Sometimes words seem so unnecessary. Introducing Unspoken. The new diamond fashion collection you'll only find at Jared Jewelers and just in time for the holidays. Discover the brilliance of natural diamond pendants, rings, earrings, and bracelets in a range of carrot weights, expertly interwoven and white or yellow 14 karat gold. It's the perfect holiday gift where your love speaks for itself. Unspoken. The dazzling new collection. Exclusively at Jared. Tackle the NFL action on FanDuel. Get started with $150 in bonus bets of your first $5 bet wins. FanDuel, an official sports book partner of the NFL. 21+ and present in Colorado. First online real money wager only. $5 first deposit required. Bonus issued is non withdrawal bonus bets which expire seven days after receipt. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanDuel.com. Gambling problem, caller text 1-800-522-4700. Tonight on All In. You thought Pete Haggseth was surprising, Matt Gaetz. Well, that'll knock you right off your feet. The president-elect makes his choice for attorney general. Look, guys, this is not normal. Senate, you better stop some of this. Tonight, Senator Chris Murphy on what he's calling a red alert moment for American democracy. As Donald Trump is welcomed back to the White House by President Biden, the enduring problems for our constitutional order. President Trump and J.D. Vance are going to be running the Senate. Plus, why the president-elect is already complaining about Elon Musk? And the case that Democrats can win again with Kentucky governor Andy Beshear. And All In starts right now. Good evening from New York. I'm Chris Hayes. For the past week, it was at least a little tiny bit of an open question about how the second Trump administration would govern. I think today we got our answer and that little window has closed. In quick succession this afternoon, Donald Trump announced former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard as his pick to be the national intelligence director. And sitting Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz for attorney general. Well, maybe not sitting anymore, as Gaetz has apparently already offered his resignation from Congress amidst his nomination. Now, both of those decisions, along with picking the guy from Fox and Friends, to be Secretary of Defense, are, you know, shocking and appalling in their own way. But the Gaetz pick is really its own thing. Definitely set off alarm bells throughout Washington. You may recall Gaetz was once investigated by the Department of Justice, the very agency he's now being tapped lead on allegations of sex trafficking. To be clear, Gaetz denies those allegations. He's never charged with a crime. The takeaway here is obvious. Donald Trump is testing the limits of what he can get away with. Matt Gaetz is unique in one regard. He is almost unanimously loathed by everyone in the Republican party, regardless of ideology. That's, of course, in large part because he forced out Republican Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, apparently because MacArthur refused to squash an ethics probe, into Gaetz's conduct, at least that's according to McCarthy. Here's how McCarthy later put it. I'll give you the truth why I'm not Speaker. It's because one person, a member of Congress, wanted me to stop an ethics complaint because he slept with a 17-year-old. An ethics complaint that started before I ever became Speaker, and that's illegal and I'm not going to get in the middle. Gaetz denies those allegations, as I said. The stunt that Gaetz pulled, which was kicking McCarthy out of the Speaker ship, right, with that vote of no confidence. It didn't make him any friends in Congress. Just listen to Republican Senator Mark Wayne Mullen of Oklahoma just a year ago. This is a guy that didn't have, that the media didn't give a time of day to, after he was accused of sleeping with a underage girl. And there's a reason why no one in the conference came and defended him, because we had all seen the videos he was showing on the house floor that all of us had walked away of the girls that he had slept with. He'd brag about how he would crush ED medicine and chase it with an energy drink so he could go all night. This is obviously before you got married. And so when that accusation came out, no one defended him. Gaetz denies those allegations as well. But that certainly appears to be representative of how most of his fellow Republicans. I mean, just Republicans view him. When Punchball asked Republican Congressman Don Bacon of Nebraska to react to Gaetz's nomination, he remarked, "I've got no good comment." While Republican Mike Simpson of Idaho said, "Are you bleeping me?" Republican Max Miller of Ohio, a former Trump aide, said this. I just think it's silly. I believe that the president is probably rewarding him for being such a loyal soldier to the president. But the president is smart enough, and his team is smart enough to know that Mr. Gaetz will never get confirmed by the Senate. Mr. Gaetz breaks things to breaks things, and then once he breaks it, he breaks it even more. And that is somebody who should not be the Attorney General of the United States. I can tell you, I'm not the only one out of 222 that we'll end up with that is happy that he is leaving this conference. Okay, so bottom line, the people closest to Max Gaetz who served with him view him as a man of exceptionally low character, they loathe him. And I think it's fair to say he couldn't win a secret ballot for Senate confirmation if you just took the Republicans. Of course, cabinet confirmation votes are not secret. So again, this is a purity test by Donald Trump. He wants to see how much he can get away with. He is forcing Senate Republicans to do the indefensible in service of their dear leader. That said, nothing is a foregone conclusion. Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska has already signaled she may oppose Gaetz. I don't think it's a serious nomination for the Attorney General. We need to have a serious Attorney General, and I'm looking forward to the opportunity to consider somebody that is serious. This one was not on my bingo card. Our Galaxy's opposition is not enough, though. Congressional Republicans have not exactly shown a lot of backbone when it comes to opposing Trump. Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama is already threatening his colleagues to close ranks around Matt Gaetz. Will Matt Gaetz get the votes in the Senate? I don't know. You're finding all the swamp creatures coming out right now. Everybody's got an opinion up here, but at the end of the day, President Trump was elected by an enormous vote. And he deserves a team around him that he wants. It's not us to determine that. We've got 53 votes in the Senate. We can confirm with 51. I've already seen where a couple of them says, "I'm not voting for him. Wait a minute." You are not the United States of America. You have one vote in the U.S. Senate. You did not get elected President. Vote with President Trump. This is the last chance we're going to have a save in this country, and if you want to get in the way, fine. But we're going to try to get you out of the Senate, too, if you try to do that. So that's the message. Seems to be received by some, like Senator Mark Wayne Mullen, the guy who went on camera to say no one would defend Gates against allegations he slept with a 17-year-old. Are you going to vote for Matt Gates? You know, Matt Gates, in either's no question that we've had our differences. They've been very public about it. I completely trust President Trump's decision making on this one. But at the same time, he's got to come to Congress and sell himself. Hearing, I guess, over this? So, again, we don't know what's going to happen. This seems like one of those moments where Democratic input, pushback, phone calls to lawmakers, senators, particularly, who are going to have a vote on this, matter a lot. It's possible Gates can get through. But again, he's very unpopular. And I think it's fair to say, when you talk about that mandate, the very narrow national majority, one and a half points that voted for Donald Trump and think they were putting Matt Gates at AG. But Democrats in the Senate don't want to see him as the chief law enforcement officer in the United States. At the very least, they are going to need to pick a very public fight about it. Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut won re-election by a decisive margin of almost 19% last week. He also outrun ran the top of the ticket, and he joins me now. Well, let's start, Senator. I mean, the advising consent role of the Senate is an important one. It can be frustrating and maddening when it's abused to keep people out of positions. But this seems to me like one of those situations where who's going to run the Department of Justice, Matt Gates, it seems pretty important for the Senate to exercise some advice and consent here. Yeah, listen, I think this is kind of a before and after moment. You know, Donald Trump said transparently during the campaign that he wanted to use the power of his office to go after his political opponents, Project 2025, called for the Department of Justice to just become another arm of the White House. And now he is executing that plan. I don't know that you return from a decision to end the independence of the judiciary. It is one of the hallmarks, the bedrock, a foundation of American democracy that the Department of Justice stands up for everybody and applies the rule of law fairly. Matt Gates is going to do whatever the White House tells him to do. He says, made it clear that he thinks law enforcement should bend their knee to the Trump White House. And I don't know that this is American democracy any longer if Matt Gates is simply executing the wishes of a very political partisan and vindictive White House. So yes, I do not think that this is what Americans voted for, in part because a lot of people didn't believe Donald Trump when he said, I'm going to use the power of my office to go after my political opponents. They thought that was bluster. They thought that that was just tough talk. And now the American public are seeing that he wasn't kidding around. And I think the American public may have something to say about that. Yeah, let's, I want to stay on that. And then I want to talk a little deeper about the sort of question of what this election was and wasn't about, which I think is, you know, important here. I mean, to me, the mechanics, this is a test here a little bit about whether these mechanics are going to function. In any other universe, like Gates is not confirmable. He's not, again, this is not an ideological statement by yours truly. Like there are tons of Republican lawyers you can name that would be confirmed. Like Gates is not confirmable when Murkowski says it's not a serious pick. Like it's forcing Republican senators to vote on something manifestly absurd on purpose. And the question is, are they going to do it? Yeah, I mean, and I don't know that Lisa Murkowski is much of a signal. Right. Dosa has never had any compunction about standing up to Donald Trump publicly. Yes, I think that this is an early effort to