is possible. and my life is basketball.west, but that doesn t stop my afib from leaving me at a higher risk of stroke. that d be devastating. i took warfarin for over 15 years. until i learned more about once-daily xarelto®. a latest-generation blood thinner. then i made the switch. xarelto® significantly lowers the risk of stroke in people with afib not caused by a heart valve problem. it has similar effectiveness to warfarin. warfarin interferes with vitamin k and at least six blood-clotting factors. xarelto® is selective. targeting one critical factor of your body s natural clotting function. for people with afib currently well-managed on warfarin, there is limited information on how xarelto® and warfarin compare in reducing the risk of stroke. like all blood thinners, don t stop taking xarelto® without talking to your doctor, as this may increase your risk of a blood clot or stroke. while taking, you may bruise more easily, and it may take longer for bleeding to stop. xarelto® may increase your risk of bleeding if you take certain medicines. xarelto® can cause serious, and in rare cases, fatal bleeding. get help right away for unexpected bleeding, unusual bruising, or tingling. if you have had spinal anesthesia while on xarelto®, watch for back pain or any nerve or muscle-related signs or symptoms. do not take xarelto® if you have an artificial heart valve or abnormal bleeding. tell your doctor before all planned medical or dental procedures. before starting xarelto®, tell your doctor about any conditions, such as kidney, liver, or bleeding problems. to help protect yourself from a stroke, ask your doctor about xarelto®. insurance changes? xarelto® has you covered. leagues here, and he is going to be the deciding vote on the future of the court for a long time, it appears. this is an important decision. when someone moves up to the supreme court level, different important questions are asked, and people are much more careful. that s the way it ought to be. makes perfect sense. what the democratic senator says there. it also makes perfect sense for the president and republicans to say you lod him last time, he got through without any objection. this is all partisan. i this i it helps republicans enormously from a public relations perspective to be able to say look at all these guys. over a dozen democrats were in the senate when they allowed him through, and i think there are also even now where a few hours into his nomination, democrats are writing statements that are basically saying he deserves a vote. if they re starting, you know, day one not being on the same page about how to move forward procedurally, i think it s going to be very, very hard for them to mount a real opposition to him. but they can t be on the same page because they ve come from such different places. by definition. you have the democrats accident like elizabeth warren, who is a democrat from massachusetts. incredibly popular in her own state. never mind the fact that she s the head of the liberal wing of the party right now. whether she likes it or not. she likes it. and then you have democrats like heidi hidecamp from the reddest of red states. it s sort of politically miraculous that she s in the united states senate as a democrat from north dakota saying, whoa, whoa, whoa. that is what republicans are relying on is for those democrats who are from states where donald trump won and where democrats are not really usually representing them to say, okay, i m going to give this to that point, again, the value of preparation, unlike some of the other roll-outs, the trump administration was ready for this one, and they have conservative allies who as we speak are airing television ads in these red states. ten democratic senators up in 2018 in states that trump won. we can show you the map. some of them, you know, trump won michigan just barely. trump won florida just barely. how much wind does he have there? when you look at heidi of north dakota and joe manchin of west virginia, that was 32 points in west virginia. if you start, republicans have 52. senator durbin is on the record saying he wants a vote and not filibuster. there are a handful of democrats that have said that. that gets you up to 56, 58. they only need to peel a couple of the other people to make this go away and have 60. my question is, number one, we ll have to see if it works, but kudos to the republicans and conservatives for being ready to mount this campaign. the question is will it work? the republicans are aided by the fact that judge gorsuch is a known quantity, and also by the fact that he will not be changing the balance of the court if he is confirmed. because his views are seen as so similar to former justice scalia s, it is not the case that democrats can argue that all of this judicial press debt is suddenly going to be out the window. it is not the case that he is such an unorthodoxed choice, that he is so outside the mainstream, a term that senator schumer used to describe what he would be looking for. it is not the case that this is, you know, somebody that trump literally picked off the set of the apprentice. the democrats get some mileage out of saying, you know, this isn t someone with the right experience, the right qualifications. now, they will argue you are surprised it wasn t amarosa? they are making this on ideology and on his judicial interpretations, and