the truth about what happened in our elections in 2016. >> it took an ex-british spy to give us a first look into what moscow might have been into. american investigators and journalists and prosecutors will now have to fill in the rest of the picture. good evening, i'm lawrence o'donnell and this is "the last word's" special last word of the year. it was a year like no other. rachel will join us and ezra klein to talk about the study of the impeachment process w. the white house occupied by the least experienced pthd in history, what could possibly go wrong? >> this american carnage stops right here, right now. >> this was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration period. >> this is off to a terrible start. >> he's now accusing president obama of wiretapping his phones. >> there was no such wiretap

activity. >> the national security adviser essentially could be blackmailed by the russians. >> i think it's very, very unfair what's happened to general flynn. >> the president of the united states is under criminal investigation for his conduct in office. >> regardless of recommendation i was going to fire comey. >> the trickle down crowd is now having a beer party in the rose garden. >> that's the group. >> it's a completely sterile presidency. >> if you want to eat an elephant, eat it one bite at a time. >> he doesn't have a role now in the trump administration. >> we condemn this display of hatred and display on many sides. on many sides. >> there is no moral equivalency between the kkk, the n e o-nazis and anybody else. >> rocketman is on a suicide mission for himself. >> it is in nobody's interest to out kim jong-un.

>> there he is tossing single rolls of paper towel into a crowd of people on an island where 95% of its citizens don't have power. >> i think it's now acknowledged what a great job we have done. >> a self interested man, na narcissistic at a level we have never seen before. >> you damn well i was a snake before you took me in. >> as the only president in history to reach the end of its first year in office with a 32% approval rating, donald trump made many, many losing moves in 2017. it is impossible to list them all so here is just a sample starting with following steve bannon and roy moore to defeat in alabama. luther strange was the republican senator appointed to fill jeff sessions senate seat after donald trump appointed jeff sessions to be his attorney

general. here is the president campaigning for luther strange in september by telling republican voters they could vote for the other guy. >> and by the way, both good men. both good men. and you know what? and i told luther, i have to say this, if his opponent wins, i'm going to be here campaigning like hell for him. >> donald trump's endorsement did not help luther strange who lost in the primary to steve bannon's chosen candidate roy moore and roy moore accused of sexually assaulting a girl when she was 14 years old and trying to date other girls while they were still in high school and roy moore was a 32-year-old assistant district attorney. republican senator richard shelby withdrew his support of the republican ticket and voted for someone else, the republican -- the senate republican political action committee stopped funding roy moore's campaign. mitch mcconnell, leader of the

senate, said an ethics investigation of roy moore would begin immediately if he was elected to the senate. what did donald trump do? president trump campaigned for the accused child molester. >> get out and vote for roy moore. do it. do it. do it. we need somebody in that senate seat who will vote for our make america great again agenda. >> and once more, more people voted against donald trump on election day and donald trump, roy moore and steve bannon went down in crushing humiliating defeat in alabama giving us one of the best political sound bites of the year. >> mr. bannon, this is a huge defeat for you. >> the silent humiliation of

steve bannon. and in charlottesville, a self professed neo-nazi charged with murder for driving his car into a crowd of peaceful protesters and killing 32-year-old heather heyer. it was condemned by politicians in both parties except for one. donald trump. >> we're closely following the terrible events unfolding in charlottesville, virginia. we condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides. on many sides. >> i do think there's blame, yes. i think there's blame on both sides. you look at both sides, i think there's blame on both sides. and i have no doubt about it. an you don't have any doubt about it either. you had bad people in that group but you also had people that

were very fine people on both sides. >> steve bannon was he said proud of donald trump's both sides response. two days after president trump said that, senator bob corker said this. >> the president has not yet -- has not yet been able to demonstrate the stability nor some of the competence that he needs to demonstrate in order to be successful. >> but only one of president trump's losing moves will continue to imperil his presidency in the new year and that's firing fbi director james comey and telling lester holt on nbc that he did it essentially to obstruct justice. >> regardless of recommendation, i was going to fire comey

