Show: THE LAST WORD WITH LAWRENCE O`DONNELL Date: December 1, 2016 Guest: Joy Reid, Elise Jordan, Robert Reich, Jim Vandehei, Sam Stein, Ana Marie Cox, Joy Reid, Elise Jordan
RACHEL MADDOW, MSNBC: Three years ago, the Congress would have to -- legal, wrinkle with that, because there`s a federal law that says we`ve got civilian control of the military.
You can`t be Secretary of Defense if you were on active duty any time within the last seven years.
General Mattis only retired three years ago, the Congress would have to pass a waiver to that law in order to approve him for that job.
We`ve got a little bit of breaking news right at the end of the show tonight. Democratic U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand from New York, she`s on the Armed Services Committee.
She has just put out a statement saying "while I deeply respect General Mattis` service, I will oppose a waiver.
Civilian control of our military is a fundamental principle of American democracy, and I will not vote for an exception to this rule."
We`ll see if that catches on, but that could be a big deal for a really big nomination. That does it for us tonight, we will see you again tomorrow, now it`s time for THE LAST WORD with Lawrence O`Donnell, good evening, Lawrence.
LAWRENCE O`DONNELL, HOST, THE LAST WORD: Thanks, Rachel, you know what? Congress, I think, as you know, I`m sure voted for one exception to this rule in 1950.
And when they did, they said, this better never happen again.
MADDOW: Right, they basically said -- sounds like a signing statement, saying --
O`DONNELL: Yes --
MADDOW: We`re doing this now, but it should never --
O`DONNELL: Right --
MADDOW: Happen again, well, it will be tested --
O`DONNELL: Once and only once for George Marshall, that was it --
MADDOW: That`s right, thanks, Lawrence --
O`DONNELL: Thank you very much, Rachel.
MADDOW: Yes --
O`DONNELL: Well, Donald Trump made news tonight announcing his choice for Defense Secretary.
And as Rachel just pointed out, the only problem is, there is actually a law in place that prevents Donald Trump`s choice from becoming Defense Secretary.
Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich will join us tonight to talk about the jobs that Donald Trump claims that he saved today in Indiana.
And the jobs in the very same factory in Indiana that are still scheduled to move to Mexico in complete defiance of Donald Trump`s powers of persuasion. But first, a look at Donald Trump`s first post-election rally tonight.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT-ELECT OF THE UNITED STATES: What are we going to do? We`re going to make America great again, you watch. Although we did have a lot of fun fighting Hillary, didn`t we?
(CHEERS)
We won in a landslide, that was a landslide. There`s no way that Donald Trump can break the blue wall, right?
We didn`t break it, we shattered that sucker.
(LAUGHTER)
We shattered.
(CHEERS)
They don`t know that Hillary lost a couple of weeks ago.
(LAUGHTER)
They forgot. Do you agree with my stance that if people burn the American flag, there should be consequences. Are we doing a good job with our cabinet and our people?
(CHEERS)
Named a billionaire at Commerce. Well, that`s because this guy knows how to make money, folks.
(LAUGHTER)
We are going to appoint "Mad Dog" Mattis as our Secretary of Defense. Today, we have only 12.3 million manufacturing jobs left in the Rust Belt.
We`re going to bring them back. We`re going to bring them back. Anything we want for our country is now possible.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O`DONNELL: It is impossible to imagine Donald Trump ever reading all well, he has after all confessed to not being a book reader.
But Donald Trump`s presidency now promises to be flawlessly Orwellian. Donald Trump knows something that no president before him has ever known, because for no president before Donald Trump has it ever been true.
What Donald Trump knows is if he says it, then it is true. Meaning, it is true to Donald Trump voters, and it also means that it is at least partially true to most of the American news media.
And so when Donald Trump goes to Indiana today to congratulate a company that is moving 1,300 jobs to Mexico against Donald Trump`s wishes, he says he is there because the company has agreed not to move an additional 800 jobs to Mexico.
And so, Donald Trump calls that a victory and pundits on cable news say it`s a victory, and headlines will say that Donald Trump saved jobs in Indiana.
And somewhere down in the body of most of the news stories written about this, there will be reporting on the number of jobs that the company is still moving to Mexico, very much against Donald Trump`s wishes.
Donald Trump made an effort to stop over 2,000 jobs from going to Mexico, and he failed. Thirteen hundred of those jobs are going to Mexico.
Donald Trump got about 40 percent of what he was trying to get in that deal. And if you get 40 percent right on an exam, you get a failing grade.
Today, Donald Trump gave himself an `A` for getting 40 percent. And Donald Trump supporters are probably giving him an `A`-plus.
It`s true because he says it`s true. He tells don`t matter, facts don`t matter. Hillary Clinton got a 2.5 million more votes than Donald Trump.