it is not unprecedented for there to be votes against or even a confirmation denied for that reason, but it s different than saying, you know, here s someone who is not qualified. it s different than saying this is someone who is going to totally change the face of the court. egit s a great point. this is all about politics within the democratic party. you just referenced the 2018 senate map, which i can count to four, maybe five because of that. i can t count to eight, which is what they need to overcome which is what democrats need to provide to kill the filibuster. i think democrats need to decide if they re going to take the short-term view possibly angering their base or take a long-attorney general view. if they do not filibuster this and if mitch mcconnell doesn t have to use the nuclear option to change the rules, i think they could set themselves up to be in a better position to influence president trump s next supreme court nominee if somebody retires than if they just changed the rules. in which case trump doesn t even have to consider how the next supreme court justice pick would pick or how to get them through the senate, but if it they decide to just go to the mat over this one, then he won t have to take democrats into account. that s such a good point. democrats give up their leverage for a next pick if they go to the mat on this one. the next one could matter immensely because this is, again, a younger scalia replacing a scalia. not a big shift in the idealogical balance of the court, but a lot of people also think a lot of conservatives say justice kennedy in private conversations says he wants to retire, and he thinks, oh, trump is doing well here. he is picking good guys. maybe he will go. that s the swing vote on the court. we ll see. this debate will end in 70 days brsh that s the average run time for a nominee. sometimes they look very different at the end than they do at the beginning. go back in your history books. how you frame the beginning matters. listen to the senate, the majority leader mitch mcconnell trying to set the standard here. judge gorsuch received a unanimously well qualified rating by the american bar association when he was nominated to his current position on the court of appeals. he was confirmed without any votes in opposition. that s right. madam president, not a single democrat opposed judge gorsuch s confirmation. not senator barack obama, not senator hillary clinton, not senators joe biden or ted kennedy. i don t know if that history will matter, but that s well played, including senator obama then senator obama, now former president obama, was a classmate at harvard with judge gorsuch. it also underscores the degree to which this potential new justice is a card-carrying member of the establishment. right? for all of the disruptive things that trump has done, this is not one of them. the question for a lot of people in trump s orbit both the republican leadership in congress and even people inside the white house who are as abby mentioned sort of at war with each other, in different camps, divided as to the approach he would take towards different things, what signal is president trump going to take from how well this roll-out is perceived as having gone? will he take a signal, oh, i could make less trouble for myself by doing more things this way, doing more things in the normal way. i mean, the establishment way. or does he want to or he likes it better when people s heads are exploding. it s important to note that the supreme court a supreme court nominee is different from anything else that he will deal with because there is a conservative machine out there at the ready, and they have been at the ready with ads, with ideas, with a whole lobbying apparatus to use whatever republican president they had, whether it s president trump, as a vessel to get the person on the supreme court. it s a great point you raise. this works well, but does he prefer chaos? we ll find out. a seemingly routine hearing in washington, but it has a big purpose. to get the president s attention. as soon as i left thl after a dvt blood clot, i sure had a lot to think about. what about the people i care about? .including this little girl. and what if this happened again? i was given warfarin in the hospital, but wondered, was this the best treatment for me? so i asked my doctor. and he recommended eliquis. eliquis treats dvt and pe blood clots and reduces the risk of them happening again. yes, eliquis treats dvt and pe blood clots. eliquis also had significantly less major bleeding than the standard treatment. both made me turn around my thinking. don t stop eliquis unless your doctor tells you to. eliquis can cause serious and in rare cases fatal bleeding. don t take eliquis if you have an artificial heart valve or abnormal bleeding. if you had a spinal injection while on eliquis call your doctor right away if you have tingling, numbness, or muscle weakness. while taking eliquis, you may bruise more easily .and it may take longer than usual for bleeding to stop. seek immediate medical care for sudden signs of bleeding, like unusual bruising. eliquis may increase your bleeding risk if you take certain medicines. tell your doctor about all planned medical or dental procedures. eliquis treats dvt and pe blood clots. plus had less major bleeding. both made eliquis the right treatment for me. ask your doctor if switching to eliquis is right for you. you know how painful heartburn can be. for fast-acting, long-lasting relief, try doctor recommended gaviscon. it quickly neutralizes stomach acid and helps keep acid down for hours. relieve heartburn with fast- acting, long-lasting gaviscon. this is the house armed services committee. just one of the routine hearings you find in the congressional schedule. 