knowing there was no good time to do it. and in fact, when i decided to just do it, i said to myself, i said, you know, there this russia thing with trump and russia is a made-up story, it's an excuse by the democrats for having lost an election that they should have won. >> joining us now, joy reid, national correspondent and host of "am joy" on weekends and also jonathan capehart with "the washington post" and msnbc contributor. joy, no question, most important political interview of the year. mr. lester holt who manages to get without having to try that hard to get a confession out of the president. >> yeah, absolutely. with all due respect to the three of us doing interviews and journalists, the definitive interview of the trump interview. lester holt managed to get donald trump to emote and to as donald trump wants to do spill

his guts and he told lester holt the thing that will wind up probably undoing donald trump's presidency that he fired jim comey, former director of the fbi, because of the russia investigation. up to now they'd had a cover story for why they fired james comey and included because they thought he was too cruel to hillary clinton and insane and he despises hillary clinton and obsessed with her and that confession really does set in motion part two of the russia-gate investigation by mueller and track one is whether or not the trump campaign colluded with russia. did donald trump himself obstruct justice? donald trump seems to think, yes, he did. >> jonathan, firing comey, it's a hard thing to schochoose but that the biggest trump mistake of the year? >> oh, absolutely, absolutely. just -- you know, recently, the president even said what we just saw in the clip there which is a made-up story by the democrats to explain why they lost the election. he wouldn't have to be saying those things had he not fired

mueller. in a normal presidency, james comey would be still the fbi director. a normal president would allow the fbi to conduct its investigati investigation, would say the proper things to get to the bottom of this, means something for the democracy, whatever the russians did and fully cooperate and leave it at that. instead, the president decides he wants to not just fight with the justice department, fight with the fbi, but fire the fbi director and then keep fighting with everybody who keeps getting closer and closer to him. >> might not be a special prosecutor if he hadn't fired james comey. we don't know. joy, there's a racial line going through donald trump's first year of the presidency with the both sides comments, with his rush to support roy moore in alabama. and there seems to be no breaking that spell for donald trump. >> yeah. and for donald trump it's both

his own proclivities back to the nixon administration of all administrations prosecuting he and his father and charging them with racial discrimination in the housing developments in queens. putting "c" for colored on the applications through the central park five and him wanting the five accused teenagers who were accused of raping a white woman and proved by dna executed and just the long history of weird, racial comments but you marry it to the zigs to tie the fortunes to theali alt-right saying whit supremacists and that group embedded in the past in the democratic party and now in the gop and donald trump decided to make common cause with them with the bannons, the breitbarts of the world and the decision to marry the fortunes to them, his birtherism, his own proclivities lashed him to a kind of a brand of racism that we have never

seen this overtly in the white house since woodrow wilson. >> the president's views on these things disgusted prominent republican southerns. >> absolutely. look. again back to the normal president comment before, a normal president would keep the alt-right at more than arm's length. a normal president would not have a white supreme cyacist fe from the oval office and he the president is still consulting with steve bannon. to joy's point, i would just add that every time the president gets into a fight with the person of color, whether they're nfl players -- >> yeah. >> members of congress like congresswoman wilson of florida, you name it, it's always playing to his base. his base loves it. if we know about president trump, his job approval rating could be in the 30s but as long as that base of the republican party still cheers him when he

goes and does the rallies, applauds those lines, he's going to give them what they want and clearly what they want and what they like is grievance, you know, stewed in with racial animosity and looking at folks like me and joy and like wealthy nfl players as spoiled, ungrateful people to be happy to be here. >> joy, it is not that long ago that most of the mainstream media was falling for the idea that donald trump was somehow a communications genius because he kept communicating successfully with a minority of american voters. >> right. >> and came in, you know, far behind hillary clinton in the vote on election night. they still thought that was brilliant. and now, in the latest polling, nbc poll, control of congress for 2018, 50% favor democrats. 39% favor republicans and that's thanks to the genius donald trump. >> yeah. it's funny.