But he told his supporters tonight at a rally in Ohio that he won a landslide. He used that word landslide, in that room it was true.
It was a landslide. Donald Trump won in a landslide because Donald Trump said he won in a landslide.
We have never been here before in our politics -- never. Tonight, Donald Trump said he`s going to bring our manufacturing jobs back from foreign countries.
And his audience believed him. No one at the rally yelled out a question about when he`s going to bring back those neck-tie-making jobs from China.
The place where Donald Trump has his gaudy line of neck-ties made, because he does not want to pay even the minimum wage to American workers to make those neck-ties.
Even though the United States of America has dozens of neck-tie factories. Donald Trump did make news tonight at his rally when he confirmed something already reported in the "Washington Post".
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: I will not tell you that one of our great generals --
(CHEERS)
Don`t let it outside, right? And of course the press is very honest, they`ll never let this go.
Even though it`s all live, they`ve got about seven stations live. We are going to appoint --
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes! --
TRUMP: "Mad Dog" Mattis --
(CHEERS)
As our Secretary of Defense. But we`re not announcing it until Monday, so don`t tell anybody.
(LAUGHTER)
"Mad Dog", he is great. He is great.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O`DONNELL: Retired General James Mattis does have another nickname, "Warrior Monk" because he is a lifetime bachelor.
When you give Donald Trump a choice of nicknames, "Mad Dog" or "Warrior Monk", which one do you think he picks?
Probably we`ll have a difficult road ahead for Senate confirmation, because it is, as I said against the law for a Secretary of Defense to have served in the military in the previous seven years.
There`s actually been one exception to that law since it was first enacted in 1947. And that was for General George C. Marshall who was appointed in 1950.
And when the Congress made that exception, they included in the bill a line about how this exception should never, ever be granted again.
Saying "it was the sense of the Congress that after General Marshall leaves the office of Secretary of Defense, no additional appointments of military men to that office shall be approved."
Civilian control of the military is one of the principles of our government, hence the prohibition on recent military veterans serving as Defense Secretary.
New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand who is a member of the committee that will handle the confirmation of the Defense Secretary said tonight that she was opposed to legislating an exception for General Mattis.
Joining us now, Joy Reid, Msnbc national correspondent, she is the host of "A.M. JOY" which airs weekends on Msnbc.
Also with us, Sam "Mad Dog" Stein --
SAM STEIN, SENIOR POLITICS EDITOR, THE HUFFINGTON POST: No --
O`DONNELL: Sam --
STEIN: "Warrior Monk" Stein --
O`DONNELL: Sam, the monk guy --
(LAUGHTER)
Sam, the monk guy, senior politics editor --
STEIN: This is starting well --
O`DONNELL: At the "Huffington Post", at "Huffington Post" and Msnbc contributor, and Ana Marie Cox; senior -- the esteemed senior political correspondent for "MTV" --
(LAUGHTER)
ANA MARIE COX, SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, MTV NEWS: Mad cat --
O`DONNELL: For --
COX: Mad kitty --
O`DONNELL: For "MTV News". Joy, where to begin? So, the rallies have started. The --
JOY REID, MSNBC NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes --
O`DONNELL: Guy who won with rallies is now back on the rally stage which - - where he calls home.
REID: Yes, and you know, I have expected him to, you know, regale the crowd about how he saved the NFL by completely failing in the U.S. -- its football league.
Or how he saved Delta Airlines by buying the eastern shuttle, and then destroying it and having to get rid of it, and thereby opening up the eastern corridor between New York and D.C. and making Delta more profitable.
I mean, you know, it`s really remarkable the way Donald Trump spins failure. And to your point, I`m really glad you said it.
Because he doesn`t talk, anything he tweets becomes reality for much of the media, which is credulously reports whatever he says as if it was true.
So, the carrier deal which is, you know, part of what he went to tout today is exactly as you explained it.
The removal of 1,300 jobs, not just those 1,300, but carrier has another facility not that far away that`s also moving to Mexico.
So, you know, he was able to spin that, and then this idea that he`s doing this thank you tour, and he goes to one of the parts of Ohio that he lost.
So, he wasn`t even in the part of Ohio that he won. So, I mean, the ability of this guy to spin failure, and for his supporters to drink in, no matter what he says as if it was the absolute gospel truth.
I guess you have to call it remarkable.
O`DONNELL: I`m going to make "Mad Dog" stew a little bit here while I -- while I go to Ana --
STEIN: Warrior Monk.
REID: Because I -- the beard, the beard is the warrior monk thing.
O`DONNELL: Ana Marie, this problem that we have in the coverage which is as Joy put it out, Donald Trump can just tweet that he is saving jobs in Indiana, and there will be a headline certainly online instantly.
And a lot of the TV screens will have something quoting him, it will be in quotes, you know, Donald Trump saving jobs.