10:00 a.m. it started. house armed services committee. this one was scheduled with a purpose. many in congress worry about the new president s world view and they know he watches television. they re trying to get his attention. it is not naturally self-sustaining. we have sustained it. if we stop doing so, it will fray and eventually collapse. this is precisely what some of our adversaries seek to encourage. translation? don t be nice to vladimir putin because he is trying to disrupt the european union and the nato alliance. this is really i mean, this is really serious stuff. he is not the first person to say this. former general james mattis said basically the same thing in his confirmation hearing. there is this risk that the north atlantic treaty is going to disintegrate if we don t continue to sustain it, if we don t continue to do the things fwheed to do to start alliances with the u.k., for example, as posed to with vladimir putin who is explicitly about undermining nato. this goes beyond trump. it s about the world view of the folks around him. the idea that we should rethink this whole world order thing is very real, i think, in the white house, and that s why some of these folks the point you made earlier about the competing powers, it is fascinating we have a president never been in the military or been in government service. that s never happened in our history. there s an open tug-of-war and a competition for his world view, for his focus. be pro-putin? no, don t do that. say nato is obsolete? no, it s the fundamental source. he is in office, and there s still a tug-of-war for his world view. trump surrounded himself with hawkish generals. on the other hand, he has elevated steve bannon to the principals committee and diminished the role of the dni, the director of national intelligence, the joint chiefs of staff in terms of being guaranteed regular attendees to these meetings. i think it s still unclear as to which direction trump is going to go. in his inaugural address, he gave very short ideas philosophically as the u.s. as the gaurn tear of world peace. he has talked dif i visively ab what we get out of these. we re going to have to see which direction this goes. trump is very consistent about this throughout the campaign. he repeatedly questioned whether nato was obsolete. this was also a major theme of the british prime minister s visit last week. prime minister theresa may seeking some kind of assurances from trump that he would not go as far as he has said he would go, and she did not get any commitments from him either. there is still a lot of nervousness on the world stage. the administration and trump also have never made any commitments about what they re going to do with russia s sanctions either, and so there s a lot of uncertainty. one of the things driving the debate is the immigration ban or restrictions, call it what you will, that the president put in place earlier in the week. he tweeted this morning because there s been a debate about can you call it a ban. he has used the word ban. when his press secretary says it s not a ban, and they say the president calls it a ban. call it what you want. it s about keeping bad people with bad intentions out of the country. smart messaging from the president there. make it about safety. there s a process in the state department. this may sound more dramatic. they have this dissent process. if you are in the foreign station, you re stationed for the state department somewhere around the world, you can join this dissent process. more than 1,000 people have signed this dissent cable protesting this policy, and they say the end result of this ban will not be a drop in terror attacks in the united states, but, rather, it would be a drop in the goodwill towards america. it happens in other administrations. this is early in this administration. you ve had the white house press secretary on notice saying either get with the program or resign. the acting attorney general, an obama holdover, wouldn t enforce this policy. the president said you re fired. how will this be processed in this administration? will they say, great, we re having a conversation about this, or will they say go away? not well. i mean, like you said, sean spicer, the white house spokesperson, was as blunt as you can be. get with the program or get out. that isn t how it works, and it is this process or at least our colleague has been doing great reporting on this. the reason this process is even in place in the state department is because of the vietnam war because afterwards the officials who are in charge realized that they need place and a mechanism for people who have expertise in areas to voice their dissent, their opposition, and their concern. you know what, we should welcome that. it s something that is incredibly important. this is not an autocratic government. that s not how we operate. certainly within certain branches, i guess, you know, donald trump was in his