"all in with chris hayes" starts right now. tonight on "all in," pompeo, bolton, mulvaney -- >> everyone was in the loop. >> a stunning new report on the role trump's top men played in the corrupt ukraine extortion scheme. and the day they all tried and failed to convince him to end it. >> i don't want to make money. i don't care about making money. then the fleecing of america. >> look, i like golf, it's fine. >> a new breakdown of the $120 million hustle in which we pay trump to golf at trump properties. what a deal. >> when you look at what they did, it's rewriting history. >> plus the triggering. the pathetic truth behind the great "home alone 2" scandal, when "all in" starts right now. good evening from new york, i'm chris hayes. we have new incriminating information about president trump's corrupt scheme to extort

ukraine into manufacturing dirt on his political opponent. keep in mind we already knew a lot. it was three months ago that we saw the notes from trump's call with the ukrainian president. and when the ukrainian president said he would like to buy more american weapons to combat russian aggression, trump responds, quote, i would like you to do us a favor, though. then the house held a whole impeachment inquiry, you probably watched some of it, and they founding enough evidence to impeach the president on two different counts, abuse of power and obstruction of congress. the main point of contention in the impeachment right now at this moment is the somewhat unprecedented limbo that the actual articles of impeachment currently in. the speaker of the house, nancy pelosi, says she will not send over those articles to the senate until she gets some sense from senate majority leader mitch mcconnell about what the trial will be like. and we know that the inner sanctum of the president, trump's closest advisers, the

people who actually knew the most about what was happening and why, that they have all been blocked from testifying before the house. the white house has blocked the release of any documents as well. but now reporters from "the new york times" found something extremely important, something we did not know before that provides a glimpse, crucially, into what kind of incriminating testimony trump's closest advisers would give if they were allowed to, or required to, by, say, a subpoena from the senate for its impeachment trial. "the times" reporting there was a meeting in late august in the white house where, quote, defense secretary mark esper joined secretary of state mike pompeo and john bolton, the national security advisor at the time, for a previously undisclosed oval office meeting with the president where they tried but failed to convince him that releasing the aid was in the interests of the united states. those are three of the most senior members of the trump administration, arguably the most senior other than the president and the vice president, trying and failing to get the president to back off,

to lift his unlawful hold on the aid to ukraine. now, of course we know the hold and the aid was part of the inducement to coerce ukraine into manufacturing dirt on his political opponent and pursuing an insane conspiracy theory. the crazy thing is the whistle-blower thing that led to impeachment all broke in september. we did not know that this meeting with these principals in the white house, we did not know it existed until it was reported today. they also found trump's office of management and budget was preparing broad and specious legal arguments. by late summer, top lawyers at the omb were developing an argument, not previously divulged publicly, that mr. trump's role as commander in chief would simply allow him to override congress on the issue. okay. just override congress, just like that? "the times" also reveals that trump's acting chief of staff, mick mulvaney, who had

previously publicly declared that they held up the ukraine aid so ukraine would start an investigation, remember, he admitted the quid pro quo, that mulvaney took unusual steps to keep the scheme under wraps. quote, mr. mulvaney is said by associates to have stepped out of the room whenever mr. trump would talk with rudy giuliani to preserve mr. trump's attorney/client privilege leaving him with limited knowledge about their efforts regarding ukraine. that's weird for a bunch of reasons but it undercuts the idea that what the president was doing with rudy giuliani was in his personal interests. if he was conducting foreign policy, there is no reason for mick mulvaney to leave the room. there is no privilege to protect when you're advising the president. that in and of itself is an utter tell the entire operation was for the personal benefit of donald trump and not the country. this "new york times" report

comes as secretary of state mike pompeo is heading to ukraine at the end of the week. he will meet with the ukrainian president who, by the way, still has not gotten that white house meeting with trump that was the original thing that he wanted so desperately from the president. secretary pompeo will not be meeting with ambassador bill taylor, the guy who famously texted, quote, i think it's crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign. the guy who testified before congress that it was his, quote, clear understanding security assistance money would not coming until ukraine's president committed to pursue an investigation. that guy, ambassador taylor, is now on his way out. he plans on leaving ukraine literally a day before secretary pompeo arrives in the country. and get this, just yesterday, right, right before pompeo is going to make this big trip, taylor is leaving, we learn that president trump had a phone convo with russia's vladimir putin on sunday. how did we learn it? only because the kremlin posted a brief readout of the conversation yesterday. the white house did not provide