the beltway media long had this sort of romantic attachment to what they call the plain spokenness and seeing barack obama as revealing of the own backgrounds and media cleave toward the plain spoken, harry truman and plain spoken guy and have a will have affair with it and then trump voters in tennessee going down as if you're in the zoo looking at the plain, ordinary, white working class voter as if they're an exhibit and i think that's a problem with media. i think it says something about the east coast/west coast version of the media that that's where the media comes from but with donald trump and an idea he's a genius because he uses twitter and it's done nothing but hurt him. the communication in alabama did not help both candidates. he did not help -- such a great genius of communication, why is he at 32% bottom of the polls of

every president in modern and probably all of presidential history? he's not a communications genius. he know who is the audience is. >> right. >> we have to leave it there. joy, jonathan, thank you very much. >> thank you, lawrence. and coming up, the case for normalizing impeachment. this is a hugely important article. the man who wrote it, ezra klein, joins us next. later, my hero rachel maddow joins our year-end special edition of "the last word."

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if you are charged with a crime in this country, the founding fathers gave you a right to a trial by a jury of your peers. if you don't like the result of the trial, you have the right to appeal it. if you don't like the result of the appeal, you can appeal it to the united states supreme court and if you don't like the result in the united states supreme court, too bad. because that is your court of last resort and whatever the court of last resort decides is what you're going to have to live with. for impeachment, the founding fathers very deliberately gave the president no such rights. the president of the united states can be brought up on impeachment charges by a vote by the house of representatives and then a right to a trial in the united states senate in which

the members of the united states senate are the jurors and if the president does not like what that jury of senators decides, too bad. because for the president the united states senate is the court of last resort. in impeachment trials. the president does not have a right to appeal to a higher court. there is no higher court. the president does not have a right to appeal to the supreme court if he is convicted by the senate in an impeachment trial and that means that the proper grounds for impeachment are whatever the united states senate says they are when they decide an impeachment case and for centuries we have pondered the phrase high crimes and misdemeanors as if by pondering it we can come up with a legal standard, an objective standard, a judicial standard about exactly what constitutes an impeachable offense. in his brilliant article, mandatory reading entitled the

case for normalizing impeachment, ezra klein has studied the phrase, high crimes and misdemeanors. he has studied the history of impeachment in the united states government and mostly been used to impeachment federal judges who have lifetime appointments and ezra klein has discovered that high crimes and misdemeanors means whatever the united states senate says it means. joining us now is ezra klein, editor at large at vox and host of the ezra klein show. loved every word of this. could read it twice. go to the first impeachment case you cite in the article, a federal judge and what this judge was being impeached for. >> so the first-ever federal impeachment is john pickering, a federal judge and does not commit really a crime and probably suffering we think from early stage dementia, more or

less impeached for behavior unbecoming of a judge and not unusual back then and founding fathers are clear on and with the president, too. quite a few examples of the founding fathers considering things not crimes and say would nevertheless impeachment if the president did that. firing officials and james madison said a president would be impeached and clear at this time in that era high crimes and misdemeanors is much more than criminality. >> you make the case in your piece that is arguable that instead of the american government seeing impeachment as a drastic thing that should be used once a century or less, there's actually a case to be made it should be used more frequently. >> so this is the key. we have an attitude towards impeachment that it can only really be used in the case of criminality and potentially 25th

amendment for mental incompetence and we are in a strange position where we are running a nuclear hyper power. the president of the united states is the most dangerous job in the world. the president who is the wrong person, the extent of what can go wrong there goes over to nuclear holocaust and launched more or less before breakfast and going to be the only job, the only job any of us think of where incredibly poor performance cannot get you fired? there is something wrong with that. and i will say when i began this piece my belief was that the cost, consequences of impeachment too large to considered and then after thinking through what can go wrong with a president that should not be president and seemed an absurd position to me. everything else in the economy is against some standard of performance. so, too, should be the presidency. >> and, ezra, when i began really studying impeachment it was the clinton impeachment and