right to fire the acting attorney general, but this is a process that needs to happen, and they probably should not say get with the program or get out because at some point they re going to need people to say, excuse me, this is going to hurt you. and it goes beyond the state department. across the government there s been this sort of, like, undercurrent of dissent among career public servants. it s interesting to see are the white house with a lot of people that have never been in government or run government before, dealing with the unwieldy nature of the vast federal bureaucracy. there are a lot of people who may or may not hold dissenting views, and they have ways to make those views known. it can create a lot of turmoil for this white house if they re not careful about managing the fact that most of these people are not political appointees. they re career people who have been there for decades. the offense they ve taken mostly, but when it goes public, their attitude is i won the election, i m in charge of the government. you work for the government. we ll see how this goes. we ll see if they do it quietly. maybe they ll tolerate it more. if they do it publicly, i don t think they like it. we ll be back in just a sec. nice tells you what you want to hear. but kind is honest. this bar is made with cranberries and almonds. so, guess what? we call it cranberry almond. give kind a try. whfight back fastts, with tums smoothies. it starts dissolving the instant it touches your tongue. and neutralizes stomach acid at the source. tum -tum -tum -tum smoothies! only from tums conservatives and church going social conservatives who had their doubts about whether he was personally a godly man, nonetheless, they were praying for a conservative choice on the supreme court. an ento see that prayer answered by judge gorsuch is a happy moment for them. excellent point. you made a point in break just chatting about how, you know, mitch mcconnell s not there and how this moment is here because of mcconnell s decision ten months i ll hold out. i think people forget that immediately upon scalia passing away, mitch mcconnell, the republican majority leader, made it clear before the nomination. there would be no hearings and no votes for no reason whatsoever would he waver from that. a lot of people, particularly conservatives and the insurgent community doubted him. they have not been always happy. he didn t hold the line the way they would prefer. the president would not have had this opportunity, he wouldn t have been able to make the bargain of wary conservative voters in the election if mcconnell has not done this. he spearheaded this. top down. that s why gorsuch will be most likely the next justice on the supreme court. may be the reason donald trump is president. absolutely. democrats thought republicans would take a political hit for leaving the supreme court vacancy. they thought that voters would be mad at what that did to the institutional fabric of the senate. not only did republicans not take a hit but they drew political advantage from it getting conservatives out to vote. and conservatives not seen donald trump as their guy. let s be honest. who might otherwise have stayed home because this is a guy who was for single payer, actively outwardly pro-choice and so on and so forth and because he put out the list of potential nominees early on, very smartly, he convinced the conservative base that he would take care of them and he did. and trump is also facing a huge group of people at the lower court level that he can fill in part because of mitch mcconnell s strategy throughout eight years of holding the line on federal judges. thanks, everybody, for dealing with the rock n roll today. that s what happens with live television. thank you for joining us. press secretary sean spicer getting ready. my colleague wolf blitzer will take you there in just a moment. w york state is already in motion. companies across the state are growing the economy, with the help of the lowest taxes in decades, a talented workforce, and world-class innovations. like in plattsburgh, where the most advanced transportation is already en route. and in corning, where the future is materializing. let us help grow your company s tomorrow - today at esd.ny.gov serious allergic reactions, and new or worsening heart failure. before treatment, get tested for tb. tell your doctor if you ve been to areas where certain fungal infections are common, and if you ve had tb, hepatitis b, are prone to infections, or have flu-like symptoms or sores. don t start humira if you have an infection. ask about humira, the #1 prescribed biologic by dermatologists. clearer skin is possible. and i finally found our big idaho potato truck. it s been touring the country telling folks about our heart healthy idaho potatoes, america s favorite potatoes, and donating to local charities along the way. but now it s finally back home where it belongs. aw man. hey, wait up. where you goin ? 