anything until 10:45 this morning because why would anyone be curious about private conversations between president trump and president putin? according to the readout, trump did not mention russian election interference or its continued occupation of ukraine. it was just less than two weeks ago nancy pelosi announced this interesting gambit to withhold sending the articles of impeachment to the senate. a lot of people were left scratching their heads. but to the extent that new information has risen in the interim, information like what we learned today, maybe it is a smart idea to leave that window open. joining me now is eric lipton, investigative reporter from "the new york times." he helped break this story detailing trump withholding aid to ukraine. eric, can you just tell us what the context was of that meeting, what happened and what do we know about what happened in it? >> tension had been growing through for several weeks into july and august particularly with the department of defense. there was real frustration with the inability to spend money.

defense contractors had been designated to provide radio equipment and other supplies to ukraine. there was a real agitation growing in the department of defense among the personnel there who are in charge of getting the money out the door, among the lawyers there who wanted to make sure the money was spent before the end of september. also john bolton had -- hearing from other members of the national security council and from folks at state had been pushing president trump and the administration to lift the hold. what we learned also is that pompeo had had similar feelings. so there had been a number of conversations that particularly bolton and esper had had with senior people in the white house. the three of them gathered in the oval office around the president's desk on a sunny day in late august and they made the point that this was in the national interests to provide this military assistance to ukraine. but still president trump was unwilling and unready to let -- to lift the hold. >> one of the things that your reporting highlights there, and even in what you just describe

there, is that there are genuine legal concerns. we were talking a lot about whether there was a scheme of extortion, a quid pro quo, a this for that. but take everything aside from the phone call itself, just withholding the military aid after the president signed an appropriation passed by both houses of congress posed significant legal problem for a whole bunch of lawyers up and down the chain within the white house. >> right. there's something called the impounding and control act which was passed after nixon tried to stop funding for projects that he didn't support. >> right. >> and it was passed by congress to make sure that it is congress that controls how much money is spent and what the money is spent on. the president doesn't have the power to simply defer or to block funding for programs that congress has appropriated. if the president is going to defer that funding, the president needs to notify congress. and so basically what dod had said to the white house and to the office of management and budget is basically you have until like august 5th to get

this hold worked out. if you do it by august 5th, we're going to be fine. august 3rd or august 5th. and so august 3rd or august 5th comes and passes and still nothing has happened. at that point it starts to escalate and that's when esper gets involved. there's a real question at that point whether or not they are violating the impoundment control act. that's when the administration began to prepare this legal justification which concluded this the president has the constitutional power as the chief maker of foreign policy to basically say forget about it, we're not going to spend this money. >> we should note again, whenever this subject is raised, the president himself signed the law that appropriated this money. this was not foisted upon him. there's a lot in your piece which i think is really important too. if there were policy rationales for all of this, they were never made public. there was no public announcement that mr. trump wanted the assistance withheld. neither congress nor the

ukrainian government was formally notified which is part of again what is so strange about this entire situation. it's causing alarms inside the government. no one is saying word one publicly about it. >> it was fascinating as we got inside the office of management and budget through interviews and documents we had access to. there was just complete confusion among the folks whose job it was to execute on this order that had come from the president, that they wanted to be able to explain to people, the state department and the pentagon, why this hold was in place. they just kept asking and asking and they were simply told, you know, there is no explanation. just do it. and it was quite frustrating to them because they were trying to -- they wanted to be able to explain it, which would perhaps get more deference by the agencies. but they were unable to explain it. >> eric lipton, great reporting, you and your colleagues. thank you very much. >> thank you. joining me now for more on the legal implications of trump's actions, joyce vance, now an msnbc legal analyst.