force Senate Republicans into utter and complete submission. If they do something as farcical as putting Matt Gates in as the Attorney General, then the game is over. There is nothing that they will not do. And so he's putting the test to Senate Republicans early on. Are you going to be my agents as I try to convert this country from a democracy to something that looks very different from a democracy? Or are you going to or are you going to exercise any independent judgment? We're going to have a very early test of that. It is hard when I think about it to believe that there aren't four or five Senate Republicans that will vote no on Matt Gates. I know these people personally. I know how they feel about him, but time will tell. Yeah, I mean, there's reporting today that one of the reasons he is trying to resign today is that they're scheduled to be an ethics vote in the ethics committee about a report that was being generated about him. That was going to be very unflattering around the allegations around the underage girl that he was alleged to have sexual relations with, that he denied. Let me ask you this. I've been listening to and reading what your sort of takeaway from this election is. And maybe I'll let you give your elevator pitch version of it before I followed up and not put it in my own words about how you understood the loss of Kamala Harris and the loss of a number of Senate seats in this last election. Yeah, listen, I think people in this country are feeling powerless. They're feeling impotent, and they want power, but they also know that power to some extent is a zero sum equation. You have to take it from somebody to give it to them. I thought maybe the most important work that the Biden administration did was the work to revitalize anti trust policy, the work they did to try to break up the big corporations. I wish the Harris campaign had talked more transparently about the way that Americans are getting screwed by billionaires and corporations and talked about a real populist agenda to return power to them. I think we misunderstood the Republicans focus on immigration. Yes, some of it was playing to nativism and racism. But a lot of it was about telling Americans that they are not at the mercy of forces beyond their control. In this case increased global migration that we can control our borders. And that speaks to Americans who are feeling out of control of their lives. So I think we've got to engage in some much more robust economic populism, talk about who has power, talk about how we are going to tangibly deliver it to Americans who have lost power. And I think that should be the tent pole of our party. And that's the second part of my analysis that we became very intolerant, very judgmental of people who thought differently than us on social and cultural issues and other tough subjects like guns and climate. I think we should return to the party we were in the 70s and 80s when we had economics as the tent pole and then we let people in who thought differently than us on other social and cultural issues and we fought out those debates inside that tent. That's a difficult thing for the Democratic Party to do because we have applied a lot of litmus tests over the years, but those litmus tests have added up to a party that is pretty exclusionary and is shrinking, not growing. So those are the two things, the sort of immediate takeaways that I have from this election. One of the ways, so one thing that I've kind of come to think is that even if governing is about making people's lives better, politics is about positioning the blame for things sucking. Like, the policy doesn't matter, your point about Lina Khan is great, like this was one of the most, I mean, if you talk to people in the Fortune 500 class, Wall Street, they all felt like the Biden administration was more anti-business than any administration that ever been with. I talked to people in the anti-trust, Tim Wu, who worked in the Obama administration and the Biden administration, way more tough on anti-trust, way more anti-corporate on the labor record. All this stuff, stuff, stuff suddenly, it didn't matter. Donald Trump gave corporations a huge tax cut and he's like hanging out with a world they're just guy to figure out how to cut to chili dollars in the budget. That's not going to matter either, whether he built the wall or not didn't matter. The actual policy doesn't matter, it's just what stories you tell, is that like, am I wrong to quit thinking that now? No, you are, and listen, people are really angry about the state of their lives and the state of the economy. And even when we did take on corporate power, let's take, for example, the breakthrough that we had on prescription drug pricing, where we finally forced the drug companies to negotiate directly with Medicare. We didn't tell a great story. Frankly, other than Bernie Sanders, there wasn't a lot of storytelling about the abuses of the pharmaceutical company. We didn't call them out by name. Instead, we spent a lot of time explaining the dynamics of bulk prescription drug purchasing, which flew over the heads of people and felt like just a pretty small ball adjustment to an existing healthcare market that wasn't working. You actually have to spend some time telling the story of who is screwing Americans, probably more than 50% of your time, and then spend the remaining time talking about the solution. Democrats spend 20% of our time talking about who's screwing you and 80% of our time explaining the intricacies of the policy solution. That's just backwards and it ultimately doesn't sell, it doesn't meet