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and that the president-elect talked about a system where for every new regulation comes in, two have to go away. i m not sure how that works. but something along those lines where new regulations have to be counter weighted with reduction in the overall regulatory burden on small companies. we ve seen happen many times a regulation gets put into place and nobody s thought about how it s going to affect the small business owner. i it may make sense for big business but small business gets talking up. you have to have institutional reform so that you force government to do this. sunsetting regulations, for example. it forces the elected officials to say, does this still make sense? in terms of what s changed in technology and the economy, should we still be doing this? is this a better way to do it? look at the cost/benefit analysis. those types of reforms are needed so we bring sanity to the regulatory morass in washington, d.c. todd, you did a survey about the cost for small business who s never shotgunned a beer. shotgunning a beer when is you re basically breaking into the bottom of a can, and then you re drinking from that hole. reporter: once the partners settled on what to build, they had to figure out how. we started calling people. reporter: the people they called for help were engineers, industrial designers, metal fabricators, and their parents. we both got a small investment from our dads. i think around $10,000. reporter: with all that help, the two created a sleek-looking, inexpensive product they eventually called the saber tooth. after graduation, they body got jobs in silicon valley. but quickly ditched those when they realized the saber tooth had some real teeth. this year we ve grown almost 800%. it s been really great growth. reporter: they say it wasn t the product itself that caught fire, but the whole frat party brand, which they named raging mammoth. raging mom moth is all about having a great time. reporter: the saber tooth opened their eyes to an overlooked market niche. we look around, why has no one started a company around this lifestyle that we love? that s really how raging mammoth formed. reporter: more than a logo, raging mom moth became a symbol of the high-octane adventure their customers craved and a brand with a mission. so why are we doing this? our why is to create good times. it s literally the way you feel when you use the product. that was a defining moment for us. that s what really drives our growth. reporter: not only did sales numbers explode but they say their customers hijacked their instagram and facebook pages. with hundreds of unsolicited pictures and stories boasting of their exploits. about 99% of our posts on social media, they re all created by our customers. they re seeing us online and like, oh, this is what this brand represents. and then once they fall in love with that, then they can buy our products. then they re part of the community. reporter: now they re using that brand idea as a springboard to new products. really it doesn t matter what we make. raging mammoth, everything that we create is about having a better time with your friends. that s all that matters. so then the products come out, that come out of that, how are we going to create a product that s going to complement that lifestyle? people come to us with an idea reporter: that s where rob lang comes in. then we work through the different faces of designing and developing and getting a product into manufacturing. reporter: they turned to rob and his san diego-based southern california design company. we ll meet with them and say, this is what we want, can you guys engineer this, what do you think? we ll look at that idea, look how to make it better. do a couple of prototypes, sign off on them. then from there, they ll find manufacturers and get it moving. basically manage the product s lifetime. we re removing here, we re going to flatten it out, right? flip it back over. reporter: the next product up for release is their deluxe take on the humble shotski with several magnetic-based shot glasses lined up for group drinking. our friends were upset they were spilling it all over themselves. what about the weight? you seemed to think it was good? weight s perfect. hound the rigidity of it? reporter: this is only one of more than a dozen new products scotty and wyatt want to take to market as quickly as possible. they are going to be a massive part of our company in this next year because we have 13 original products we re releasing. reporter: to keep things moving they ve outsourced the design and manufacturing to rob s southern southern california design company. the way we look at them, they re up and comers. they re going to grow that business. we re confident in that. so instead of us going out and trying to learn like, okay, like we need to get a warehouse, you know. we need to pay for the insurance on the warehouse. we need to hire. let s just give to it somebody who knows what they re doing. reporter: with big dreams they ve outsourced the shipping and fulfillment, customer service, and marketing. they are concentrating on what they do best, developing the brand and the supporting products. where that leads, even they can t predict. we never started out to try to make this a huge company. we really wanted to prove to people we could do something valuable. so we could go do something bigger down the road. just ended up doing a lot better than we originally planned. millennial moms have some say. they have hugely influential. according to our guest, 55% of millennial moms say they are frequently asked for product recommendations. so how can you get them to start spreading the word about your product? sharon bindering is the founder