what are the legal implications here from what you gleaned from that "times" article and what eric and his colleagues revealed? >> well, this story is tremendously important, chris, not for the least of reasons because as you mention in opening the delay appears to be a friend for the democrats. you know, the truth has a habit of coming out. sometimes it takes time, but it appears here that now the truth is coming out maybe in drips, but it's starting to look more like a waterfall. and what jumps out from this story is that this meeting in the oval office between trump and some of the top leaders in government looks a lot more like an intervention than it looks like a meeting. and this is -- you know, this is a meeting that's familiar to any prosecutor who's ever done public corruption cases. you almost always see something like this, whether it's a governor or a mayor, there's a point at which their senior leaders, their senior advisers come and sit down in their

office and say, look, you've been lucky so far but this has gone on long enough and you're really fixing to get into a lot of trouble here and this has to stop. and clearly the president chose not to stop here. so we see these sort of gymnastics, right, these almost a contortion to try to come up with a theory that's contrary to the clear language of the constitution that gives the power of the purse to congress, some expansive new form of executive power that says the president can override congressional enactments of funding. >> it also strikes me that it just highlights how important the witnesses, who we've not heard from, are. the fact that the principals in that meeting are people that it would be nice to hear from firsthand or at least to see the written paper that might have gone back and forth. how important is it, do you think, calling witnesses in light of this new revelation? >> so i think we can measure the

importance of these witnesses against the ferocity with which the president has tried to avoid permitting them to testify. no one keeps witnesses who can exonerate them from testifying. trump has gone to such extreme lengths to keep these folks from testifying that we can be almost certain that their testimony will be very probative of the truth and that the truth is not friendly to the president. and we know that because we now know that these people had explicit conversations with the president while his scheme was under way, while these legal positions were being developed, that were apparently so faulty that they were never made public, they were never offered to congress as a justification for violating the impoundment act, which tells us that the folks at omb didn't think that they could make those legal arguments with a straight face. so this witness testimony is critical. any proceeding in the senate, any sort of a trial that doesn't involve their testimony will be fatally flawed. >> i want to ask you about one

prominent member of the senate who's calling for witnesses in "the washington post" today, doug jones. there's also an nbc report about doug jones and which way he might go on impeachment, the possibility that he would break can democrats at the senate trial. you know him fairly well. you're from alabama. you've been in some of the same circles. what do you think he's sort of thinking as he enters this? >> so i suspect that senator jones doesn't view this as a political issue. not a matter of republicans versus democrats. he's a former prosecutor but also a former defense lawyer. he'll be interested in hearing the facts and thinking about the law and making whatever decision is warranted based on that evidence. but one thing that i think we can be certain of for anyone like senator jones who looks at this through a legal filter is that when the president, who's sort of our stand-in here for a defendant in a criminal case, even though it's not a criminal case, when it's that defendant who procures the absence of material witnesses, then you draw all of the inferences against that person.

here we can assume that the president has a lot to hide or we'd be hearing from these witnesses. i think that that will influence senator jones and his calculus. >> all right, joyce vance, thank you very much. joining me now, democratic congressman al green of texas who submitted his own articles of impeachment against president trump over two years ago. congressman, let me begin with the speaker's decision to wait to appoint house impeachment managers until some kind of basic procedural stipulations are made by mitch mcconnell. do you support that? >> thank you for having me. i think that it is imperative that we try as best as we can to get a fair trial as opposed to a fake trial. a fair trial necessitates witnesses and the production of evidence. documents, if you will. a fake trial allows the senate to simply convene, have a few perfunctory procedures and then vote to dismiss. i believe that trying to get a

fair trial is a good thing for us to do. it will enhance the public's belief that we are sincere and we are maintaining the moral imperative to go forward. i also think we have to be careful not to go so far as to allow this to become in the minds of many political expediency. that's a line that we dare not cross. but i do believe that thus far trying to get the senate to do what it has been said to have to do in the constitution is a fair thing to have done. i would also add this. the chief justice has a role to play. he has the dignity and the majesty of the supreme court in his hands. he can be a fly on the wall, or he can be the judge who has findings of facts and conclusions of law. he can literally make his own rulings known to the public by way of the written word as well as his open announcements in the senate. so i think that the chief justice has to step up.