the emotional zeitgeist of the country, which wants you at some level to just understand and relate to how they're feeling. And like, sit there for a little while and then tell them how you'll solve the problem. Quickly, one last point that I think is important here. One thing that's been bothering me about some of the postmorims is, something doesn't become either good policy or morally defensible or good politics in the long run because it's ratified by a majority. And I, you know, we lived through this in the Bush administration. Like, he won re-election in 2004. The Iraq war was still a disaster. Torturing people, still a disaster in a war crime. Gitmo, still a disaster. Now, it was also true the median voter didn't care. Fine. But also, it's important not to lose sight of that central fact as we're entering this era of all these fights on democracy. The median voter may not care about it. I don't think, most people think of it when they're voting, but it's still important to fight on this stuff. I guess it's my point. Yeah, listen, it still matters, but we do actually have to look at ourselves here. We ultimately needed to defend democracy in this election, but we came off as defenders of the existing form of democracy. Right? Yeah, this democracy isn't working. This version of democracy isn't working. And we actually are the party of democratic reform, but it didn't feel like this like that in this election because we were defending the existing version. So that is another takeaway. We have to be the critics of democracy because we are the party that actually has the tangible plans to make democracy work better. For people rather than just giving up on it as Donald Trump seems to be proposing and campaigned upon. And his co-president, Elon Musk as well, Senator Chris Murphy. Always a pleasure. Thanks for taking extended time with us tonight. Appreciate it. Coming up, Donald Trump returns to the White House after floating the idea of a third term with congressional Republicans. That's next. Introducing Instagram Teen Accounts, a new way to keep your teen safer as they grow, like making sure they always have their seatbelt on. All right, buckle up. Good job. New Instagram Teen Accounts, automatic protections for who can contact your teen and the content they can see. True Crime Podcasts. There is no shortage to consume, and if you're like me, you've consumed them all. I'm Ashley Flowers, creator and host of the number one True Crime Podcast, Crime Junkie. Every Monday, we cover a case in a way that's not like you've heard before because I have built a one-of-a-kind team of investigative journalists dedicated to conducting original reporting, making sure that you get the inside scoop. Listen to hundreds of Crime Junkie episodes now, wherever you get your podcasts. Tackle the NFL action on FanDuel. Get started with $150 in bonus bets of your first $5 bet wins. FanDuel, an official sports book partner of the NFL. 21 Plus and present in Colorado, first online real money wager only. $5 first deposit required. Bonus issued is non withdrawal bonus bets which expire seven days after receipt restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanDuel.com, gambling problem caller text 1-800-522-4700. Today, Donald Trump returned to the White House for the first time since he slunk away four years ago, skipping Joe Biden's inauguration. Biden invited the president-elect to meet in the Oval Office, a tradition meant to symbolize the peaceful transfer of power from one administration to the next. And you can see in there the two presidents sat side-by-side in front of a roaring fire and put on a friendly face for the cameras. Well, Mr. President, elect in the former president. Thank you, Donald. Congratulations. Thank you. We're looking forward to having, like we said, the school transition. You know what I mean? We can't make sure you're accommodated, what you need. And we're going to get a chance to talk to us on that today. So good. Welcome. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you very much. And politics is tough. And it's, in many cases, not a very nice world. But it is a nice world today. And I appreciate it very much. A transition that's so smooth, it'll be as smooth as it can get. And I very much appreciate that, Joe. You're welcome. Are you still watching? Have you thrown the remote? Or switched? I don't exactly blame you. I absolutely get why Joe Biden is following the normal rituals. You're right. Welcome his successor. Shaken's hand. It is to send a signal about the stability of our system. But that doesn't negate the fact that for a lot of folks, that scene is a pretty tough one to watch. And the reason is because four years ago, from that very office, Donald Trump tried to overthrow the republic and fomented a violent coup, ending in people dying and cop's heads being bashed in. And the other time around, he also threatened to do the exact same thing if he lost. In fact, he was basically threatening that up until like 5 p.m. on election day. Except this time he won. And so, okay, I guess democracy carries on peacefully, as usual. Because that's what the democrats do when they lose. And we're all just going to swallow and live with that asymmetry. It feels weird. And also pretty enraging. I mean, are we supposed to take away that our democracy had a narrow escape because Donald Trump won? So instead of deranged and dangerous lies and conspiracy theories and maybe more violence and who the hell knows what else, right, if he came up with a few hundred thousand votes short in the swing states, instead of that, we get a happy