i had stopped working in the senate but i was talking to senator moynihan at the time about it and other senators privately an we all believed we were going to find this holy grail of high crimes and misdemeanors and what it meant and the longer everyone stared at it they all began to realize, the senators one by one, there's no definition. it is up to us. we have the look at the clinton evidence and decide for each one of us, does it meet the standard as senators and there is no other standard. the's nothing written down. >> thises a hard thing. we don't like the burden of interpreting the constitution. >> right. >> we want to do this stuff as if it's an seance with the founders but it's written that way because they decided, chose not to enumerate impeachment. an earlier version said bribery and treason and rejected that as too narrow and left it up to us to have an ability to decide and we want somebody else to make the decision for us because it's easier that way, safer that way.

there's nobody there to make that decision for us. it is only us. we have to take the responsibility and by the way when they created this power, they weren't worried about nuclear weapons or the american military's ability to project power across the world and in the looking at a presidency like the one we have or consequences anything like the ones that we can create. and so, we are dealing with our world and our consequences and we need to take that seriously. we need to hold not just the leaders accountable but ourselves accountable for what we can do. >> i think it's clear the founding fathers would be shocked that there is so much reluctance to use an impeachment process against a president, any president, that has this nuclear code stuff in his pocket, that has that power that they never contemplating putting in the hands of an individual. we could go on and on about this. the way is to read ezra klein's article. thank you very much for joining us tonight. appreciate it. >> thank you. up next, my favorite part of this job, talking with rachel maddow.

here's a sample of your comments this year about my favorite part of "the last word" which is, of course, when we hear rachel maddow's last words. shei sheila writes, watching lawrence and maddow talk is almost the best part. having a full hour just expountding on news items would be heavenly. elizabeth says i can spend an hour of tv each night just listening to maddow and lawrence talk about anything and everything and so by popular demand, ladies and gentlemen, the one, the only, rachel maddow. >> frankly, there's nobody i'd rather hear from in the world right now than lawrence

o'donnell. >> i feel i should have told you before now. >> okay. >> but i'm wearing a wire. it's right here. it's on mila pel. >> mine, too. i think even if he was desperately head over heels in love with jeff sessions he would be trying to get jeff sessions out of there. >> desperately head over heels in love with jeff sessions is the country song waiting to be written, rachel. more breaking news. rachel maddow has a new boyfriend. >> i do. >> and he asked the question of chuck grassley at the town hall in i want to that rachel maddow would have asked if she was there. >> he knew exactly what he was talking about. he had the right follow-up questions and wouldn't let grassley get away without committing to it. beautiful. i love him. >> we're going to get you two together. >> susan will kill me. >> i hobbled in here on a cane tonight. we are but weeks away from you and me back in the dance floor

saturday nights like we always do. >> gosh. >> in this town. you know? >> it's true. >> doing that, you know, jennifer gray/patrick swayze thing. >> we get to switch off who gets to be jennifer. >> that was our little secret until now! thanks, rachel. the scaramucci quotes today. >> even just trying to learn enough about human anatomy to figure out what he was suggesting steve bannon was doing with himself -- >> steve bannon can't do it. stop thinking about it. it's an impossibly. just get it out of your head. >> bleach. it's gone. thank you. >> thank you, rachel. >> good-bye. >> you're killing me, man. thank you very much. >> thank you, rachel. i did it again! >> now you have me blushing so i have to turn away. >> thank you. >> good luck. thank you. the woman at the counter at the diner turns to me, grabs me by the shoulder and says please tell larry o doan knell he needs to run for president.

i was like, that i will do. good evening, lawrence. >> good evening, rachel. my turn to blush. there's the full screen picture of judy from the diner at barnes & noble today. i told her i would happily accept the vice presidential nomination on the m maddow/o'donnell ticket. >> you have been doing bank-up work and i'm glad we're both going to be the last planes off the island and i look forward to being colleagues with you forever. >> thank you to the smartest cable news host. now that you mention that. >> zip it. stop it. thank you, lawrence. top stop it. >> i love doing that. >> good-bye. >> rachel is blushing. don't cut away from her. >> i have to go. see you. >> thanks, rachel. and thank you, again, to our fearless leader here at msnbc, rachel maddow. up next, george will explains what he calls donald

trump's dangerous disability and later the last word's most watched segment of the year online and here's a hint. it has something to do with donald trump not telling the truth.