But that`s the message that gets delivered out there. And the inside of that story is something that never gets the same exposure as whatever Donald Trump decides the headline is. Because Donald Trump is now writing these headlines, not the media.
COX: And how do you even keep up, right? I mean, like how do you decide which -- if you`re going to put lie in the headline, how do you decide which lie to put, right?
I mean, because there were many in that speech. You know, hundreds of thousands of refugees pouring into our borders?
There are less than a 100,000, actually, as I`m sure everyone on the panel knows. The fact that there`s a crime wave, there`s no crime wave.
In fact, crime is mostly down, except in some cities, it`s true. I found this speech, I mean, we can laugh about it, and there are parts of it that are absurd.
But in the end, I am -- I am terrified, quite frankly. I mean, I think that he is laying out the kinds of language and the kinds of policies that, you know, that lead to a police state.
I mean, he`s talking about an invisible crime wave, he`s talking about putting people in jail for expressing their first constitution -- their First Amendment rights.
He`s talking about the press being untrustworthy. You know, it`s a fact of fascism to traffic in this kind of lies.
To make the truth unclear, to say that there is no truth, to make the truth something that you fight about. That is something that happens in undemocratic states. That`s how undemocratic states happen.
As absurd as this all is, I really don`t want to lose sight of the fact that there are very serious consequences for losing our grip on reality.
O`DONNELL: Yes, then, that`s a very important note introducing to these discussions is that Trump will always say things that are absurd.
And in our discussion of them, we`re going to smile, and we`re going to laugh at certain moments.
By the way, you can`t go to an Irish wake without seeing smiles and laughter. It`s a way of dealing with grim situations.
But Sam, that is one of the challenges here, is balancing everything about this coverage, including the tone.
STEIN: Sure, and I think the most important thing that was said all day today actually came in the appearance he gave at the carrier plant. Where he was explaining why it was that he felt he had to go back and make this deal.
And the explanation that he said was that, when he was on the trail, he was talking about saving this plant, he didn`t think he was speaking literally.
He actually said this, he said --
(LAUGHTER)
I never actually meant that I was going to do this, and then I guess some light bulb went off on top of his head, and he realized that he had made this promise, and that he did go --
O`DONNELL: Well, he actually said he saw it on Lester Holt`s -- he didn`t mention Lester Holt`s show.
But he saw it on the evening news someone talking about it in Indiana, thinking that Donald Trump was going to save the plant --
STEIN: And so --
O`DONNELL: And that made him think maybe he should try.
STEIN: And so, I thought about this a lot, and I guess if you`re an optimist, you can look at that and you can say, OK, well, he`s up there and he`s making stuff up about crime and refugees and he doesn`t believe it.
O`DONNELL: Right --
STEIN: He doesn`t speak literally. But then I looked at it another way, which is that if you speak unilaterally, if you are spreading falsities and you get people`s hopes up, and then you have to after that go and do policies to make sure that you don`t let these people down --
O`DONNELL: Right --
STEIN: Which is what happened in Cairo(ph) --
O`DONNELL: Right --
STEIN: Then you`ll lead yourself into truly bad policies --
O`DONNELL: Right.
STEIN: And I think that`s what I`m trying to figure out where the Trump presidency is going to go --
O`DONNELL: Well, sure, so, for example, he doesn`t really mean that he wants to ban Muslims for example from entering the country.
But he said it --
COX: Yes --
O`DONNELL: And he saw a guy on TV saying he said it --
STEIN: Yes --
REID: Yes --
O`DONNELL: So, now he better do it.
REID: Well, and here`s the other thing that`s going on, sort of behind the scenes of all of this.
You have -- if you go back and remember when there was the story that Donald Trump`s son went to John Kasich; the governor of Ohio --
O`DONNELL: Yes --
REID: And said, you know, if you will be Trump`s VP, you`ll be running everything, he`s just going to go around the country making America great again.
I think what you saw today was sort of the real living out of what is probably going to be the default way the Trump administration operates.
Donald Trump didn`t actually do anything, Mike Pence --
O`DONNELL: Yes --
REID: The current, sitting governor of Indiana, simply handed over millions of dollars in Indiana state tax credits and tax breaks to Carrier in order to temporarily -- we don`t even know what the terms of it are.
O`DONNELL: Right --
REID: Are they going to lose their health insurance? Who --
O`DONNELL: Right --
REID: You know, how do they choose who gets to say -- who gets to -- we don`t need that.
Mike Pence did the actual deal that legalize bribe. This sort of we`ll keep your stadium in our city, please don`t move it to another city deal.
Well, Donald Trump goes around the country, "Making America great again".
But because of the Bannon wing is a bit sidelined in terms of -- at least from what we`re seeing from the outside looking in.
The Pence wing is picking whatever billionaires they want to, you know, execute the tax cuts and the corporate tax cuts for their friends.