fireside chat. And on the next January 6, 2025, there will be no gallows erected on the capital grounds. And instead, Kamala Harris will preside over the peaceful constitutional certification of the electoral votes as she should, to be clear, as she should. But Donald Trump's electoral victory does not solve the central problem, that he specifically and a lot of the folks in the movement he commands remain a dangerous threat to the continuity of our constitutional republic. We're seeing it today. They still don't respect democratic norms or the law or facts. They don't believe the rules apply to them. At the same time, we shouldn't come to the conclusion that because he won, all of that doesn't matter. Yes, the majority of Americans decided that January 6 and all of Donald Trump's other crimes were not enough to sway their vote against him. I don't think that means they don't care about our democracy. And I know that I and a lot of my fellows have been still cared deeply about our constitution, about our tradition of peaceful transfer power, about upholding this thing that is at its root self governance, like not being ruled by some other person, but us ruling ourselves. So I don't, I'll be clear, I do not know what the solution is as we're now preparing for another four years of Donald Trump in power. And I just refuse to accept that this, this thing, like January 6, if Democrats win, fireside chat if Republicans win is the way things just are going to work now. I don't accept the idea that there's one set of rules for him and another for everyone else. We can't accept a status quo in our elections where if one side wins, they have to scratch and claw to withstand the lies and the legal challenges and the violent mobs. And if the other side is successful, then they're invited to measure the drapes and gather around the fireplace. I mean, yes, the nature of preserving democracy and institutions and norms is that you uphold them even for people like Donald Trump who have tried to tear them down. I get that. But I'm just saying this thing, this is not a sustainable equilibrium. One side upholds liberal democratic norms, the other subverts and tries to destroy them. It's going to break one way or the other. I don't know how it ends up or who wins, but that central struggle didn't dissolve because the insurrectionist won more votes this time. There's no question he's a leader of our party. So now he's got a mission statement, his mission and his goals and objectives, whatever that is, we need to embrace it all of it. Every single word in his mission statement, we need to embrace it. If Donald Trump says jump three feet high and scratch your head, we all jump three feet high and scratch your heads. That's it. Donald Trump will be heading into office with Republican control of both the Senate, also the House of Representatives. Let me see news that's projected that Republicans will retain the majority of the House, although it might still be quite narrow in the range of a handful seats as it has been this term, which of course has been hard for them. That matters because Trump already plucked three Republican House members for his administration, at least a fan of New York for UN Ambassador Michael Waltz of Florida for National Security Advisor, and Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz for Attorney General. Today Trump made his first visit to the House since winning the election and floated the idea of a third term, telling congressional Republicans, "I suspect I won't be running. Again, unless you say he's so good, we've got to figure something else out." Of course, he would be 82 years old and constitutionally barred. Republicans said he was joking, but we all know how Donald Trump jokes on the square. And so one, congressional Democrat isn't taking any chances. Congressman Dan Goldman of New York plans to introduce a resolution clarifying the Constitution's to eternal limit for presidents, applies even if the terms are not consecutive, and Congressman Goldman joins me now. Well, let me ask others' resolution. Isn't that already clear? Like, don't we already know that? Yes. It is very clear, which is why it should be very easy for every single Republican member of Congress to vote in favor of this resolution. But Donald Trump, as you point out, Chris, has joked, quote, unquote, about many different things, including, as I remember in 2018, he joked about pardoning himself, and then that became completely normalized, and everyone just expected him to pardon himself if he won this time. The same thing has been happening. He has mentioned this over and over and over again for years now, and his jokes are not jokes. Nobody takes them as jokes. They are trial balloons. They are very intentionally designed to soften the response, and then to normalize his unconstitutional and anti-democratic goals. And so this resolution that I'll introduce tomorrow is purely designed just to reaffirm what the Constitution says, and reaffirm that it applies to Donald Trump. You were a phenomenal mistake in the USA for quite some time under the Department of Justice. We got the announcement of a, I guess, current colleague, maybe former colleague of your Matt Gaetz as being nominated to be attorney general of the United States. I'm guessing how you feel about that, but I'll ask you to respond. Well, I think there's a lot of funny business going on with this right now. The fact that he resigned today, and there's reporting now that an ethics report into an investigation into him from the House Ethics Committee would have been released on Friday, and his