last year columnist george f. will left the republican party when donald trump won the nomination. four months into the trump presidency, george will found a

key phrase to describe donald trump. dangerous disability. >> trump has a dangerous disability. that was the title of george will's column that was trending on twitter today. george will has often had the most talked about column of the day in the decades as a columnist. today there was an urgency to his writing. he said it was urgent for americans to think and speak clearly about president trump's inability to do either -- to do either. this seems to be not a mere disinful disinclination but a disability. it seems he does not know what it is to know something. joining us now george f. will, pulitzer prize winning columnist for "the washington post" and thrilled to have you join us because once again you wrote the column of the day that everyone's talking about. and it's within of the columns that puts in towards things that many of us have thought in

different ways but most of us haven't found the way to put it into words. you're saying that the president is actually not able to think. >> well, the problem, lawrence, isn't just that his sentences don't parse and that his pronouns float around in search of antecedents and not just that he's challenged and eisenhower was and i think his 0 pastie sometimes tactical. it is not just that he's given to verbal fender benders. george w. bush had his share of those. the question is whether or not the way he talks and the judgments he makes about matters of fact, history, for example, suggest that he really is not capable of sequential thought which is rather alarming in a president. you add that to the fact that his demonstrated lack of knowledge of american history, his recent talk about andrew jackson angry about a civil war that occurred 16 years after he

died suggests that, again, he is a basic unfamiliarity not just with the path but the present. remember during the republican candidate's debates he said once in defending the conservatism of his sister when's a federal judge, he said that his sister had signed some of the same bills that justice alito signed on the supreme court. he suggested federal judges and supreme court justices sign bills. this is rather alarming. if next week he comes out and says grover cleveland was a stern critic of the new deal, we'll be pleased and surprised to know that he knows there was a president grover cleveland but there comes a point at which this goes, manages to be ludicrous and not at all funny when you have a president that doesn't understand the basic facts of american history, the

basic realities of american governance and finds it impossible to put into simple declarative sentences what he's talking about. >> i want to listen to a professional diagnosis here. this is from a former professor at harvard medical school, professor of psychiatry and what he had to say about the president on this show. >> lying in the way that he does it repeated dangerous lying makes him unfit and a sign of serious mental disturbance and i agree. i don't think he knows reality clearly. he doesn't have a clear grasp of it because he changes. he makes up reality to suit his internal needs. >> george, your column scrupulously avoided any diagnosis that you ire not medically qualified to make. but were you tempted? i feel your column goes up to the border of psychiatry.

>> i stopped there purposely. first place i've not qualified. second, i remember the gross abuse of psychiatry when my man barry goldwater for whom i cast my first presidential vote was running for president in 1964 and a whole slew of psychiatrists diagnosed him from a distance as having all kinds of authoritarian and other disagreeable behaviors and tendencies. i'm just going by the evidence that the president continues to put in front of us in torrential amounts. >> and your recommendation at the close of your column is, quote, for the public to quarantine this presidency. how can the public do that? >> well, the public has to communicate to their elected reptdives that the elected representatives have more to fear from the public, from their constituents than from mr. trump. that is, the public has to say, we have taken this man's measure and we find him alarming and we

want you to be on our side, the side of our alarm and rational fear, rather than the normal tendency to defer to presidents on important matters, particularly of war and peace. i mean, it's one thing for him to wander around and say, my gosh, who knew health care was complicated. it is another thing when he's dealing with north korea, the south china sea, the ukraine, crimea and all the rest when the use of force is involved because that requires, a, a certain confidence on the part of the public to support a president and because the normal madisonian checks and balances do not restrain the president with military force. >> based on what you are hearing of elected officials in washington, is that message from the public, certainly many members of the public already feel this, what you're talking about in you column and have been trying to communicate it, is that message getting through?