and ceo of parent tested, parent approved, one of the most-recognized awards program busy consumers. good to see you. thanks for having me on. you ve grown your business a lot by millennial moms talking about it. absolutely. that s literally how we grew our business. word of mouth, getting moms talking about it, telling them our story and getting them to spread it for us. look, so many people are trying to get to these mommy bloggers because they know that moms, as a whole, they re speaking from the heart. it worked for my kid, it worked for me, i m going to tell my friends. that was the whole concept behind our business. what i think a lot of brands are missing out on is they re still advertising to these millennial moms in very traditional ways. so for example, they need to stop advertising showing moms in these very traditional roles holding a laundry basket, looking all disheveled, running after the kids. reality is that s not a millennial mom s typical life these days. right, it s not speaking to them. no, not at all. the husband plays a role in this. yep. or they have help at home. because they re likely working full-time as well. so let s show them as professional, accomplished women. even when we see as women in the board room, they re always in a hurry. why are they always waiting on the side of the street, they re late, waiting for a taxi? always, every ad i ve seen in a professional sense. so show them in a way that s more modern. so that they ll actually it will actually resonate. so they can relate. also you talked about, we use the word authentic, everyone does. authentic. but don t push stuff down. yes. right? be authentic about why you re talking to them. right, connect with them on an emotional level. it s funny, there s this video that publix put out, 2014, mother s day. literally an ad of a mom and her daughter and she s a pregnant mom, she is standing in the kitchen baking with her daughter. yes, they re casually showing ingredients. but by the end of this commercial, nobody is not crying. and it s three years later and i am still talking about this commercial because it resonated with me on an emotional level. so it made that connection for me and publix. so that s how you need to be communicating with people. i think a lot of these brands still think of millennial moms as my marketing tool. i ve got to get to them, got to get them to try my product. and you can t ram it down people s throats. that s exactly it. that used to work. it no longer works. they want a subtle message. they want to know a little bit more about the companies. millennials really want to know about the companies. they want to know if they have a social conscience. if it s food they want to know where it s sourced. these things are more important than the advertising that you re ramming down their threats. they are turning to video. so we did a survey and 83% of millennials said they go online to search for the products they re going to purchase. 3 of every 5 turned to video to learn more about the product. so that is a no-brainer for companies. be out there, be on video. again, make sure you re taking into account all of those emotional components that you want to have resonate with that consumer afterwards. once you get one, once you ve got a millennial mom who likes you, how do you encourage her to spread the word? so it s all about making sure you re talking to them about the things that are important to them. what we found is really important to millennials, they want to know that there is value in the product they re purchasing from you, they want to know that there s convenience, and the number one thing is safety. so as long as you can incorporate that messaging, that customer will really stay with you. because where it used to be a price plan, i won t say the price doesn t impact their purchasing decision. they are willing to pay a little bit more to make sure that they have all those three things encompassed in the product that they re purchasing for their family. right. once you get someone like this to move it they stay with you. and spread the word. exactly. the last thing you need to be on is social. at the end of the day social is such an important component because theme are talking about thins they love. we ll go out and find influen influencers who loved a product we want to be talking about and make sure they are authentic. by authentic, i know it s a buzz word, but to us it s won t that they ve used the product, they really love the product, they ve talked about it in a positive manner before they ve been paid to do so. that s how we re trying to build a positive buzz for the brands that we work with. all right, congratulations on your success. thank you. you know more about this than anyone. thank you for stopping by. my pleasure. i don t care if you re a silicon valley startup or a small-town dry cleaner, technology is going to keep on changing your business. in order to stay one step ahead, you have to know where the trends are heading. ink.com highlights five of the top tech advancements coming our way. five, upgraded wireless signal that s going to make smartphones and tablets even more valuable. two, augmented reality. companies like microsoft are launching headsets that could change the way you do training, sales demos and more. three, chatbots. systems that you interact with via text will get much