But the Trump wing, the Bannonite wing still needs something to do. Well, what does Donald Trump like to do?
That`s to go to rallies --
O`DONNELL: Yes --
REID: He likes to receive the love and adulation of his fans. But when he does that, he`s liable to go off within the prompter, and start saying the things that make him happy.
The things that bring him joy -- "build the wall", "lock her up", he gets them whipped up.
But then he -- Pence is married to somehow executing those policies. I don`t think there`s almost any limit to what Trump fans will believe and what they`ll accept --
O`DONNELL: Right --
REID: And what they`ll go along with. But at some point, what he`s saying at those rallies, some of that has got to happen.
O`DONNELL: Yes, he just needs 49 more governors to do this before. I just want to -- before we -- before we break this segment, I want to go to one thing that may become a perennial in these Trump speeches.
And that is about flag burning. Let`s listen to what he said about it tonight.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: You know, a lot of the people that protested, we said, did you vote? No, I didn`t vote.
They don`t vote. They never vote. And do you agree with my stance that if people burn the American flag --
(CHEERS)
There should be consequences?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O`DONNELL: Now, a crowd that size, there might be a few VFW members in it, veterans of foreign wars.
I just happen to have the VFW guidelines for disposal of flags. First of all, they would like you to fold it in the customary manner, that makes perfect sense.
And then they want the fire to be large enough and sufficient enough in intensity to ensure complete burning of the flag.
That is a quotation from the VFW manual on how to dispose of a flag. The only honorable way to do it is to burn it, which non-veteran doesn`t seem to know, Sam Stein, and I think --
STEIN: That was a nice -- that was a good bit of research you got there.
O`DONNELL: I think we`re going to be -- I think we`re going to be hearing this for a while.
STEIN: Well, this is such a funny thing, too, and it says a lot about Trump, which is apparently, this whole crusade happened because he saw a segment on "Fox & --
O`DONNELL: Yes --
STEIN: Friends" at 6:25 --
O`DONNELL: Same --
STEIN: In the morning --
O`DONNELL: Your point again --
STEIN: And you know, if this is how you get your --
O`DONNELL: Yes --
STEIN: Ideas from cable news, unless it`s this show of course --
O`DONNELL: Yes --
STEIN: I feel like that`s not a really smart way to go about governing.
Now, I also think it says a lot about what he likes to do, which is in addition to having these rallies and tweeting and all that stuff.
Is, he really loves to have some sort of cause, some sort of crusade, something to be agitated about and to whip people up in a frenzy. And there`s nothing you do than these sort of proxy culture war battles like flag burning.
And so, I think this is going to be sort of a four-year thing where every now and then, we`ll have this thing that we`re supposed to be mad about that really has no broader pertinence to American society.
O`DONNELL: Sam, the thoughtful monk Stein --
STEIN: Yes --
O`DONNELL: Gets the last word in this segment. Sam, thank you for joining us tonight --
STEIN: Thank you --
O`DONNELL: I really appreciate it. Coming up, Hillary Clinton`s vote total grows after a big shift of votes in the Pennsylvania count.
And as he showed tonight, Donald Trump not only is bothered by it, is forced to completely lie about it. Also coming up, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich on the Trump deal with Carrier.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: We have a Congress that`s going to go along with things. And I think a lot of Democrats are going to join the train, if you want to know the truth.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Have you talked to many?
TRUMP: People -- yes, I have. We`re going to have a lot of Democrats joining us on a lot of these things, maybe even healthcare.
But so many of the things that we`re going to be pushing are common sense, and we will get a lot of support.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O`DONNELL: He can`t name names of those Democrats of course. That was Donald Trump tonight on Sean Hannity`s show.
How should the Democrats handle President Trump? I`ll ask former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, that`s coming up.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: How about when a major anchor who hosted a debate started crying when she realized that we won?
(CHEERS)
How about that?
(APPLAUSE)
Tears -- no, tell me this isn`t true. And you know what she doesn`t understand? Things are going to be much better now.
(CHEERS)
She doesn`t know this. I mean, think of it, we won in a landslide, that was a landslide.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O`DONNELL: Donald Trump who did not win a landslide also did not win a mandate for his agenda.
Hillary Clinton`s lead over Donald Trump is now more than 2.5 million votes according to the "Cook Political Report".
And in Pennsylvania, Donald Trump`s margin of victory got smaller today after Philadelphia updated its vote tally.
Donald Trump now leads Hillary Clinton by about 46,000 votes in Pennsylvania. That number matters because green party candidate Jill Stein got about 49,000 votes in Pennsylvania.
Jill Stein shared the vote in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan is now larger than the number of votes separating Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in those states.
If Hillary Clinton had won those three states, she would be the president- elect. Joining us now, Elise Jordan, former adviser to Senator Rand Paul for president and an Msnbc political analyst.
