Electoral college in a landslide, trump has done this countless times before as a candidate but now hes less than two months from being sworn in as president on the steps of the u. S. Capitol. Thanks to the authority embodied in the office hes about to hold, he has the singular ability to legitimatize any claim no matter how destabilizing it may be, no matter its relations to the fact. In the current state of affairs calls Bush Administration officials dismiss the remark about a realitybased community which told the New York Times, were an empire now and when we act, we create our own reality. This was all precipitated by a strange turn of events over the thanksgiving holiday. Last week, new York Magazine reported that a group of election experts was encouraging Hillary Clinton to challenge the results in three key states. The states that constituted the margin of victory. Wisconsin, michigan and pennsylvania. Presenting evidence that clinton received 7 fewer votes in counties that relied on electronic Voting Machines compared with counties that used paper ballots. Now, theres a lot of reasons to think of why the results are consistent with tampering and the Clinton Campaign thought the same. They declined to take up the challenge. Well, enter green Party President ial candidate jill stein who launched a fundraiser to pay for recounts in the three key states, an effort thats been enormously successful. In under a week, shes managed to raise 6. 3 million, nearly double the 3. 5 million she raised over the entire campaign. There have been several red flags and increased her fundraising goal and upped the estimated fees for lawyers and recount observers. Additionally, we cannot guarantee a recount will happen in any of the states that we are targeting. Stein has filed for recounts and the process is set to begin this thursday when she plans to file paperwork in michigan this week. Over the weekend, amid the signs that the recount effort would move forward, a lawyer for the Clinton Campaign announced they had agreed to participate. Now, i want to be clear here about what this does and does not mean. It does not mean, as the New York Times headline put it, clintons team is joining steins recount effort. Let me quote the lawyers statement. We feel its important on principle to assure our campaign is legally represented in any Court Proceedings on the ground in order to monitor the recount process itself. In other words, if you had a choice, the clinton lawyers want to be present just like the trump camp which dispatched its own lawyers to observe the proceedings as well. But the clinton news set off a tirade of tweets from the president elect. Writing, the green party scam to fill up their coffers. Its not the recount efforts that have gotten under trumps skin. Election officials around the country are still counting ballots and in the three weeks since election day, Hillary Clintons popular vote margin has quietly grown to 2 million votes. 1. 7 . Its not small, by historical standards between the popular vote and Electoral College. Donald trump, a man who measures success and ratings and poll numbers, seems to have opted to go with different facts entirely. In addition to winning the Electoral College that is not true. There is no evidence to back up trumps claim. Washington post traced its origins back to Greg Phillips who tweeted, completed analysis of database of 180 million voter registrations. Noncitizen votes exceeds 3 million. Consulting legal team. A voter fraud activist phillip has yet to share any of his data. His tweets got picked up by infowar, the website run by conspiracy theorists and a 9 11 truther believes that was an inside job and believes the sandy hook massacre was staged. From there, it went to the top of the drudge report. Even drudge was skeptical enough to label it a claim, not a statement, of established fact. Good for drudge. Think about that trajectory for a moment from a random guys twitter feed to a pronouncement by the soon to be most powerful person in the world. Im joined by michael steele, a msnbc political analyst. Michael, do you ever worry about what the information inputs into the man who will be president are . I think yeah. You just kind of look at what the output is, sure. You do concern yourself with where the information is gathered. But this i find very fascinating about all of this and have for the last few days, is what are we talking about . Were talking about something thats not related to the conflict of interest issues. Were getting that, michael. Were getting that. Youre getting to that. But this is where the vast majority of the media has not been. Right. So a lot of this is what donald trump has been very expert at, is knowing his audience and knowing what rabbit holes he needs to create for the press to follow. You know, thats interesting. Im torn between two theories on this. I agree with you, right . That hes constructed this strange situation in which unlike other folks in his position, hes not had a press conference. Its fairly traditional. Barack obama came out that friday. It was tuesday election day and friday had a press conference. Hes got the tweets which he can throw out from like behind trump tower. Right. The other thing is, dont you also think that