more sophisticated in 2017. there are already ones that will handle your travel plans or tell you the weather, but think about ones that you think will monitor your health or spending. four, phones go wireless. expect to have even more ways to charge all your mobile devices without using cables. and five, amazon s alexa is already being used to lock your car, read a book, or make purchases. in 2017 expect to also see it shop at public places like your bank or local grocery store. pleasure to meet you, chair onthomas. pleasure. so look. in the dining industry there s a gazillion choices where to eat. we ve all been there before. where do you want go? i don t know, where do you want to go? no more arguing. instead of arguing you bust out spotluck, a free app. you get one spin per day, we pick a great local spot for you and give you the discount. it s a smart discount so we patented software that makes the discounts change based on day, time, weather, and other factors that affect restaurant occupancy. you ll get higher insensitives on a monday than a friday, higher if it s raining than if it s nice out. consumers love it because it s fun. like spinning a wheel. we ve got great traction, over 100,000 people on the a pchpp e month, we re the number one dining app on itunes. a good foundation but a long way to go. we want to get the right people involved. we re raising $1.5 million to launch new york, arguably the largest dining in the world. we have half committed. we have over 200 restaurants signed and ready to go live in march. so really, we re here because by have a decent foundation and a good product but the team is magic. these guys eat, breathe, live, sleep spotluck and we can prove we can execute. congratulations. number one app on itune i say start the pitch with that. because that s big. while we re chatting i need two numbers from you guys. number one, from 1 to 10, what do you think of the product? number two, what do you think of the pitch? okay, let s see what these guys think. i m up. i gave the product a 7. i gave the pitch a 6. the product, i live if new york, i m a foodie, we don t just use one app, we use multiple apps to find restaurants. i think there is a potential for something fun. unlike j.j., i always get a little suspicious, especially when a young startup company says that you re number one in anything. i don t believe it. how is it possible? sure. i like companies that are sort of say where they re going, what their intention is. in terms of the pitch, i wanted to know your story. i love a company born out of personal challenge, personal story. you were fighting with your friend. as opposed to the generic, when you re out, you know. for me, i was looking for something to relate to and i think that s the potential for improvement, that part. i appreciate the feedback. this is what simon is all about, connecting with the why. the why you started your business, the why your business. you should listen to his ted talk. we re big fans at spotluck. thanks for the feedback. so 8 and 7. so on the product, i think you have a great product. what i m looking at is that it does have other uses. and you ve done a great job of kind of focusing on one thing right now, not getting distracting, which is really good. and i ve learned the hard way that when you get distracted, you only dilute. you get in trouble. on the pitch, i have to agree with simon, make it your story. put a little thing behind it that s personal. we used to have the story about wow, people would get instead of talking about money and results, they would get hung up on wow. tell us about that wow. what does that wow mean? that became the bigger conversation than trying to talk about money and results because the money and results aren t good in the beginning. it strikes me that you are a solution and next version of groupon for these restaurants which was a problem, but you allow them to change the price discount. absolutely. i agree with what you re saying. our story is traditional. we started in my basement, quit our jobs, used our own money. what was the birth of the idea? s. ing that prices in a restaurant at tuesday at 2:00 p.m. when it s raining shouldn t be the same as friday night at 6:00. that s real. we wish you the best of luck. thank you for coming on the program. thank you for giving your honest feedback, so helpful. if you have a company and you want to pitch our panelists like you just saw, send an e-mail to yourbusiness@msnbc.com. tell us what you do, how much money you re looking to raise, how that money is going to change the trajectory of your company. we cannot wait to see some of you here on the show. still to come, when it comes to hiring managers, what s best? hiring from within your company? or looking outside of it? why you shouldn t be chasing the money. will your business be ready when growth presents itself? american express open cards can help you take on a new job, or fill a big order or expand your office and take on whatever comes next. find out how american express cards and services can help prepare you for growth at open.com. how do you choose your top-level managers within your organization? do you prefer to promote from within? do you hire from outside? president quick answer is this. both. and it depends. so clearly what we have to do, if you re going to hire from or promote from within, then the great