resignation today now means that the Ethics Committee no longer has jurisdiction over them and will not release this report. So I'm going to reserve judgment to see whether Matt Gaetz actually ends up sitting for a hearing to become attorney general, or if this is just a ruse to allow him to resign so that his ethics investigation is not revealed publicly. There's some talk about some, have you caught one of this? There's like, I don't know if it's real or not, but some cockamamie scheme to do some recess appointments of everyone and the House would recess and the Senate would reassess. And I can't tell if it's like nonsense or the colonel or something or a game of telephone, but I'm just asking you if you've heard about this on the Hill. Look, there's been a lot of talk about recess appointments, and I think Donald Trump first started by trying to pressure the candidates for the Senate majority leader to change the rules in the Senate to allow for a long enough recess, 10 days, so that the president can make recess appointments which would bypass the advice and consent role of the Senate. That is not the custom that are not the rules of the Senate. John Thune, the new majority leader, would have to lead a change in the rules of the Senate to allow for that. And now, as I saw as well as you, there's some rumblings about something in the Constitution and Donald Trump being able to declare this. But this really goes, Chris, I don't know where that's going to go, I don't believe it, but I think this goes to a central point that we need to focus on. This is not Donald Trump alone attacking our democracy. If he is successful, it is because Republicans in the House and Senate are complicit, and they allow him to do this. Just like I do, they take an oath to the Constitution, not to Donald Trump, and they have to stand up for the Constitution against whomever is president, Donald Trump or otherwise. And if they're going to be Troy Nells and jump off a bridge because Donald Trump says that they need to jump off a bridge, then they are also violating their oath. You know, one thing that's always weird to me about this. We just came out of this big election here where it was like revolved around these sort of very almost cartoonish celebrations of masculinity through the lens of, you know, Hulk Hogan and all the kind of broy podcasts and all this stuff. And whatever you think about that stuff, it's weird to me that all of these Republican men who are so into this sort of vision of male virility act like submissive little, what's the word, wimps. Like why won't you stand up for yourself? Why are you a groveling little wimp about all this stuff? It's really quite an amazing internal contradiction that the like the party of the tough guys and the party of world wrestling and the party of like macho-ness, like can't find it in themselves to, I don't know, to quote an old adage be a man about this stuff? Yeah, and that's exactly right. Part of it is that Donald Trump is, you know, part mafia, wanna be mafia boss, part bully, and that the entire Republican conference is worried about Donald Trump supporting a primary opponent because he is vengeful and he will do that. And part of it is also, I just think, some degree, this cult following that he has developed that transfers and translates into Congress. But if they now are gonna have both bodies of Congress in the majority, the Senate and the House, there's very little Democrats can do through our official authority here in Congress to put checks and balances on Donald Trump. And so it is really important that we all emphasize that the Republicans who are in the majority, in the Senate and the House, are responsible for the checks and balances that our Constitution devised and imagined. And that is why the responsibility is greater on them right now than it would have been if the Democrats had taken one House in the majority. Although they've already plucked three, maybe Gates has gone for them, we'll see what happens. But I also think to your point, it's gonna take some thinking outside the bun to quote the old Taco Bell commercial about how to do this. Like for instance, like someone could leak the ethics report. I would never prove that, but if it ended up in someone's inbox, Congressman Dan Goldman, thank you very much. Thanks Chris. Still to come when Democrats win in a red state, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear shares his lessons on winning while staying true to his values ahead. Using Instagram teen accounts, a new way to keep your teen safer as they grow. Like making sure they always have their seatbelt on. Alright, buckle up. Good job. New Instagram teen accounts, automatic protections for who can contact your teen and the content they can see. True Crime Podcasts, there is no shortage to consume and if you're like me, you've consumed them all. I'm Ashley Flowers, creator and host of the number one true crime podcast, Crime Junkie. Every Monday we cover a case in a way that's not like you've heard before because I have built a one of a kind team of investigative journalists dedicated to conducting original reporting, making sure that you get the inside scoop. Listen to hundreds of Crime Junkie episodes now, wherever you get your podcasts. Tackle the NFL action on FanDuel. Get started with $150 in bonus bets of your first $5 bet wins. FanDuel, an official sports book partner of the NFL, 21+ and present in Colorado. First online real money wager only, $5 first deposit required. Bonus issued is non withdrawal bonus bets which expire seven days after receipt restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanDuel.com, gambling problem caller text 1-800-522-4700. Know the old adage that says "guess like fish" begin to smell after three days? Well, it's been a week since Donald Trump's was elected and there are numerous reports that one notable guest at Marlago is wearing on his welcome. That would be the world's richest man, Elon Musk. Musk used his Twitter platform, his vast personal wealth and his just absolute magnetic charisma to help get Trump elected. In return, Trump announced yesterday he was putting Musk and Vivek around a swami in charge of a still theoretical department of government efficiency or doge to slash government spending. Musk has become America's most powerful private citizen, according to the New York Times. He's sitting in on job interviews with Trump team pushing for Silicon Valley friends to get plumbed positions in the White House. Times even reports that at Marlago one recent evening he walked to the dining room about 30 minutes after the president elected and received a similar standing ovation according to two people who saw him enter. That's an interesting one. There's one thing we know about Donald Trump is that he loves sharing the spotlight. Now it seems clear Musk has bottomless ambitions and the South African born tech billionaire. You see they're participating in a Trump family photo that weirdly doesn't include Trump's wife Melania is barred from running for high office by the Constitution because he's not a natural born citizen. So this is as close as he's going to get seems to be making the most of it. We joke darkly about Musk setting himself a sort of co-president, but it's not just us. New people familiar with the transition now tell NBC News. Musk may be overstaying his welcome in Trump world. He's behaving as if he's a co-president making sure everyone knows it. One of those people said more insiders told political's playbook that Musk has become almost a comical distraction hanging around Marlago sliding into high level transition meetings and giving unsolicited feedback on Trump's personnel decisions. As one of them said, Elon is getting a little big for his britches. Now this may just be back biting insiders who are envious of Musk's close relationship and future president, but it tells me that even some close people to Donald Trump who helped him win over voters aren't crazy about the world's richest man issuing orders to a Democratic nation. What will Americans link? Well, more to their point, how will Trump think? How many Scaramucci's do we think the Donald will let pass before his ego can no longer tolerate the adoration and authority of his co-president? From that point before Trump's trip to the White House on Wednesday, he made a stop to meet with House Republican leaders, Elon even tagged along on that trip. After the cameras went off, Trump told lawmakers a joke about Musk according to multiple sources, "Elon won't go home," the president-elect said, "I can't get rid of him until I don't like him." I guess the good news is Trump is likely to get sick of Musk. The bad news is until that moment comes, our unprecedented experiment in handing over the levers of power to unelected billionaires continues. In the world of election, post-mortems and analysis, there's a small group of people that should be listened to a bit more than others that have earned the right to be listened to. One example, Democrats who have managed to be victorious in really difficult places for Democrats to win. One of those people is Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear. Last year, in his state's gubernatorial race, Beshear beat his Republican opponent by five points, in a state Donald Trump just won last week by nearly 30 points. He managed to do it at a time when inflation and border crossings were even higher than they are now. Yesterday, Governor Beshear published an op-ed in the New York Times, making the case that Democrats can win again, saying in part, "While I'm deeply disappointed with the natural results, I refuse to play the blame game." While others are talking about political strategy and messaging, the way forward is really about focus and about action. The next several years are the Democratic Party's chance to show the American people we will not just run on, but also govern by addressing those core issues that can and will improve the lives of our people. Andy Beshear joins me now. It's good to have you on, Governor, and like I said in the intro, I think you've earned a special voice in this conversation. If you had to distill your advice down or what you've learned by being the governor of the state of Kentucky, which just voted for Donald Trump by 30 points, what would you say? What I'd say is we've got to recognize when people wake up in the morning, they're not thinking about politics. They're thinking about their job and whether they make enough to support their family. They're thinking about the next doctor's appointment for themselves, their parents, or their kids. They're thinking about the roads and the bridges they drive that day, whether they're safe, what traffic will look like. They're thinking about the public school they drop their kids off at, and they're thinking about public safety in their communities. If you don't feel secure about those things, you can't get to the offense of the day in Washington DC or the crazy thing that Donald Trump may have said at a rally that day. My piece was about focusing every day on those core issues that Americans care about, that they have to satisfy to get to the other things and making sure that we