The Rachel Maddow Show weeknights at 9:00 Eastern on MSNBC. Some very exciting news today, the former vice president has a job, not the former former vice president who's now president. I mean, the immediate former vice president, Mike Pence. The Heritage Foundation has announced that former vice president Mike Pence is going to go work there. He said today, quote, The Heritage Foundation announced today that former Vice President Mike Pence will join the organization as a distinguished visiting fellow.

What exactly is that job? What exactly is he going to do there? And that's kind of beside the point. But Heritage is very excited to have him working together with the former vice president. Heritage will continue to support and defend our policy accomplishments while also fighting back against a socialist agenda pushed by those on the left. That's what Mike Pence is going to be doing. He's going to be fighting socialists full time ish on a visiting basis. Congratulations, Mr.

Pence. Here's an unexpectedly awkward thing, though. The Heritage Foundation in this announcement today repeatedly describes their new hire as the former vice president. And indeed, Mr. Pence yesterday unveiled new letterhead proclaiming that he has opened an office now, which he is calling the office of the former vice president. The reason that is surprisingly awkward right now is that no matter what he does with his post White House life, it is going to be hard for former vice president to Mike Pence to assert that he ever served in the administration of former President Donald Trump, because apparently we're not supposed to admit there is such a thing as former President Donald Trump.

Mike Pence, so far as happy to call himself the former V.P. Donald Trump is not calling himself the former president. And it's not just with the name of the office. There were two statements released today by by Mr. Trump. The awkward about what to call him. One was actually a real laugh out loud statement, I'm sorry to say. I did actually laugh out loud, but in which he signed a letter announcing that he was quitting the actors unions sag after because they're about to strip his membership from him because he incited a violent insurrection against the US Capitol.

His letter resigning before they could fire him. This is a real thing. I write to you today regarding these so-called disciplinary committee hearing aimed at revoking my union membership. Who cares such that while I'm not familiar with your work, I'm very proud of my work on movies such as Home Alone, too, and it goes on from there. This letter is to inform you of my immediate resignation from SAG after you have done nothing for me. And he said that on letterhead under the presidential seal.

Seriously, it's worth noting that SAG after the union sent back to this letter a two word response. What they said is their response was two words. I said thank you, which made me laugh out loud again, because that was one statement from him today. Second statement from him today was a letter from his lawyers, his defense lawyers and the impeachment trial declining a demand that Mr. Trump testify under oath at his impeachment trial next week. In the letter, Mr.

Trump's lawyers bent over backwards to describe him in this very specific way, quote, Your letter only confirms what is known to everyone. You cannot prove your allegations against the forty fifth president of the United States. And then they sign it. Bruce Castor and David Shewn attorneys to the forty fifth president. Now, it is technically accurate, of course, to call Donald Trump the forty fifth president, but it's just as accurate to call him the former president.

Apparently, though, that is something that can never be said, at least not in front of him today, his spokesman for his post presidential office said on Newsmax TV, quote, I do not expect the forty fifth president to be in Washington next week. Oh, you mean the former president? No, no, no. That cannot be said. I realize I've been sort of picking at this for a few days now, but it is now going on for long enough.

And it is insistently consistent enough that this is worth noticing, in part because Mr. Trump really does appear to be insisting on this. And that could get very weird very quickly. I mean, the very first statement he put out from his forty fifth president's office at the beginning of the week had this as the headline. The headline said, Forty fifth President Donald J. Trump announces his legal team statement was four paragraphs long. In those four paragraphs, it kept repeating that exact same ungainly phrase.

The first line. Forty fifth. President Donald Trump today announced then quotes one of his lawyers saying it's an honor to represent the forty fifth president. And then, of course, the other lawyer saying, I consider it a privilege to represent the forty fifth president. It's the same thing in his lawyer's formal written response to the impeachment charges levied against him repeatedly and insistently, calling him the forty fifth president, even when it tortures the grammar and makes everything impossible to read and makes the sentences not work.

But apparently they have to insistently call him this because they can never call him the former president of the United States. I think it is possible and I think we should start getting our heads around the prospect that Donald Trump doesn't think of himself as the former president. He is not allowing anybody around him to use that phrase about him. Does that mean he thinks he's still president? He used to call Mar a Lago, the southern White House, which was weird for all sorts of reasons, but maybe that's what he thinks it is in the impeachment response from his lawyers.