this is partly his i dont think its too strategic. It seems that he really does think that things are rigged against him. Its important to remind everyone that hes the winner. I think thats very true and theres a long history for that. I mean, again, you think about how this man has built empire. Its not been the easiest of things to do and hes always had to fight his way, you know, from his perspective of things to win. And so hes all about the win. The challenge that he now faces is that this is no longer about winning. This is about governing. And this is about putting in place the various pieces you need to do that and this becomes sort of the distraction for him and sort of pivot back to the good old days of tweets at 2 00 a. M. I think thats wellsaid. Hes also talking about he says virginia, new hampshire, california had serious voter fraud. Youve got republican officials in new hampshire. Hes saying thats absolutely not true, dont question the operation that is running in these states. It occurs to me that for all this has been effective and it has, the man got himself elected president of the United States. Its the case now that his Approval Rating is very low compared to other president elects and he does have some reaching out, it seems to me, to do to build up some Political Capital in advance of inauguration day. Well, it is low but it is rising. His negatives are coming down. His approval is going up. People like the way this transition has unfolded. They like to see these folks paraded, his property in new jersey, they like its very different. It captures their imagination. What have we done in the past . Weve waited for the president to stand in front of the flag and say, yeah, this is my secretary of state. Now theres drama, theres intrigue. This whole thing with Kellyanne Conway, who is the most loyal of loyalists among Donald Trumps loyalists, you really think that shes gone off the rails on her own . Come on. Thats a perfect example to me. All of the personal theatrics. Personally, i dont care one way or the other. You want to parade people forward, youre having infighting, thats fine. To me, the bigger problem is this kind of vindictive pettiness. Theres only so far that can play as president of the entire country. Whats the vindictive pettiness . Wheres that . In the tweet saying that 3 Million People voted illegally. Theres massive voter fraud in virginia and new hampshire. This sort of, i cant move on from the fact i won picking at the scab. Thats one interpretation. The other would be that theres nothing vindictive or petty about either of that rather its a narrative that he established a long time ago. But its not a true narrative, is the problem. And you were able to prove that during the election and the result was what . But wait a second, michael. Lets be clear youre telling the story. Youre taking up air time to talk about something you know is not true. Right. To say that its not true, right . But lets be clear, its important for us to agree across the ideological spectrum. Theres story narrative and political victories. He won the political victory. Those are detached from the world. We are not living in a post modern universe in which there are no facts and everything is constituted by i got that. You and i agree that there are things like gravity and if donald trump says theres no gravity, that doesnt mean that it goes away. Hes just wrong. I got you. I want to make sure we all keep touching the ground here. But keep youre touching the ground with a different pair of shoes each time and thats what donald trump likes. He likes putting on a different pair of shoes for you each time. So sometimes you feel the ground, you know its real. Other times, you have to look down to make sure. Right. But theres something its always going to make you look down. Even if you could descriptively admire that, this reality distorting, you can say its been effective as political rhetoric, theres something deeply if he comes out with a tweet and says nancy pelosi knew about the attack in absence of evidence, thats terrifying and lord knows if hes on infowars. Thats an extreme that i dont think donald trump would go to because that then opens up a whole series of doors that he doesnt want to open. The question is 3 Million People voted illegally. To your point, thats the closest hes ever come to opening that door and realized very quickly just how problematic it was to open it. Michael steele, appreciate it. You got it, buddy. Joining me now is bob garfield, editor at large at media post. I want you to take a look at the wall street journal front page today which embodies a problem here, right. People are not used to president elect being able to single handedly make a claim that has an authority. Trump takes aim at millions of votes and then you realize this is baseless fabrication. Yeah, weve got two problems here, chris. We have the problem that the president elect is still running a campaign and hes running it like an 8yearold boy and he is you know, he doesnt care about the truth or doesnt know the truth. Its just hard to tell. And then theres the way the media cover him, which is to kind of equivocate or at least be in the way it describes his troublesome relationship with facts. Some papers and