he can't be a fly on the wall, he's got to be a person who lives up to what is expected of a presiding judge. >> you just mentioned political expediency and insincerity. those are two charges that have been leveled against democrats during this entire affair, particularly since september when the formal impeachment inquiry started. you play a starring role in those charges. the argument goes like this of house republicans and trump and his allies, basically the democrats wanted to impeach donald trump from day one. they cast about looking for a set of facts that thebz plausibly use to do it and it was engineered to get to this point. exhibit one, congressman al green who's been calling for the man's impeachment for two years now. what's your response to that charge? >> well, the genesis of impeachment, to be very candid with you, was when the president was running for office and he had members of his own party to talk about his unfitness to hold

office. the persons who were running against him, mr. romney spoke of his not being fit to hold office. mr. cruz made statements about it. so the president didn't have the luxury of persons from his party having been on his side, as it were, throughout this entire ordeal. senator graham has said some very harsh things about the president. with those things in mind and with the president's behavior before us, firing mr. comey, who was investigating the intrusion of russia into his campaign, our election, that was something that was not to be tolerated. and the president has continued to try to thwart the efforts of congress to investigate. with mr. mueller, the president by and through his white house counsel tried to get this done again, to deal with mr. mueller, to extricate him, remove him from the process. the white house counsel has not

testified before the senate yet. my hope is that he will be among those that will be called. now more specifically, i said that the president would claim that he was exonerated if there were impeachable actions that he performed and we did not move to perform our duty to impeach him. he has distorted the truth. he has twisted it and tried to crush it to earth. but truth crushed to earth shall rise again and no lie can live forever. i think that we're at a point now where the senate is on trial. before there's a trial in the senate, the senate is now on trial. speaker pelosi's withholding the articles will give us an opportunity to find out whether there will be dignity and integrity as a part of the senate's trial. and if the public sees that there's not the dignity and not

the integrity, it will not surprise me, wouldn't surprise me one scintilla to see people coming to the actual trial itself. they may not be in the room, they may not be in the senate, but it wouldn't surprise me if people came from across this country to be there at the time this trial is taking place so as to show their concern for a fair trial as opposed to a fake trial. >> all right, congressman al green, thank you very much, sir. >> thank you. next, the real donald trump. the president publicly names the alleged whistle-blower in his toxic twitter feed. that story in two minutes. that story in two minutes. can my side be firm? and mine super soft? yes. with the sleep number 360 smart bed, on sale now, you can both... adjust your comfort with your sleep number setting. so, can it help us fall asleep faster? yes, by gently warming your feet.

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wthat's why xfinity hasu made taking your internetself. and tv with you a breeze. really? yup. you can transfer your service online in about a minute. you can do that? yeah. and with two-hour service appointment windows, it's all on your schedule. awesome. so while moving may still come with its share of headaches... no kidding. we're doing all we can to make moving simple, easy, awesome. go to xfinity.com/moving to get started. for months now basically the moment after we learned about the whistle-blower's complaint on the president's dealings with ukraine, the right-wing media has been obsessed with the identity of the whistle-blower. many right-wing outlets have published the name of a person they claim is the whistle-blower. we don't know if it is.

and they're not alone. don junior has outed this individual, senator rand paul, congressman louie gohmert, so perhaps it was only a matter of time before the president did it himself. he did it over the weekend in his favorite venue for this sort of thing, his twitter feed. the trouble is those tweets have real world effects. when threats against the whistle-blower spike, often seemingly spurred by presidential tweets, he is driven to and from work by armed security officers. that's a u.s. government official who needs a security detail because the president is directing venom at him. and this all comes amidst a very, very noticeable uptick in the president's twitter activity, which has always been dark and weird and angry and insulting. in fact "the new york times" analyzed more than 11,000 tweets from the president going all the way back to his first day in office. unsurprisingly "the times" found more than half of all his tweets are attacks on someone or something. quote, no other category even comes close. and then there's the president's activity of retweeting accounts,