>> i think it is. the important thing is that it get through to republicans. the democrats have gone into well advertised resistance. the real question is will republicans in congress feel a need to defer? i think not. now, you notice the other day the president when he broke new ground in presidential behavior by urging a governmental shutdown said also which is none of his business coming from the executive branch that the senate should change its rules to get rid of the filibuster. there was an instant and bipartisan rejection of that which indicated that republicans as well as democrats are finding a common ground in establishing a distance and an institutional self interest against mr. trump. >> george f. will once again written the column of the day that everyone's talking about. george, thank you very much for joining us tonight. really appreciate it. >> glad to be with you.

okay. last word scholars, what was the most watched segment of "the last word" online in 2017? the answer is coming up next. building a website in under an hour is easy with gocentral...

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i started calling donald trump's statements lies when he lied about president obama's birth certificate years ago and then very few of us decided to

call a lie a lie. but now most of the news media understands the challenge of having a pathological liar in the white house and "the new york times" and other newspapers who never called anything donald trump said a lie until the final weeks of the presidential campaign routinely label his statements lies. in march, i talked about the president's pathological lying in what became our most watched segment of the year online. >> the president is living in fear of reporters tonight now more than ever. he's visibly afraid of being anywhere near reporters now. since donald trump lied about president obama tapping his phone during the presidential campaign, he has been afraid of having to answer reporters' questions about that. so in the few moments when reporters are allowed in the same room with the president, they're not allowed to ask any questions. and when some of them try to do that, the president remains

abjectly afraid to speak. >> thank you. >> thank you. appreciate it. thank you. >> thank you, mr. president. >> over here. thank you for coming. >> donald trump's new lie about president obama is, of course, violation of the president's oath of office. white house press secretary sean spicer works for a president that violates the oath of officer day and knows that. sean spicer knows for a fact that donald trump does not faithfully execute the office of the president of the united states. he knows donald trump lies to the american people regularly. sean spicer knows that that kind of lying is not faithfully executing the office of the president of the united states. sean spicer's first day on the job was all it took to define him forever as the single worst

most incompetent, untruthful white house press secretary in history. george washington department have a press secretary. his definition of faithfully executing the office of the president of the united states was answering the questions himself. the history of white house press secretary begins in 1929 and ended in january of 2017 when sean spicer took the title and the paycheck and he made a mockery of the job. on the first day. by lying about the least important thing ever argued about in a white house press briefing. >> this was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration. period. both in person and around the globe. >> now, 50 days in sean spicer has grown comfortable enough to openly laugh about the fact that the president of the united states is a pathological liar, a liar who cannot stop himself from lying in ways that are

instantly provable as lies. some in the white house press corps have redefined the standards of the presidency to a point so low that they, too, believe that the president's public and obvious lying is now a laughing matter. new windows into the president's lying open every day, often where we least expect it. the routine monthly disclosure of the jobs report by the bureau of labor statistics never occasioned the exposure of the president as a pathological liar. until today. listen to this exchange in the white house press briefing room. >> in the past the president referred to job reports as phony or totally fiction. does the president believe that this jobs report is accurate and a fair way to measure the economy? >> i talked to the president prior to this and he said to quote them clearly. it's very real now.

>> they may have been phony in the past but it's very real now. now, that's what the president actually told him to say. the bureau of la boar statistic today's calculation as they have for every previous employment calculation. it is impossible for those methods to have produced a real result today and never before. and everyone in that room today understands that logic which is why everyone in that room today understood that what the president told sean spicer to say was ridiculous. and the room was then divided among those who thought the ridiculous was funny and those who thought the ridiculous was offensive, because it was an admission by the president of the united states thate had mentioned the unemployment rate in the united states. >> the jobs report is fiction, because all of the people -- >> it's total fiction?