The lawyers claim that it was not necessarily a false statement when on January a January 6th, Trump told the mob that would attack the capital that day, that he had won the election in a landslide. They are contending in their written defense to the impeachment that that is a false statement. They describe the election results as contested and say it's not necessarily false that he won in a landslide when he said that maybe that was true. I think we are underestimating the potential for crazy here.

I mean, the Republicans right now are heading into the impeachment trial, which starts at the beginning of next week. And they think that they are mounting a defense against the conviction of Donald Trump on the technical grounds that the Senate shouldn't even be holding an impeachment trial for him because he's not president anymore, because he's a former president. I am here to tell you, dude does not agree that he is a former president and he is not allowing anyone to describe him that way.

If that's the trap door they're going to use to try to get him out of a Senate impeachment conviction, he's going to fight it. He insists he cannot be called a former president. He must be called the forty fifth president. He's still using the presidential seal. There's no sign that he concedes that there's now a forty sixth president. And so he's an ex. I mean, how many ticks are we away from him claiming that he is still in office, that he still has the powers of the president presidency, that he's rightfully still president?

I mean, I would love to hear him cross-examined on this subject. In a Senate trial, say perhaps by leading impeachment manager and distinguished constitutional law professor Jamie Raskin, I would pay good money to see that. But Mr. Trump's lawyers today said no. They said no. The forty fifth president will not testify in Washington next week. Heads up that there's no reason they couldn't subpoena Trump to testify on his behalf. His lawyers are denying factual claims in the charge against him.

Somebody should have to back up those disputations of fact under oath. We shall see. Honestly, I think if you asked Mr. Trump directly, he would have to testify. Nobody listens to him anymore. He has no outlet. He doesn't have a social media platform, he doesn't have anybody meeting with them, he doesn't have anybody taking his calls, as far as we can tell. I mean, he insists that he hasn't really left office and he's not a former president and nobody's listening to him.

And the Democratic House impeachment managers are now demanding that he come to Washington and explain the events of January six. Don't you think he's desperate to do that? Oh, please let the man speak under oath. I don't know what would happen if they subpoenaed him. It would be a new test for our country, but that's not anything new during the Trump era. We shall see. Trial begins next week. I'm not sure if Capitol Hill Republicans have noticed yet that they are all planning to vote to acquit him at his trial on the basis of the technical fact that he's out of office while the defendant himself doesn't agree and doesn't accede to that technical fact.

I don't know if they've noticed that train coming down the tunnel at them yet, but you can forgive them for their attention being divided. They have had their own problems to mishandle over the course of this week. I think it would be helpful if you could hear exactly what she told all of us denouncing Kiwane, I don't know if I say it right. I don't even know what it is any from the shootings. She said she knew nothing about lasers or all the different things that have been brought up about her.

She knew nothing about the lasers. The leader of the Republicans in the House, Kevin McCarthy, trying to convince everybody in Congress that Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia has essentially been falsely accused. He says that she told him in a private meeting, looked him in the eye and told him that a lot of the things that have been brought up about her, she doesn't know anything about them. The laser's thing, he says he she told him she assured him, quote, she knew nothing about the laser's here in her own words, is Congresswoman Green on the laser's from her Facebook post, quote, There are too many coincidences to ignore.

I find it very interesting that Roger Kimmel on the board of directors of PG&E is also vice chairman of Rothchild Inc. What a coincidence. It must be that Governor Brown signed a bill protecting PG&E and allowing them to pass off the cost of fire responsibility to its customers. It must also be a coincidence that the fires are burning in the same protected areas that the high speed rail project is to be built. And what are the odds that Feinstein's husband, Richard Blum, is the contractor to the rail project?

Then oddly, there are all these people who said they saw it looked like lasers or blue beams of light causing the fires and pictures and videos sold or space generators collect the sun's energy and then beam it back to Earth. If they're beaming the sun's energy back to Earth, I'm sure they wouldn't ever miss a transmitter receiving station. Right. Question mark. Question mark. Exclamation point. Exclamation point. What would that look like anyway? A laser beam or light beam coming down to earth, I guess.

Could that cause a fire form? That's her in her own words on the lasers. She told Kevin McCarthy she knew nothing about these lasers. Her contention is that the Jews are amazing with the space lasers to start the fires as a false pretense to help the other Jews with their conniving plots. But she told Kevin McCarthy she knew nothing about the lasers. Kevin McCarthy says he looked her in the eye and told her that her post there is from November of twenty eighteen.