some that are brand new with zero followers, pushing forward weird conspiracy theories from the darkest corners of the internet. for instance, how does he even find these accounts to retweet them? joining me now is benec collins who spends his time chasing down bots and conspiracy networks. sometimes the president will retweet an account and it has very few followers, sometimes it's following zero people. in one case he retweeted the first tweet of an account. i thought to myself, how did he get there to finding out this person to retweet their first one. how does that work? >> he got there from seb gorka. this account tweeted once and he said that he was joseph from brooklyn and he said he is no longer a fan of jerry nadler

after 30 years of being a fan of jerry nadler. twitter took this account down in like a day because they did some basic forensics. they tried to sending it an email and the email didn't work. these are really easy things to track down. he's been on one recently. that's probably the best way to put it. when he is, he retweets these very shady accounts. the accounts all have very specific hypertargeted messages, just like joseph from boro park. they are almost always impossible to verify. >> the joseph from boro park, the idea was this was a jewish skp constituent of jerry nadler. the profile picture was from a "new york times" story. >> there wasn't a lot of work put into this one. >> but part of the question i always think is where -- so in that case you had sepp gorka.

but where does the president get this stuff? how is it getting into his brain these people are out there saying these things? >> what we really have to do is come to the reality that we are all in now, which is that there are two different realities for news now. and he has ventured into the one that appeases him the most. there is an entire ecosystem that exists to push narratives that absolve him of every crime, absolve him of every wrongdoing that has ever existed. there's an ecosystem that exists to help those writers push buttons. you know, for example, a really good example of this is facebook banned the name of the guy that people believe is the whistle-blower. they banned it from posts from showing up. the posts are hidden. what they didn't do is they didn't take it out of titles of news articles. so, you know, conservative news outlets would push these stories

and be like you won't believe who the whistle-blower is and then they leave the title with the guy's name in it on facebook and those would go wildly viral. there is an incentive structure for this sort of thing now that it feeds into the president. and the president only sees this stuff. he searches specific names, specific concepts, and he is fed algorithmically stuff so he retweets it. >> no amount of standards can stop the biggest person in the world from elevating something. news organizations and facebook will say we're not going to report this and the president can just retweet someone or use his platform to do it and there's no containing him in some ways. >> yeah. and this is something we're going to have to deal with for the remainder of our lives. he has a separate fire hose that connects to people that is in a lot of ways larger than a lot of

mainstream media, a lot of even alternative media. he's created a secondary ecosystem for himself that absolves him of everything. in these spaces, there was a graphic up there that showed this pipeline from fortune all the way to facebook. in these spaces where he's like a god emperor, he cannot do wrong. while not living person has read it, some of this stuff makes it downwind, and it makes it downwind through infowars and gateway pundit, things like that. when it happens, it gets to the president and then it gets to regular people. so even though these -- normal people would never be on 4chan, it can get to regular people just from this downwind effect. >> and he is the key link in the chain which is what's so

fascinating about that. ben collins, thank you so much. >> thank you. every time trump goes golfing, you pay the bill, he gets the money. how much has gone into his pockets? the reporter working to track that down will be here, next. t that down will be here, next i'm your mother in law.

and i like to question your every move. like this left turn. it's the next one. you always drive this slow? how did you make someone i love? that must be why you're always so late. i do not speed. and that's saving me cash with drivewise. my son, he did say that you were the safe option. and that's the nicest thing you ever said to me. so get allstate. stop bossing. where good drivers save 40% for avoiding mayhem, like me. this is my son's favorite color, you should try it. [mayhem] you always drive like an old lady? [tina] you're an old lady.