you don't think there's been improvement from the crash? >> i would say it's 90%. don't believe those phony numbers when you hear 4.9 and 5% unemployment. the number is probably 28, 29, as high as 35. the 5% figure is one of the biggest hoaxes. >> america has had presidents who have lied. some of them have told very big lies. but we've never had a pathological liar who is willing to lie about anything and everything, from the size of the crowd in front of him on inauguration day to criminal conduct by the previous president. the american news media has never been confronted by a challenge like this before. it is an historic challenge. it comes a year after the historic challenge the american news media failed, the challenge of covering a pathological liar as a presidential candidate. vigilant patrol of the trump administration lies has already yielded some important results, including the resignation of former lieutenant general

michael flynn as the president's national security adviser. we have now discovered michael flynn was a secret foreign agent lobbying for the turkish government during the trump campaign. the work he did would have been legal if he had registered as a foreign agent, which he did not. the failure to not register as a foreign agent could subgener su general flynn to criminal prosecution. apparently realizing that possibility, general flynn has retroactively filed a registration as a foreign agent this week. michael flynn has issued no apology yet to the crowds he led in chants of "lock her up." [ crowd chanting "lock her up" ] >> that's right, lock her up!

>> tough crowd. the "lock her up" crowd is a tough crowd. they're ready to lock people up even when the fbi director tells them no crime has been directed. the "lock her up" crowd has enough evidence tonight to want to lock up michael flynn. so he owes them an apology for having so often publicly lied to them about his personal moral superiority over hillary clinton. but trump world has any been good at apologies. >> if there is no evidence that any wiretapping took place, will the president apologize to president obama for making such a serious charge? >> let's not get ahead of ourselves. i think it's important to see where that goes. and i don't want to prejudge their work at this time. >> will he apologize about the birth certificate? donald trump still hasn't apologized to president obama for lying about his birth. he's not going to apologize. america knows that. the president is going to keep lying.

america knows that too. and as the lies multiple upon themselves, the vigilance of the resistance to those lies and the contest of these four years, if donald trump remains in office, will be a contest between that resistance and the lies, between trump lies and the truth. today the truth won, twice. first of all, february jobs reports almost as good as president obama's february jobs report. accepted by republicans as a good jobs report. that is progress. that is a step toward the truth. and second, the b"lock her up" crowd is going to have to find someone else to lead their chants now that michael flynn has gone silent and is surrounded by protective lawyers.

and of course sean spicer was pushed out of the white house last summer and michael flynn has pleaded guilty to lying to the fbi and now is a cooperating witness in the and prosecutor's investigation. tonight's last word is next. and we'd like you to be part of ours. happy new year! so our chevy employee discount is still available to everyone. you pay what we pay, not a cent more. we're so happy to share this with you. because you deserve to start the year off in style. it's our way of saying happy new year! and welcome to the family... the chevy family. the chevy employee discount for everyone ends soon. when it comes to travel, i sweat the details.

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each year we introduce you to a child in malawi who you're helping with the k.i.n.d. fund,

kids in need of desks. maureen bester is now in second grade. last year we delivered desks to maureen's school where she was the first student to get right to work on her new desk. this year maureen told us she wants to be a doctor. that means she's going to need help with tuition for high school because public high school is not free in malawi. thanks to your generosity, the n.d. fund is providing scholarships to 3,000 girls in malawi. with continued support, we'll be there for maureen when it's time for her to go to high school. you can help at lastworddesks@msnbc.com. maureen and the 200,000 schoolchildren in malawi who now have desks thank you. but the need is so great in malawi that most schools there still do not have desks. and so for your continued support of the k.i.n.d. fund, our last word for the year is, as always, a deeply grateful

thank you. [ singing ] fake news. >> here. ♪ >> congratulations, mr. president. >> i am outraged. >> lordy, i hope there are tapes. >> this trump and russia thing is a made-up story. >> we're getting nothing done. >> violating my body. >> it was disgusting. he mashed his lips against my face. >> 2017 has been an unbelievable year. the most outrageous, the most surprising, and exhausting. the greatest number of "have you seen this" events we've ever