news about that is that these people are going to bring they understand the corporate culture, they understand the history and the dna from the organization. and also what they do is they inspire other employees from your organization who want to grow. the great thing about bringing people in from the outside is that they bring a new level of energy to the organization. new blood. new ideas. a new fresh set of eyes. clearly we have to bring people into the organization who have experience. we want to round out our team of strengths. more importantly than that, though, whether we re hiring or promoting from within, hiring from without, we need to have people who are highly motivated, who have a lot of integrity, and who have tons of capacity so they can grow with you. we now have the top two tips you need to know to help your small business grow. leadership expert simon cynic and tariq fareed, founder and ceo of edible arrangements, are back with us again. not only leadership expert, top three most-watched ted talk. if i can tout both of you, you were the second or first story we did on this show, one of the first three. you had 400 franchises? a little less than 400. now? 1,300. so i clearly want to hear the tips from you. you guys know what you are doing. it s the show that did it. exactly, i launched you both. all right, let s start with you, simon. sure. so my top tip is, take care and work to see that those around you succeed. so many entrepreneurs make bit themselves. and they forget there s other people there who have devoted their lives, their work days, to support. and when they feel that they re always subordinate and trying to see you succeed, it s actually demoralizing. work to see that those around you work to their natural best. they become valuable members of the team, and more and more they will offer you blood, sweat and tears to see your vision come to life. what does that look like? celebrating them at company meetings? helping them grow. so part of it is offering aff m affirmation and positive feedback. also offering them opportunities to grow. it s offering them classes and opportunities to learn communication skills. or confrontation. things that will actually help them grow as human beings. put them in situations where they can fall and try again. where you won t just take over because you can do it better. let them screw up and let them thigh again, you re there to support them. people aren t coming to your company to punch the clock? right. they want to get something out of it too. they want to grow, they want to be better versions of themselves. so my best lesson that i learned was from the best business person i knew, my mother. i always say the same about my mom. i was 17, started my first business, struggled every day. i would come home disappointed. and she looked at me, she said, stop chasing money, it runs really fast, go to the right thing, it will chase you. so it changed focus totally at that point and really focused on the customer instead of focusing on trying to make money. and just making the customer get that wow experience. and really listening and everything. so i think you have to, in a business, small business, as you get larger, it becomes tougher and tougher, youreally have to focus on the customer. a lot of people believe they do but they ll see they actually don t. not the way they do it on the first day they started business when they were desperate for every sale. so did you lose money, you think, as you were changing from chasing money to understanding the customer? did your revenue go like that? you know, to my surprise, when you take care of a customer, they always leave a little more behind than they needed to. so then they tell ten people about it. they come back because of you, not because of maybe the product you were selling. i was selling flowers. they could have gone to 30 different places but it was that spooeshs they would come back for the wedding, they d come back for all the other things. we stayed true to that but we tested to say, are we really true to that commitment to the customer? i think what you both say is don t cut corners. if you succeed by cutting corners with your employees, customers, it will get you here, but it will not get you here. it will eventually get you here. take care of the people inside, take care of the people outside, watch the business grow. your biz selfie come from the owners of s and s intimates in dearborn, michigan. they say they re about empowering women in the way they look and feel and this is the sexiest your biz selfie we ve had so far. pick up your cell phone and take a selfie of you in your business. send us to us at yourbusiness@msnbc.com. include the name, the name of your business, your location, and #yourbizselfie. thank you to all of you for joining us today. we love hearing from you, so if you have any questions or comments about the show, e-mail us at yourbusiness@msnbc.com. we read all of your e-mails. you can go to our website, openforum.com/yourbusiness. we posted all the segments from today s show plus a whole lot more. connect with us on digital and social media platforms as well. we look forward to seeing you next time. till then i m j.j. ramberg. remember, we make your business our business. will your business be ready when growth presents itself? 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