i love golf. but if i were in the white house, i don't think i'd ever see turnberry again, i don't think i'd ever see doral again. i don't think i'd ever see many of the places that i have. i don't think i'd see anything. i just want to stay in the white house and work my ass off and make great deals, right? who's going to leave? >> that was a real theme of then

private citizen donald trump's attacks on president barack obama. in fact eight years ago on this very day he tweeted, quote, i play golf to relax. my company is in great shape. barack obama plays golf to escape work while america goes down the drain. of course you will never guess what he did today. this is the president's public schedule. it's blank. instead he was out at the trump international golf club in west palm beach. it should be noted in his three years in office donald trump has well, well outpaced president obama in terms of golf outings. obviously there's the shameless hypocrisy here, but there is also the cost, which is not nothing. according to a huff post analysis, trump's golf rounds have cost the u.s. government more than $118 million. now, to be clear every time a president of any party through the years goes and golfs, and presidents do golf, they like to do that, it does cost the u.s. government money. the thing that makes this so very different is that some portion of that money is going back into donald trump's pocket because it's always at his properties and we do not know the simple matter of how much. here with me now, the huff post

senior white house correspondent behind the analysis. i really like this piece. how did you work through the math of just -- first, let's start with the total cost of what the golf outings have billed to the government. >> right. well, we got a break on that because the general accountability office, which is what used to be the government accounting office did a study of the first four trips the president made to mar-a-lago way back in the first few months of his administration. they foundi that those four tris added up to more than $13 million. they broke out the costs. how much went for air force one and the various transport planes that bring his limo down, et cetera, et cetera. so we could basically figure out roughly what these trips were costing wherever he went. that's how we come up with he's now the 26th trip down to mar-a-lago. he's made a couple of dozen to new jersey.

that's how we get up to $118 million. each trip to mar-a-lago is $3.4 million, by the way, so it's not nothing. >> and then the qstion becomes so some portion of that, the question is how much does the u.s. government actually hand over to these trump properties. the president goes and golfs or stays at one of his properties. he's got security. the secret service, i remember, was getting charged for the golf carts. do we know -- do we have any inkling of what the answer to that question is? >> well, the easiest way would be for the white house to tell us, right? it's our money, the taxpayer money so we should find that out. i've asked many times and they're not at all interested in letting us know how much they're charging for top white house staff, how much for the secret service to be staying at trump properties. but there have been lawsuits from groups that have looked into this and my estimate right now is it's at least $3 million has flowed back into trump's own cash registers and possibly more. the $3 million figure is

probably just the secret service and some top white house staff for lodging, for food and beverage. we don't know for what other things they're being charged, they won't tell us. these lawsuits take time. so a group called property of the people just last month put out some numbers based on the first 25 golf trips that the president had made and that came out to a quarter of a million. he's now at 235 golf trips and that's -- just extrapolate the math and that comes out to $2.5 million. we know they went to town on a couple of early mar-a-lago visits, bar tabs of $1,000 with just some white house staff. they're being charged $550 a night for the rooms. so yeah, it adds up pretty quickly. but they just don't want to tell us, which i find kind of amazing given how much of a hard time this president gave to the last president for going to golf on his own dime. you know, going to places in

hawaii and martha's vineyard, where the government was not paying, by the way, to pay for his room and stuff. of course secret service and stuff, they all went too, but, you know, given all that criticism that we're not able to find out is kind of interesting. >> it is remarkable actually that we don't have an answer to that very simple question. thanks so much for sharing that reporting. >> it's my pleasure, thank you. still ahead, it is our last show of the decade. how about that? and we're facing a potential impeachment trial, democratic primaries in the presidential election and seriously who knows what the hell else. plus tonight's thing 1, thing 2 is next. ht's thing 1, thing 2 is next.

mom, why do we always come here for the holidays? how did you find great-grandma's recipe? we're related to them? we're portuguese? i thought we were hungarian? grandpa, can you tell me the story again? behind every question is a story waiting to be discovered.

thing 1 tonight, donald trump jr., the author of "triggered" shows us all once again what that word really means when he got very upset over a story that his dad had his very short cameo scene cut from a canadian broadcast version of the 1992 movie "home alone 2." the scene, which is about ten seconds long, occurs when mccully cull kin enters a hotel and encounters donald trump in there on his way from doing god knows what. that scene was cut, the canadian broadcasting corporation says, for time and it was cut back in