some news organizations said it was a false claim, which is good. And others kind of softpedalled it and, you know, we saw that through the entire campaign. Things got better in terms of Media Coverage towards the end of the campaign. But were not as an institution off to a running start in dealing with the first president of the United States who lies routinely and i think daily as a part of his political strategy. Yeah. And i think its part of it is this reality distortion that to me is a broader and or difficult issue. People say things like alex jones can say 3 Million People voted illegally. Its not the case with someone with an implied authority as president elect of the United States, when that person says a thing, suddenly the claim has to be even if debunked, it takes on an authority. Yes. And it has consequences. That has consequences. For our allies, for our adversaries, for the other branches of government and, of course, let us not forget the citizens of the United States of america. He either doesnt grasp that or doesnt care. And this is all happening, chris, at a time in our technological history when we are living in, you know, as americans, 330 million individual echo chambers and those echo chambers are served and guaranteed by social media which just feed us more and more and more of what we have expressed interest of in the past. One of the problems with Media Coverage of trumps lies is that it hardly matters. Right. Because the people who get it and we at the Mainstream Media get the straight dope but half the media is getting their information from other sources, none credible. And the convergence of the socially mediated world and an unprecedentedly dishonest president have put us in this crazy nightmare inside of an outrage inside of an apocalypse. Yeah. Its nuts. It is nuts. It feels to me when i saw that tweet, i felt like, i am watching its like i feel like im watching a society or body of politic commit epistemic suicide. Its like im watching dementia set in where the sheer force of the power of that office means that kind of the fog of untruth can be ushered in single handedly and even if people read the debunking and say its not 3 Million People, its like you stop caring whats real and not real at a certain point. Im glad you said that because it takes two for a lie to work, the liar and the person willing to accept it. Right now we have about half the population who is who have been conditioned, conditioned, one might even say brainwashed to close to 50 years of rightwing media which has characterized, demonized Mainstream Media and characterized it as unpatriotic and unamerican and grossly misogynistic and islamic phobic and xenophobic terms and has allowed half of our population to bathe in sort of a humiliation and i use that term advisedly because some of us are nervously paying attention to germany and seeing where the parallels are. The humiliation that i think is strikingly parallel to the humiliation to the germans and the treaty of versailles and they have had to put up with Marriage Equality and civil rights and miranda warnings, the whole social justice agenda of the left which has expanded even as the politics have gone right. They are mad. They are enraged and theyve been told to believe that everything from Mainstream Media is a lie. Is a lie. Trump is benefiting from that fairly well. I tend to stay away from that for a variety reasons but one of the most upsetting moments in the entire campaign was a man shouting the nazi german term for lying press. Thank you, chris. Still to come, donald trump putting the one president at a time rules the test as he tweets about cuba after Fidel Castros death. And you have to hear this quote because of Business Holdings in foreign countries. Thats coming up in two minutes. When coughing keeps your family awake. Breathe easier with vicks vaporub. Soothing cough relief that starts working instantly. He wears his army hat, he gets awalks aroundliments. With his army shirt looking all nice. And then people just say, thank you for serving our country and im like, thats my dad. Male vo no one deserves a warmer welcome home. Thats why were hiring 10,000 members of the military community by the end of 2017. Im very proud of him. Male vo comcast. During a president ial campaign, donald trump took to the radio interview with Breitbart News hosted by then chairman steve bannon, now incoming chief white house strategist for donald trump. At one point bannon asked about turkeys role and trump responded with a rather stark admission about his own Business Concerns. What do you do with turkey . Is turkey a reliable partner . Well, i also have a little conflict of interest because i have a major, major building in istanbul and its a tremendously successful job. Its called trump towers, two towers instead of one. Not the usual one. Its two. One of the first foreign heads of state to call trump after his election was turkeys president erdogan. During that phone call, trump mentioned one of his turkish Business Partners is a close friend and passed on remarks that hes your great admirer. This is just one example of a far, far larger issue. The vast list of trump Business Concerns to influence his decisions he makes as president. In a story yesterday