And back with us, Joy Reid and Ana Marie Cox. So, Elise, he comes in -- what -- couldn`t -- is on the verge of describable as a distant second --
(LAUGHTER)
In today`s vote world, 2.5 million votes. He tells his people it`s a landslide. They seem to think it`s a landslide, Congress doesn`t think it`s a landslide.
ELISE JORDAN, JOURNALIST: It`s a battle of perception, you say it enough times over --
O`DONNELL: For him once --
JORDAN: Over --
O`DONNELL: Is all it takes and his voters go --
JORDAN: It starts --
O`DONNELL: With it.
JORDAN: To become true. And so --
O`DONNELL: Yes --
JORDAN: He`s going to keep saying it over and over and over. Tonight, the speech was interesting in that it started out actually in a quite hopeful tone.
I thought he was talking about Indiana, he was talking about jobs, he was talking about a better economy for all Americans.
And then he just went off on this tangent about the media that all just went down-hill, normal Trump rally style.
He`s not going to change when it comes to controlling his message. He had a real opportunity to make this night about Indiana and to make it about General Mattis.
He`s a hugely respected and popular military figure on both sides of the aisle, and yet the take-away is flag burning while the media bedevils.
O`DONNELL: Well, he clearly had some written material up there that he varied from time to time.
I want to listen to what he said about Hillary Clinton which, from his crowd managed to get "lock her up" going again.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: I am going to discuss our action plan to make America great again. We`re going to discuss.
(CHEERS)
(APPLAUSE)
Although, we did have a lot of fun fighting Hillary, didn`t we?
(CHEERS)
(APPLAUSE)
Right?
(CHANTING)
Lock her up! Lock her up! Lock her up! Lock her up! Lock her up!
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O`DONNELL: Ana, they`re chanting "lock her up" to a guy who has said he`s not going to lock her up, even though he promised to lock her up back when he was asking for their votes.
COX: Oh, but wait until he sees this clip being played on "Fox & Friends" --
O`DONNELL: All right? --
COX: Right --
O`DONNELL: Right, yes, according to the previous theory of the -- yes.
COX: Right, he will now have to lock her up and we will become one of those countries where the new person in power locks up the previous regime.
And that is also -- that`s known as a banana republic. Again, I have to sort of come back to like, there are interesting things to talk about here, but it is all slightly terrifying to me.
Even sort of the idea that this is a battle of perception over whether or not he has a mandate or whether or not he won in a landslide.
It`s not a perception. There are a number of votes that we can tell him that he lost by in terms of the popular vote, right?
It is -- there`s not a perception of whether or not he has fewer votes in the -- among Americans that voted, right?
You know, I was thinking, like, we almost saw the debut of President Trump, right? Like that`s what it felt like he might have started with as Elise was saying, like this with more hopeful tone.
But it occurred to me, you know, they say, you know, Trump did not campaign in poetry, he will not govern in prose. I mean, he campaigned in tweets, and he will govern in tweets, and that is it.
Like that is his thought process. He may speak for hours at a time, but he thinks in 140 characters, and that`s the kind of policies we`re going to get.
O`DONNELL: I want to go back to that point he made about someone as he put it, one of the moderators in one of the debates crying.
Let`s look at what Martha Raddatz actually had to say the night of the election.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MARTHA RADDATZ, REPORTER, ABC NEWS: Tim Kaine has his son in the Marine Corps.
He was asked by John Dickerson, "so if Donald Trump is democratically elected and your son is serving as a Marine, you wouldn`t trust his life under that commander-in-chief?"
And Kaine said, "I wouldn`t."
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS, JOURNALIST: A lie --
RADDATZ: That`s a pretty extraordinary thing to say if you have a son in the Marine Corps and that you don`t trust the commander-in-chief.
People in the military defend the constitution.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O`DONNELL: Joy, that`s the moment that Donald Trump remembers more than any other on that night.
REID: Yes, because Donald Trump is a person who -- you know, you and I both have had lots of conversations with Tony Schwartz who knows him, wrote "Art of the Deal".
He is a person who is without empathy. Remember, you know, Donald Trump who did not serve his country, who was, you know, the correct age, the appropriate age to go to Vietnam.
Got five deferments, has never -- was never asked about it by the way during the entirety of the campaign for 18 months.
No one ever asked him to defend the fact that he`s never sacrificed anything for this country, who said not getting a venereal disease --
O`DONNELL: Yes, not --
(CROSSTALK)
Vietnam --
O`DONNELL: One Trump interviewer, not one --
REID: Not one --
O`DONNELL: Person who had the opportunity to interview him had him walk us through the deferments.