2014 before trump became president. they did it to fit commercials in. i think every person is familiar with the concept. it happens with pretty much every movie when it goes to broadcast tv. trump himself apparently tweeted about it, taking it in stride. on trump tv it was the most outrageous thing since the war on christmas. >> how much is trump derangement syndrome for you to cut that out of a happy movie. >> i think they're terrified that people will remember that before he was the new hitler he was actually a beloved mainstream, and i think they're terrified of these little things that will remind people of just his deranged -- >> it's also censorship. >> donald trump wasn't necessarily in "home alone 2" because he was a beloved mainstream figure. it was more like that was the way you had to pay off donald trump if you wanted to shoot a movie scene at one of his properties, and that's thing 2 in 60 seconds. properties, and that's thing 2 in 60 seconds.

for as long as anyone has heard of donald trump, it's been because he's worked so hard to

make sure that you have heard of donald trump. remember when he would pretend to be a publicist named john miller and call up newspaper reporters to boast about his sex life? >> frankly, he gets called by everybody. he gets called by everybody, attractive women. >> like who? >> well, he gets called by a lot of people. >> and then we made that man our president. so when the controversy erupted about trump being cut from the movie "home alone 2" we were reminded of a story actor matt damon told which probably explains why trump was in that movie in the first place. it seems trump had a little arrangement he forced on movie companies. damon says the deal was if you wanted to shoot in one of his hotels, you had to write him in a part. you waste a little time so you can get the permit and then cut the scene out. but i guess in "home alone 2" they left it in. now, donald trump has done a

whole lot of cameos and who knows how many movies he's been cut out of and matt damon wasn't even in "scent of a woman." so this is all hearsay unless you had somebody who is in the film itself, like i don't know, maybe chris o'donnell. >> it was explained to us in order for us to film at the plaza, we had a little walk-on part for donald and marla. he went through the whole -- he came through hair and makeup and ate on the set but he looked the same going into hair and makeup as he did when he left. >> what part did they give him? >> it's nothing. it got cut out of the movie. ou. can my side be firm?

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last night jews across the country lit the menorah for the final night of hahn karnnukah, night after a man broke into a home and stabbed five people, one of whom is in critical condition. the suspect is now in custody. he's pled not guilty to five counts of attempted murder, one count of burglary. today federal prosecutors charged him with another five counts tied to a federal hate crime statute. prosecutors say they found handwritten journals in his home con taping anti-semitic statements, he conducted searches about adolf hitler, and prominent companies founded by jews in america. the suspect's family says he has a long history of mental illness and hospitalizations. now, this attack follows the murder of three people in a

corncor kosher market three weeks ago carried out by three individuals. there's been an unserving stre york city against orthodox jews, particularly my home borough of brooklyn. anti-semitic crimes have jumped 21% in the past year. statistics show jews are year after year after year the number one target of anti-religious hate crimes. anti-semitism is a force as vile and fierce and bloody and old as my force in the world. the true test of a flourishing pluralistic society is if it can protect its religious minority, and especially because of the special enduring poison of anti-semitism, if it can truly protect and secure its jewish brothers and sisters. it is a test the u.s. and many countries around the world now face at a scale and with stakes

not seen i think in generations. it is all of our job to make sure we pass that test. happy hanukkah to all, and may the light vanquish the darkness. .

it is our last show of the year. in fact, it's our last show of the decade. i think everyone would agree it's been a great year and a great decade. let's hope it keeps get better and better next year. joining me to talk about if america is about to get even greater, jelani cobb, a professor of the columbia school of journalism and msnbc political analyst alexi mccammond, reporter at axios. next year is crazy because we know a lot of times on the news you don't know what is coming. but we know two big things are happening next year. we know pretty much with certainty there is going to be an impeachment trial and a nomination process and election. those are going to start right away, and people aren't ready for how quickly that's going to hit.