in the New York Times highlighted it this way. Potential conflicts around the globe for trump, the businessman president. Joining me now is eric lipton. Eric, lets start with the turkey project. First of all, its remarkable to me to listen to trump respond to a question about turkey by saying specifically i have a conflict of interest. But also the fact that this is an ongoing project and if youre looking to say curry favor with a president of the United States, you know, looking up his Development Partner would seem like a natural vector to do that. Right. Well, they are probably looking for trump in this situation is he has been hes going to be asked to take positions relative to turkey, relative to its role in syria or fighting isis and at the same time he has a business relationship there that is potentially going to be in his mind as hes contemplating these things which hes admitted himself. For example, when he was first suggesting that there should be a ban on muslims entering the United States, the president of the turkey said perhaps his name should be taken off of the mall that hes built there or his partners have built there and more recently hes been complementary of the cracking down of descent so the calls for the removal of his name descended. What factors are in his head when hes making these choices . There is great reporting on the philippines, you could write a whole book about what is going on there right now. Talk about what the business situation is there and who has been selected as a philippine envoy. Heres a case of pending Foreign Policy issues relative to human rights and relative to military bases there and trumps Business Partner in the philippines in october was selected as the official philippines envoy to the United States. So at the same time as he is trumped Business Partner, hes a Government Official in the philippines. So and they are talking about doing projects beyond the one that they have already built outside of manila. What will trumps position be . How aggressive is he going to be in terms of pressing the philippines on human rights. If his Business Partner is the envoy to the United States. We should be clear here, the context is that the philippines under duterte who is the populist authoritarian figure there has launched this very savage war on drugs, the u. S. Government trying to ratchet back its support on the war on drugs there. This is a hot, front of mind issue between the two countries at this moment. It is. The state department is very critical of the killings going on in the philippines and what will a president who has a Business Partner who is the envoy from that country do when faced is he going to challenge his Business Partner or is he going to take a more sort of laid back approach . And the final point that i think came across in the article, youre talking about building in saudi arabia or turkey or the philippines. This is place where is in any environment theres huge regulatory hurdles. In a place where the regulatory state is compromised by patronage and corruption, its possible that theres a quid pro quo that develops where you need things from the sitting government in order to get it through independent of donald trump but those are some of the environments in which hes operating. The biggest problem is not that trump or his organization will ask for special favors, i think. Its that the governments may ask them these special favors without them even asking if they think there may be a way to engender goodwill from the white house and maybe well get a more military assistance, give them the best land that we could build this new skyscraper on and theres no way that he can stop that other than to not own these assets that they can give free gifts to. Eric lipton from the times, thank you. The president elect is skipping secure briefings and chris murphy of the Foreign Relations committee is here with his reaction, ahead. Police say an 18yearold freshman drove his car through a group of people and brandished a knife. The suspect is dead. Joining us live from Ohio State University in columbus is kevin tibbles. Kevin, what do we know . Reporter what we know is that this all happened, it all went down in about a minute and a half, two minutes time. The young man, 18 years old. His family came here as refugees from somalia. Hes a student at the school. He drove his car over the curb into the engineering area which is right behind me here at osu. He ran into a number of people and then got out and started to stab people and within a minute a Campus Police officer who was nearby arrived and shot the young man dead. Now, there is no word as of yet as to what the motive here is. Pete williams from nbc has told us through his contacts at the fbi that a motive is still a long way off perhaps, although of course many people are starting to make the connection between religion and what went on here. This evening, there are a number of Memorial Services taking place on campus and one of the pastors has said to us that no religion could have had anything to do with what happened here. It was an act of hate and religion had nothing to do with it. Chris, back to you. Kevin tibbles, thank you. Thank the lord more people were not killed. Remember the Electoral College