REID: That`s right --
O`DONNELL: Now Bill Clinton, when he ran in 1992, who also avoided service --
REID: Correct --
O`DONNELL: Which was a -- which was by the way what most men were doing. Let`s remember --
REID: Yes, that`s right --
O`DONNELL: This, most men during Vietnam were avoiding service in the military --
REID: Correct --
O`DONNELL: Anyway they could. Bill Clinton had to go through every step of what he did, and he couldn`t be proud of every step of what he did because of some stuff in there that looked deceptive --
REID: Yes --
O`DONNELL: To his draft board. But he was dragged through --
REID: Yes --
O`DONNELL: Every step of that.
REID: And every person who`s run -- every man who`s run for president since the Vietnam era has had to account for the Vietnam era.
It`s been a searing part of our politics, Donald Trump was never asked about it.
Unlike Tim Kaine -- and even Mike Pence, he doesn`t have any family members immediate, none of his children have served.
They have essentially been a family whose entire service has been to themselves, to their own pocket books.
To their own egos, to their own needs. And he is a bottomless pit of need. And what he needs is adulation.
And for any journalist to dare to not be elated that Donald Trump will now be their president is something intolerable to him.
It`s the reason that losing the election, losing the popular vote is intolerable to him. Incredibly, it triggers him to be reminded that Hillary Clinton beat him in the popular vote.
Because just the idea of being beaten, bested by a woman. And any woman, not absolutely being in awe of him triggers and bothers him.
This is a needy, narcissistic man who is not a man who understands and can conceptualize sacrifice for one`s country.
So, yes, if I had a son or daughter in the military, I would be concerned.
You know, Caitlyn Dawson(ph) this week on our show was talking about the fact that now, anything with Trump`s name on it around the world becomes a target.
If I am in the military, I`m very concerned, I don`t want that to be my child`s mission, to defend the name of Trump, the person of the state. That isn`t what we are as Americans.
LAWRENCE O`DONNELL, MSNBC ANCHOR: Elise Jordan, you get the last word in this round.
ELISE JORDAN, MSNBC CONTRIBUTOR: Wow, heavy and dark. I really wonder, though, how long he can continue to keep having days like today where he had the Carrier moment. It wasn`t a one-off? Can he keep pulling this off? I started the night thinking that they were setting these sky-high expectations and that was the mistake of the night. Now after the, you know, train wreck second half of the speech, I`m not even sure.
O`DONNELL: Joy Reid, Ana Marie Cox, Elise Jordan, thank you all for joining us tonight, really appreciate it. Coming up next former Labor Secretary Robert Reich will go through the art of the deal in the so called Carrier deal.
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DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT-ELECT UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: The United Technologies and Carrier stepped it up. And now they`re keeping, actually the number`s over 1100 people, which is so great, which is so great. And they`re going to spend so much money on renovating this plant, but we`re going to have a lot of phone calls made to companies when they say they`re thinking about leaving this country, because they`re not leaving this country. They`re not going to leave this country. And the workers are going to keep their jobs.
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O`DONNELL: You would never know from listening to Donald Trump today at the Carrier in Indiana that 1300 people there at that plant are going to lose their jobs because those jobs are being moved to a plant in Mexico. That is the real news of the day at that plant. But he was there to celebrate, as he put it, that over 1,100 people were not going to lose their jobs, even though that isn`t true. He is obviously embarrassed that Carrier is only leaving 800 jobs at that plant. 800 jobs that they previously considered moving to Mexico but that`s not a big enough sounding number to Donald Trump, so he just lies and adds a couple hundred to it.
And he did not get Carrier to keep those jobs in Indiana by threatening to impose tariffs against Carrier as he said he would. He got them to do it by providing a massive advertisement for Carrier on TV today, including the advertisement that Carrier is getting right now, right here, as I speak these words about Carrier. Today`s free TV ads for Carrier were worth tens of millions of dollars.
There is no U.S. Company that could possibly have afforded to spend the money to purchase the TV time on all of the national TV networks, on all of the local TV stations around the country, all that TV time that Carrier got today for free. Carrier also got $7 million directly from the government of Indiana, which at the moment happens to be headed by Donald Trump`s Vice President to be, Indiana Governor Mike Pence. And so the Trump deal was to pay Carrier, to pay Carrier, to keep only 40 percent of those jobs in Indiana. And Carrier doesn`t have to keep them there forever. And that`s what Donald Trump calls winning. Joining us now, Robert Reich, former Labor Secretary of under President Clinton. He`s current at professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkley and is the author of saving capitalism for the many, not the few. Professor Reich can you grade the deal paper that Donald Trump submitted to us today?
ROBERT REICH, PROFESSOR PUBLIC POLICY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKLEY: It`s something like a C minus or a D Lawrence because as you said it`s not big of a deal. I know I don`t want to sound like an ingrate. I mean there were jobs that were saved. And that 800 is 800 jobs are important to 800 people. And let`s be clear about that. But Donald Trump did give away a lot, not just the free publicity, and not just the $7 million. But also Carrier is a company that has a parent called United Technologies.