That matters because today on the floor of Congress, right before all the Democrats and 11 of her fellow Republicans voted to strip her from our committee assignments, Congresswoman Greene gave a speech saying that by then, by late twenty eighteen, she was done with all that conspiracy stuff. I mean, that was from her Facebook page in late November. Twenty eighteen, her fulminating about the Rothschilds and Feinstein and Bloom and the space beams that caused the forest fires today on the floor of the House, she said.

By that time, by late twenty eighteen, she'd actually put all the conspiracy stuff behind her. Later in twenty eighteen, when I started finding misinformation, lies, things that were not true in these Q And on post, I stopped believing it. So I walked away from those things and I decided I'm going to do what I've done all my life. I'm going to work hard and try to solve the problems that I'm upset about. So I started getting involved in politics.

I also want to tell you 9/11 absolutely happened. I remember that day crying all day long, watching it on the news. And that's a tragedy for anyone to say it didn't happen, and so that I definitely want to tell you, I do not believe that it's fake. Congresswoman Greene speaking today on the floor of the House, she says it's a tragedy for anyone to say 9/11 didn't happen. I definitely want to tell you, I do not believe it's fake.

She's telling you she's definitely never propounded that. The so-called plane that crashed into the Pentagon, it's odd there's never any evidence shown for a plane in the Pentagon, but anyways, I won't I'm not going to dive into the 9/11 conspiracy.

She stood on the House floor and said that. She's never denied that 9/11 happened. It's a tragedy for anybody to say it didn't happen. This is a problem for the Republican Party, not just because she's now the mascot for the Republican Party, because they brought her into this national role and kept her there.

But while in Congress talking to the Republican leader, one on one in a private meeting, talking on the floor of the House today to the entire Congress, she keeps denying that she said any of these things. She's denied that she said any of them recently. And when all but all but 11 Republicans today voted to keep her in full standing as a member of Congress may be the most generous interpretation of that is that they naively believed her denials.

They shouldn't have because the denials are not true. This is what I ran for Congress on, I never once said during my entire campaign Q And on, I never once said any of the things that I am being accused of today. During my campaign, I never said any of these things since I have been elected for Congress. These were words of the past.

I never once, not during my campaign, not since I've been in Congress. Here she is four days ago, saying online that anybody who opposes Donald Trump is a pedophile. The list of the anti Trump paedos. That's four days ago, that's the Kuhnen stuff. That's since she has been in Congress, that since it has been pending against her, that she was going to lose all of her committee assignments, but she's she's fluent in this stuff.

This is how she became a prominent enough Republican in Georgia Republican circles that she was able to win a seat in Congress.

OK, so again, just to go over it, high level officials will soon be arrested and hopefully that's what we're seeing from all those federal sealed federal indictments and it will be a type of corruption. Now, what type of corruption would it be? I mean, is it going to be the stuff that was rumored, the things that people don't want to talk about, the things that people don't want to think about? I mean, is it going to be true that the child pedophilia and the elites in the Washington, D.C., is that what we're really going to see come out?

Is it true? Is the type of corruption we're going to see come out? Is it going to be satanic worship that possibly all these people are involved in? I mean, we already saw there was an email came out of the WikiLeaks emails where Cheryl was at Cheryl Mills, and she told Hillary Clinton in an email that she was going to sacrifice a chicken to Moloch in her backyard. That was proof right there that there's possible satanic worship and maybe that all these scary things that that people talk about on what's considered a conspiracy, that conspiracy sites and conspiracy theories really may be true.

But that's that's what Kuis has been telling everyone we're talking about who is. Q So I'm going to tell you what he says. According to him, many in our government are actively worshipping Satan or they call Moloch. If that's not evidence that. There's Satan worship in our government, and if Hillary Clinton was not involved in it, then why would someone, someone that is involved in worshipping Satan, why would they tell Hillary that in an email? So Hillary Clinton is obviously involved, too.

The other thing that Kuis says, and this is the stuff that we don't we just don't want to think about and many Americans don't want to know about that. Q is saying that they participate in pedophilia and spirit cooking and spirit cooking. They had that spirit cooking dinner or something else he has talked about is an interesting triangle. Saudi Arabia, the Rothschilds and Soros, he says, are the puppet masters that fund this global evil. OK, so I definitely would believe that the old Saudi Arabia was funding child trafficking, Hillary Clinton, false flags and various other evil activities.

All those princes and so many of them had ties to the Clintons. Many of them were done, had made huge donations to the Clinton Foundation. So that was also very, very interesting. They also had ties to Podesta, Huma. Obama met because I really think it might happen. So I'm very excited about that. Now, there is a once in a lifetime opportunity to take this global cable of Satan worshipping pedophiles out.