this weekend resigned instead of voting for trump. In a strange coincidence today as cuba began its formal mourning period for fidel castro, there were scenes like this at several american airports. Those are the pilots of American Airlines flight holding u. S. And cuban flags marking the first day of regularly scheduled commercial flights from america to cuba since 1961. Opening travel between the two nations is part of the diplomatic thaw initiated by president obama two years ago, something which is now in jeopardy. Today, trump said, if cuba is unwilling to make a better deal for the cuban people, the cubanamerican people and the u. S. As a whole, i will terminate deal. Trump is sending a clear signal that the future relationship with cuba is unknown. We do know the president elect has held dozens of diplomatic calls with foreign leaders but doing so without guidance from the state department or u. S. Intelligence officials. Trump has attended only two Intelligence Briefings in the two weeks since election day. Vice president elect pence has received briefings nearly every day. Asked about the report yesterday, Trumps Campaign manager Kellyanne Conway would not discuss how many briefings hes had but said this. So he is receiving classified Intelligence Briefings and the president elect is also receiving information through his personal and on the phone meetings with over whats now 41 world leaders. Joining me now, chris murphy, member of the senate Foreign Relations committee. Let me talk with you about the topic of cuba in the wake of Fidel Castros death, whats your reaction to that sort of what seemed to be a warning shot from the president elect . Well, in general what petrifies me is were about to transcend into a world of 140 characters. That may work well for a Campaign Environment in which you can spark up Media Coverage with a quick tweet but thats not how youre going to keep a country safe. I hope if he starts attending these briefings on americas role in the world, what he will find is that our entire influence, our entire role in central and south america is predicated upon this continued thawing of relations with cuba. Its not just about resetting a relationship with cuba and recognizing that half a century of isolationism didnt work. Its also about recognizing that the work that weve done in, lets say places like guatemala and el salvador to try to stem the tide of illegal immigration from those countries into the United States is predicated upon this warming of relationships with the cuban government, which has opened our ability to talk to others in the region who were very upset about that policy of isolation. So 140 characters cant describe the impact that a new shutdown of relations with cuba would have on americas broader security interests in central and south america. You mentioned the Intelligence Briefings. Its one of the odder details weve encountered in this transition period. It just seems to me, if for so other reason than curiosity, hey, you get to listen to Intelligence Briefings, id say, sure, lets do them every day. Im curious to what folks have to say. Make of it what you will. What do you make of it twice if two weeks when the president elect is doing it every day . First, im going to take all of these reports with a grain of salt. Fair enough. But lets assume that its true. First, you know, these briefings are not threehour briefings. It doesnt ruin your day to take in about half an hour to an hour of intelligence material. And second, what it may suggest is that he is going to outsource a lot of National Security decisions to others, which then would leave us concerned for other positions like secretary of state. The two names have no history, no experience in diplomacy. Our new u. N. Ambassador seems to be a thoughtful person, nikki haley. But shes never represented the United States abroad. So if youre not going to attend the Intelligence Briefings, if youre going to outsource the briefings, lets make sure your National Security cabinet have people who have spent a good portion of their lifetime making and thinking about these kinds of big decisions. Do you wonder also about the vector of Foreign Policy in america . In some ways, there were things that Vice President or president elect donald trump seemed very clear about, he clearly wants to have a closer coordination with russia and syria, to essentially support assad and go after isis. Thats one item on which he seems clear. Everything else seems a black box but i wonder, from your perch, do you feel like you have a better sense or your republican colleagues on your committee . I have no idea what trumps Foreign Policy is going to be. I think youve described it in previous shows as a black box. At some point it will be revealed. Youre right. The one thing we think we know is that he wants to cozy up to russia. At the same time, mitt romney, who apparently is being considered for secretary of state, said that russia is the number one enemy of the United States. He seemed to, during the campaign, to try to distance himself from the iraq war and today he was celebrating a meeting with David Petraeus who is the personification. Petraeus is smart guy but hes not going to come in and flip your paradigm in the middle east. Its