United Technologies is a major military contractor. Donald Trump is planning a huge military buildup. And you can bet that there`s going to be some quid pro quo there. in addition, United Technologies has about $6 billion parked overseas in tax jurisdictions that actually provide very low taxes. And United Technologies is very hopeful that there`s going to be a deal struck to repatriate that money back to the United States at very, very low tax rates. And you can bet that that was also in the background of this deal.
O`DONNELL: The -- there are many things about the deal that are peculiar to say the least, and you couldn`t replicate them in other situations like this around the country. And also, the very tiny number of jobs here that was involved. What President Obama did for example with the auto industry, saving over a million jobs never got the kind of media splash that these 800 jobs got today.
REICH: Well, that`s right, and don`t forget, I mean Donald Trump is a showman. He is a Barnum & Bailey put together. so if he saves 800 jobs it`s going to be a big deal, and he`s going to be in a stadium and in a big rally and talk about it forever. But you`re absolutely right. As an economic matter, if he tries to use the same techniques as the art of the deal to save every manufacturing job that might leave the United States, that is going to be a 24 hour job for President Trump.
O`DONNELL: Let`s listen to what he said today about where he will allow companies to move and take and move the jobs away.
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TRUMP: They can leave from state to state man state. And they can negotiate good deals with all the states and all of that. But leaving the country`s going to be very, very difficult.
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O`DONNELL: So when they leave from higher-wage states to lower-wage non- unionized states where they can cut labor costs dramatically, why don`t those workers who lose their jobs in that transaction have a complaint?
REICH: Well, that`s a good question. They will have a complaint. They will have lost their jobs, obviously. But Donald Trump will probably say, well, from the standpoint of making America great not making New York state or making Illinois great. But making America great, we are preserving jobs, even though the jobs pay less, we`re still theoretically preserving jobs.
But there`s also something else going on here, Lawrence, and that is he brought on as his Treasury Secretary, this is going to be the pick a fella named Steve Mnuchin who has spent much of his life putting pressure on companies from Wall Street to actually cut their pay rolls, to cut their jobs, to move jobs ashore because pay rolls, jobs, are the biggest single cost that these companies in the United States face.
And every Wall Street investment analyst and investor has been pushing these companies to get rid of jobs. So here we have, and Wilbur Ross is coming in as the Commerce Secretary has been doing such the same thing in the bankruptcy arena. So you have his economic, Trump`s economic kind of key players, have been the ones who have been pushing this whole notion of getting jobs down, getting jobs out of the country or replacing them with technology.
O`DONNELL: Robert Reich, thank you very much for joining us tonight, really appreciate it.
REICH: Thanks.
O`DONNELL: Up next, there are 704 days until the next Congressional Elections, and Democrats are already plotting how the Trump presidency can help them win back the Congress.
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TRUMP: And we won Wisconsin and we won Michigan and we won Pennsylvania. right? And that person is doing the map, and that person was saying for months that there`s no way that Donald Trump can break the blue wall. right? We didn`t break it. We shattered that sucker. We shattered it.
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O`DONNELL: What happened to that Blue Wall, and can it be rebuilt? Joining us now, Cornell Belcher, the President of Brilliant Research and Strategies, a former pollster for the Obama 2012 campaign. He is the author of the new book a Blackman in the Whitehouse. Cornell it does -- as the votes keep coming in and being counted, and you see the three states that Donald Trump just mentioned which in the three states that gave him the Presidency. He won in each one of those states by less than 1 percent of the vote. And margins they are getting narrower in these final counts every day. So it seems like at best there were some very tiny chips in the top of the Blue Wall that needed to be repaired, and maybe the only repair you need is a candidate who`s not subject to FBI investigation in the last couple of weeks of a campaign where you get hit with two different FBI public statements about that candidate.
CORNELL BELCHER, PRESIDENT, BRILLIANT RESEARCH: Well, a couple things. One is, and thanks for having me on, Lawrence. I love your show. One is, the outcome of the, of the race was catastrophic for a lot of -- for a lot of people so the outcome of it. But if you get inside and look internally I mean this is not a sea change election. You know quite frankly, if you look at where he is right now at 46 percent of the vote. I mean he doesn`t even have the vote that Mitt Romney got, right?
So what you do have is you do have is you do have, you know, the fraying of that Democratic sort of Obama coalition, particularly those younger voters. And the Democrats have to work really hard right now. And there`s a lot of conversation in the Democratic Party about, you know, whether they double down and go after more blue collar white voters or as I would argue do they in fact try to completely realize that the Barack Obama coalition. Barack Obama won back to back, you know, majorities here.