>> i wish that i weren't ready for how quickly it's going to hit. i don't know that i'm ready for how quickly it's going to hit. the other wild card is the evergreen wild card is president trump. but specifically, president trump running a reelection campaign while he has just been impeached by the house and is going through an impeachment trial in the senate. we saw the rhetoric coming from him about impeachment before the 2018 midterms when he was doing the pseudo reelection rallies that were supposedly for other republicans up and down the pallet, but were really about him and his presidency in 2018. let's imagine what the rhetoric will be like at his rallies as he is properly running for reelection for the presidency while undergoing a senate trial and everything else is happening on the side. let's not forget that two weeks before the midterms he suddenly threw out he was going have a middle class tax cut for americans. so there are a number of things that could be wild cards that are dictated by the 2020 election and the way he is seeing americans move and the

democrats move as they're trying to run to unseat him. >> you know, as alexi talks about the sort of wild card here, i find just in talking to people and sort of interacting with viewers of the show or listening to the podcast, people i email and talk with, there is a stone of dread that sits in people's stomachs right now. a lot has been there for a lot of people since donald trump was elected. >> november 8th, 2016. >> but it's gotten more intense recently as people think about the nominating process. ed kilgore had a good piece saying my 2020 existential dread. are you feeling that? and what is your understanding of why people are feeling that? >> i think there is a kind of baseline dread that's been there since november 8th of 2016, or november 9th, i should say. and really, one of the things that concerns me is the idea of what happens after the senate trial. barring something extraordinary, the republicans are going to do in the senate what we expect them to do and acquit donald

trump. but with each thing that's happened with him, he has been emboldened. there is a famous shoot someone on fifth avenue comment. >> right. >> and this is at least politically as close as you get to that. if you have solicited the assistance, the unwilling assistance of a foreign government in an american election and -- >> on the phone while people listen. >> on the phone while people listen and you are essentially immunized by that from the republicans in the senate, what won't you do after that. >> yeah. >> i think that's the kind of dread that you have. and also, the other thing i have to say about this is that we've had this conversation before, that world affairs are complicated. and if you're a person who reads history with any kind of intention, you understand that there are really sober minded rigorous thinkers who have blundered their way into catastrophes. >> yes, yes. >> so we've been on cruise control for so long that

everyone is just let there not be something in north korea or something anywhere in the globe that could turn into a hot spot. >> this is such an important point. in some ways, we have all been very lucky in a weird way. >> tremendously. >> in terms of what has happened in the world in the last three years there has not been the initiati initiation of a massive new offensive war between, say, great powers there has not been an enormous financial cataclysm like we saw of the great recession. there has not been a natural disaster outside of puerto rico, which was by the way the biggest one and the biggest test that he had to face and thousands of americans died in puerto rico. >> right. >> that was a very pointed example of what can go wrong. and alexi, that to me is also the sort of thing that hangs over everything as we think about the election. we tend to think we know what the issue set is, but there are a lot of sort of smoking tee ii tinderboxs around the world, a lot of things that can enter the picture at any moment. >> that's exactly right.

and those things are all happening as president trump is facing these sort of political thorns in his side so to speak at home. north korea still hasn't given up their nuclear weapons, yet we see the way in which he continues to talk about north korea and dictators around the world like kim jong-un and guess out of his way to embrace those folks while pushing away some of our closest allies which is ultimately contributing to him being laughed at when he is around other foreign leaders and contributing to the decline in america's standing on the world stage. and that is something that we're going to have to rebuild whenever president trump leaves the white house. and that's not something to jelani's point that scholar, global scholars and political folks are taking lightly as they're watching maybe some of the ways in which we've been lucky so to speak with president trump so far. >> biggest hope for this year? >> i think the cynical part of me is that we get through it. biggest hope is obviously at the end of it donald trump is no longer the president. >> i think you speak for many when you say that.

you channel the voice of many, jelani cobb, alexi mccammond, thank you both for being with me. "the rachel maddow show" starts right now. >> good evening. happy to have you with us. so we've been on the road. we sent producers across the country to pull together an important story right now about something that is happening right now with historic implications. the story tonight begins with this guy. this is harry blackmon. he was from minnesota, a conserve lawyer, first appointed to the federal bench by dwight eisenhower. he became richard negatives's second appointment to the united states supreme court. but blackman was not nixon's first choice for the job. nixon's first two picks had pro segregation records that got unearthed or dissected during the confirmation process. both were ultimately rejected by the senate which