incredibly unclear and has our allies completely vexed. This Administration May be a series of flipflops and wavering on Foreign Policy that would put a lot of americans across the globe in great jeopardy. Senator chris murphy, thank you for your time. Appreciate it. Thanks. How minority of voters in america put donald trump over 300 electoral votes. And thing 1 and thing 2, the man who interviewed with a job with donald trump today. Thats next. The first rule of being a viking. Is that teamwork is important. Remember to do the little things. Help each other out. And the second rule of being a viking. Theres more than one way to win. Vikings war of clans play free now. She was so guilty, i have a list. Look. Page after page of the lies. Page after page, the lies. All over. Look at this. Page, page. It was all lies, folks. I dont have to go through and bore everybody. It was so horrible. It was so disgusting. It was so outrageous, you look at general petraeus, look what happened to him for a tiny fraction of what crooked hillary did. Thing 1. It was a favorite rift of then candidate trump except it wasnt true. As the fbi director told congress, Hillary Clinton did not lie to the fbi or break the law which is one of the reasons why they didnt recommend prosecution for her. Unlike another highprofile administration official, director comey highlighted this summer of the Hillary Clintons case. In that case, you had vast quantities of highly classified information, including special sensitive compartment code words, not only shared it with somebody who didnt have an authority to have it but found it during a search warrant in his attic. You have intentional misconduct and vast quantity of information. He admitted that he knew that was the wrong thing to do. Thats the kind of cases in my mind that illustrates importantly the distinction to this case. The classified information was found in a desk, not the attic. But youll never guess whos desk, not attic, and what that person was doing in trump tower this afternoon. Can you guess . Thats thing 2 in 60 seconds. One of the very familiar names for secretary of state is general petraeus, who as you may recall, nearly went to jail after he gave his lover biographer access to highly classified black books that contained full code words, spy names and obama briefings. The fbi confronted him about it in 2012 and he lied. General petraeus then resigned from the cia and later pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor avoiding a felony. General petraeus is now under consideration for, drum roll, secretary of state. Earlier today he arrived at trump tower to meet the president elect. I was with him for about an hour. He basically walked us around the world and grasped reality of the challenges that are out there and some of the opportunities that are out there as well. So a very good conversation and well see where it goes from here. Moments after the meeting ended, trump took to twitter to proclaim himself very impressed by a man who actually did what trump accused clinton of doing, deliberately and knowingly mishandling classified information now in the running for Hillary Clintons old job under donald trump, secretary of state. A republican texas elector, one of the people whose members of the archaic structure called the Electoral College is resigning. His Statement Reads in part, since i cant in good conscience vote for donald trump and made a pledge that i would, the best option is to resign as my position as an elector. The people will get their vote, their skittles for dinner. I will sleep well at night knowing i neither gave in to their demands nor caved to my convictions and mourn the loss of our republic. Heavy stuff. As Hillary Clintons lead in a popular vote continues to mount, the Electoral College put in part is now ratifying the will of a minority of voters and it is just one of several institutions that have brought it up as unchartered territory we have now entered of minority rule. The Electoral College by republican controlled statehouses, the peculiarities of the u. S. Senate have combined to give us beginning january 20th republican control across basically all branches of the federal government even though nationally governments have gotten more votes. As america heads towards a demographic future, in which white people will no longer be the majority, the really frightening thing to contemplate is what structures will be erected to direct the nations affairs. When we return, a prelude to the massive Voter Suppression and allies about to unleash. Dont go away. 