re-earn trust by getting real results in those areas. The greatest part is it's not partisan. If we do it well and we do it right, it lifts up every single American, and that creates the grace and the space for even those that may have voted a different way to cross over and to vote for somebody that they think will help them build a better life. You talk a little bit about your agenda in the state of Kentucky. One of the things you did was expand Medicaid after it'd been blocked for a long time, helped a lot of people get healthcare. I do wonder if there's a difference here between what happens at the national level and the local level in terms of how attenuated policy feels in people's lives. Because I think the folks in the Biden administration would say, "Hey, we were pretty focused on a lot of this stuff." We passed a lot of legislation to fix roads and bridges. We passed legislation to invest in new jobs. We passed legislation to give people cheaper drugs. Like we really did try to do this. Folks didn't feel it, and that gap was what doomed them. I think that analysis is spot on. The Biden administration was really good to Kentucky, and their policy is helping us build a bright economy, but people have to be able to see and feel and experience things. The signing in the Rose Garden, in real for people anymore. I think about it in terms of an announcement of new jobs, which may create hope, a groundbreaking which shows progress. But the thing that most people ridicule that they shouldn't is the ribbon cutting. That's the reality where the jobs are there, and people's lives are changed. I think about Henderson, Kentucky, which is an area that I won just barely in 2019. We were able to place the cleanest, greenest, recycled paper mill in the country there. 350 jobs paid nearly $40 an hour. We wanted overwhelmingly in 2023 because we bettered people's lives, and they could see it. They could feel it. They knew their community was on the move. You got to have the right policy, but you also have to have the action, the results, and then to tell your story. So I'm a person that didn't play in that blame game. I think, for instance, the vice president ran as hard as she could over 107 days, and I crisscrossed the country for her. This is about what we do over the next couple of years, day in and day out, and not just meet, but other governors, mayors, senators, representatives. Just get out there and show the American people, while Donald Trump is making some extreme choices right now, we are focused on your everyday life, and we are going to be that party that doesn't move you to the right or the left, but moves you forward and moves us forward for every American. One of the points you make in the op-ed is about LGBTQ folks and the folks in your state. You vetoed several laws passed by Republican majorities in both houses of the Kentucky legislature targeting trans folks in particular, LGBT folks, you vetoed those laws. You basically, hey, look, we don't have to throw these people under the bus. You can stand up for your values of people, know where you are coming from when you issue your veto or where you stand up for them. Tell me more about how you communicated around that. I think it's two things. It's about telling people your why, but them always knowing your focus the next day is on those core issues we've talked about. For me, my why is my faith. I live by the golden rule that I love my neighbor as myself and the parable, the good Samaritan that says everyone is my neighbor. When I vetoed one of the nastiest anti-LGBTQ plus bills that are stated ever seen and did it during my election year, I told people why. My faith teaches me that all children are children of God, and nobody ought to be picking on a group of kids. That's something that first was worth losing over. But I think by telling the why to folks that are out there, they could say I do or I don't agree with you, but I think you're doing what you think is right. But the other thing is that they knew the next day, I'd be announcing new jobs. I'd be opening a new healthcare clinic that I would be laser focused on all of those core issues that they said, whether I agree or disagree with everything, he's working his tail off to try to make my life a little bit better. To make sure I can afford my kids' next prescription and put food on the table, that while inflation is tough right now, I can see a better day, and I can see that people are really working on trying to create that better day. Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear, who has earned a platform here, I appreciate it, sir. Thank you very much. Thanks for having me. Well, that does it for us on what was kind of an intense and brutal news day. You know, protect your piece, take care of yourself. That is all in on this Wednesday night. You can catch us every week night at eight o'clock on MSNBC. Don't forget to like us on Facebook, that's facebook.com/allandwithcris. Tackled the NFL action on FanDuel, get started with $150 in bonus bets if your first $5 bet wins. 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Guests: Sen. Chris Murphy, Rep. Dan Goldman, Gov. Andy Beshear
The president-elect makes his choice for Attorney General. Tonight: Senator Chris Murphy on what he's calling a "red-alert moment for American democracy.” And as Donald Trump is welcomed back to the White House by President Biden, the enduring problems for our constitutional order. Plus, Trump is already complaining about Elon Musk. And the case that Democrats can win again with Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear.