And it`s not like, you know, so we should, you know, spend more resources going after a shrinking, more resistant, you know, swath of the marketplace, or should we in fact go after expanding less resistant swaths of the marketplace. And you all talked about it earlier tonight. If you look at where Hillary was off from holding the Barack Obama margins with certain voters, if you look at, you know, younger African-Americans and younger Latino voters, 8 and 9 percent of them in some of these battleground states, you know, protested their vote. You know rejected both candidates say being I`m not going lesser of two evils and voted for the third party. Those -- that`s the margin of her losing in these states, right? So Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, you have him winning basically with the Romney coalition, which shouldn`t be a winning coalition if in fact we can hold together that Obama coalition that depends heavily on what America -- young America looks like, which is a browner, younger, more diverse swath of the electorate.
O`DONNELL: Cornell Belcher, we`re running short on time tonight. Cornell, we cut out there. But thank you for joining us tonight. Cornell`s new book is a Blackman in the Whitehouse, Barack Obama and the triggering of America`s racial aversion crisis. Coming up, the looming crisis at standing rock.
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O`DONNELL: Tension is mounting at the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota as a Monday deadline approaches. The Army Corps of Engineers has ordered the evacuation of a protest site which has been occupied since the summer by Native-American tribes from all over North America protesting the construction of an oil pipeline. 45 years ago, the first Native- American protest in modern history occurred in Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay. The protesters were trying to enforce then nearly 100 year old Treaty of Laramie that said that all abandoned or out use Federal lands should revert to tribal possession. The Federal prison on Alcatraz Island had been closed for six years when protesters took over the island. In the final days of that protest in 1970, Jane Fonda made her first visit to a Native American protest. And last week at standing rock, Jane Fonda visited what is now the largest such protest in American history. Her report of her experience at time.com seems virtually identical to my experience visiting Standing Rock in September.
Jane Fonda found a peaceful protest that has created in her words, an existential confrontation between two opposing world views. It is unclear what will happen in Standing Rock on Monday. The Army Corps of Engineers have softened it`s threat of forcible evacuation of all protesters. The protesters call themselves Water Protectors because leaks in the pipeline would pollute their water source, the Missouri River. The Water Protectors say nothing changes for them on Monday. They will stand their ground.
And now that the presidential campaign is over, we have television network assets that will be assigned to Standing Rock and will be able to provide live coverage of whatever happens there. On Monday, the whole world will be able to see what happens on what may turn out to be the most important day yet in this existential confrontation.
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TRUMP: This is an election about truth. And you`re not going to get it from the dishonest media. They are the most dishonest people on earth, okay? I get nothing but bad press from the dishonest media. It is absolutely disgraceful. The world`s most dishonest people are back there. Look at all the cameras going. The people back there, the extremely dishonest press.
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O`DONNELL: The last that you just heard was Donald Trump attacking the media tonight at his rally in Ohio. The news media is now transitioning from a challenge that it never mastered, covering the Trump for President Campaign to a new more important challenge, covering the Trump Presidency. Joining us, Jim Vandehei, the Founder and CEO of Axios. MSNBC is a media partner of Axios. Jim, one of the breaking news items tonight is the Secretary of State sweepstakes or whatever we want to call this thing has two more names on it, the current CEO of Exxon and former CEO of Exxon, the current CEO of Exxon, Rex Tillerson, the former CEO lee raymond for Secretary of State. This is an extraordinary departure from the people that Donald Trump has already been considering, and no word yet whether any of them have been officially dropped out of the running in order to make room for these guys.
JIM VANDEHEI, FOUNDER-CEO AXIOS. Yes, it`s really been an extraordinary process, right? Especially the one for Secretary of State where it`s almost like a reality show, and there`s a different contestant who seems to be in the running each and every day. I do think you got these new candidates largely because there`s been opposition to, I think he would have liked to gone with Rudy Giuliani. But there`s real ethical issues there and some controversy that surrounds him. Mitt Romney, it`s hard to tell how much of it is real and how much of it is, again, the pageantry part of it. He clearly is enamored with the idea of Romney. I think he sees him as someone out of central casting if he were to become the Secretary of State. But there`s so much opposition to him. And then there`s a lot of folks on the Hill pushing for Petraeus. And so my guess is, with a lot of this stuff, it`s very hard to tell which direction Trump will go in, because it`s a mix of impulse and improvisation. And so we`ll see how it plays out over the next couple of days.
O`DONNELL: Jim in previous cases like there was always a certain rationale. You could hear a name and you go oh, I get why that name is on the list. We don`t get why some of these names are on the list. And that`s a challenge to how the media evaluates this stuff.
VANDEHEI: No doubt. And listen it`s going to take us a while to figure out even what does this cabinet mean? What do these picks mean? Like every day there`s a couple and you`d say that`s a hard-liner. That`s kind of a predictable pick. Then other days he surprises you and he goes with picks who have some Democratic tendencies in the past, Mad Dog, mad as a general. Somebody who a lot of Democrats like, certainly Republicans love it
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