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 longterm 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. When the president elect falsely tweets about millions of people who voted illegally, theres cause for alarm. His lies about the prevalence of voter fraud are a prelude to the massive Voter Suppression trump about to unleash unlike his democratic and republican predecessors, trump has little respect for the institutions that preserve democracy. Joining me now is ari and christina greer. And so we have seen as a predicate this rampup of gop assault on Voting Rights, obstacles to the franchise. What do you see coming now and what do you base that on . Well, its going to get very, very ugly. Trump has control of the presidency, republicans control the congress and half of the states in the country with with oneparty rule and they are going to go after what is left of the Voting Rights act at the department of justice and be very aggressive and try to purge the voting rules and launch investigations into voting registration groups. Were going to see efforts nationalize what republicans have done in states, so federal voter i. D. Laws, federal proof of citizenship laws. This could make it harder for millions of people to be able to vote already on top of the efforts that have already existing on top of Voter Suppression. Christine, there seems to be two things happening one is there is a history of suspicion of an overly broad franchise among conservatives, the world over, right . Right. The other is sort of were seeing it play out right now, which is numerically the Democratic Coalition lost under the rules it lost and you can imagine a political system that erects more and more ways to preserve and imbed. Its a multiprong approach. You want to get rid of potential voters and call them illegals but these are people who will possibly become citizens so you want to actually deport them. And its also about early voting. Thats huge in a lot of communities and even Early Registration for 17yearolds or motor voter laws so people can register while at the dmv. If voting didnt really matter, republicans wouldnt really care. When we think back to the lbj, its a triangle of acts that he put forth as a Progressive Democratic policy. We can see this new Republican Party systematically trying to slant the acts all together. And we should be clear, this is entirely this is speculation. Kris kobach, sort of one of the most aggressive sort of prosecutors of this kind of agenda, you know, met with donald trump and hes being considered, we think, for various positions. He had a top sheet that he came out with that spelled out some of this stuff. Well, we know who is around him. Its like the three horsemen of the apocalypse. Steve bannon, jeff sessions, kris kobach, basically the voter suppressor in chief in kansas. The fact that kobach has Voting Rights on a list of priorities for the department of Homeland Security is chilling. Hes used it as a threat. Your steve bannon reference comes from the New York Times profile in which bannon talked about the genetic superiority of people and it would exclude a lot of africanamericans and mrs. Jones said maybe thats not a bad thing. Its a recalled conversation. The Electoral College is part of the southern the grand southern slave holder bet compromise, right, but it now confers an advantage on republicans fairly clearly and thats because of the rural urban divide. Theres no way were going to get rid of any incentive for a vote because its now preserving something that we can imagine even growing wider than what we have right now. Right. And twice in 16 years where we have the popular vote saying one thing and Electoral College saying another is a fundamental shift we have not seen before. We saw it one time in our history. Now it could be a more common occurrence but its really, unfortunately, so divisive. We can see if this experiment actually works out. As a political scientist, i really worry about not just demographic trends but as we have more people disenfranchise, citizens disenfranchise and we havent talked about the state yet and the privatization of prison stock goes up with the donald trump election, that also lets us know that on the state level were going to see other states trying to advocate to make sure that formerly incarcerated citizens never get the franchise again. We know that black and latinos are more affected and we know it will probably usher a lot more black and latino individuals into that. And the final piece of this, the Supreme Court vacancy, we can confident or fairly confident that the views of the Voting Rights act will not be in line with the liberals under trump. When republicans said they wanted to take us back to the 1950s, this is what it means. No Voting Rights act, no civil rights act, no fair housing act. Thats what were facing right now. Its a serious crisis to our democracy. Thats all we have time for this evening. Christina, ari, thank you. The Rachel Maddow show is now. 16 years ago, this man set a record. He ran for a seat in the United States senate 16 years ago and he lost that race, which is why you probably dont recognize him. But in the course of losing that race that year, he did set a record. And this was the record that he set. He spent more money losing a u. S. Senate race than anyone had ever spent losing a u. S. Senate seat ever before. Whoo and his name was rick lazio. And the person he lost to in that senate race in the year 2000 was somebody you will recognize, Hillary Clinton. 2000. That was the first year Hillary Clinton ran for the United States senate from new york state. She beat rick lazio badly. She clobbered him by 12 points. Over the course of that campaign, he spent himself into oblivion. He outspent her by a mile. He outspent her by Something Like she spent 29 million and he spent 40 million. He ended up millions of dollars in debt and he lost and he lost by a lot and he had to give up