They also had ties to Huma, Obama, Mitt, Mitt, she says, did you know that Mitt Romney was in on it, too, with the space lasers and the mullock and the Great Awakening and the chickens and all the things that Kieu told us? Here she is on the Las Vegas gun massacre. How do you get avid gun owners and people that support the Second Amendment to give up their guns and go along with anti-gun legislation? How do you do that?

Maybe you accomplish that by performing a mass shooting into a crowd that is very likely to be conservative. You make them scared, you make them victims, and you change their mindset. And then possibly you can pass anti-gun legislation. Is that what happened in Las Vegas, are they trying to terrorize our mindset and change our minds on the Second Amendment? Is that what's going on here? I have a lot of questions about that. I don't believe Stephen Paddick was a lone wolf.

I don't believe that he pulled this off all by himself.

Eleven Republican members of Congress sided with Democrats today in voting to remove Congresswoman Greene from her committee assignments just as white supremacists. Republican Congressman Steve King of Iowa was removed from his committee assignments just a couple of years ago. That was more than enough to remove her. This means she will now have no actual work to do in Congress. There's no point actually in her even showing up. But the House Republican leader, Kevin McCarthy, apparently believed her denials when she told him to his face that she didn't say all these things that she was accused of.

Definitely, at least never said them recently in believing her when she denied those things to him. Leader McCarthy let down his caucus in believing her, in not checking that and repeating her denials, repeating them as his endorsed assurances. That she hadn't said any of the things that she'd been accused of, she definitely had didn't know anything about that laser thing, she hadn't been talking about the cute stuff. And a lot had he checked on whether her denials were accurate, had he bothered to check on whether she was lying to him?

He could have then told his caucus, hey, I went to confront her about this stuff and she lied to me about it, and that could have saved them. That could have been reason enough for him to be able to tell all the Republicans in the House, hey, listen, there's all this criticism of her. You can disagree with the people who are criticizing her. Maybe you even side with her on some of this crazy stuff. But I'm the leader of this caucus.

When I went to her about it, she lied to me about it. And we can't have that. But instead, he just believed her without checking, didn't check what she said, thereby excused her behavior to his caucus, defended her behavior to his caucus, believed her false denials. And so now they've got the worst of both worlds. Only 11 Republicans voted to strip forever committee, she is stripped of her committees, she will not be a working member of Congress.

She will be an ongoing source of humiliation and scandal to all but 11 of her Republican colleagues, because all but 11 of them did not to distance themselves from her. The Democrats had to do it for them, which is humiliating. The Senate today moved forward with the covid relief legislation, Republicans there at the part of the process where Republicans are offering lots of what they call messaging amendments that are not designed to pass. They're just supposed to be embarrassing votes, hopefully.

And to slow the thing down, Democrats will defeat all of those and then pass the legislation, likely without the Republicans that I saw the White House face down its first real policy controversy on the issue of whether teachers should be vaccinated before schools can safely reopen. We're going to have more on that later on the show tonight. But the CDC director yesterday at the White House and then here on the show last night talked about the science behind her assertion that whether or not teachers are vaccinated shouldn't be seen as a prerequisite, prerequisite for whether or not schools can safely reopen.

That is a very controversial assertion, particularly among teachers. The White House interestingly today said that they will wait until the CDC as an agency releases its official guidance on schools before they make any decisions on that. So this is kind of their first real bump in the road on controversial covid policy. Again, we will have more on that later, but it is playing out in public. And we'll have more tonight on the president's landmark foreign policy speech and his trip to the State Department today and the stern words that he had for the Russian government as the Russian government today in its second day of locking up for the long term the main opposition political figure in that country.

So the work is happening, right. But we remained we remain split screen with the Democratic side running. I mean, both the White House and on Capitol Hill, foreign policy, a new course, Russia off covid legislation. The first substantive policy fight on their hands is Senator Bernie Sanders today bringing in all new staff for the first time in years because now he's going to be running the Budget Committee. And if you don't think that Bernie Sanders is running the Budget Committee is a big deal, then we should talk more about the Budget Committee and the House.

Congressman Jamie Raskin, leading the impeachment managers in their historic second impeachment trial of a former president, now confronting the question of whether they can subpoena him to testify, despite his lawyers saying that he won't come. So all that work happening on the Democratic side, some facts, some of it backward looking toward the disastrous last administration, almost all of the rest of it forward looking. They're moving on the Republican side. When are they ever going to be able to stop looking back with the tsunami looming behind them with something that seems funny but may end up being a big, hairy, crazy deal?

The former president from their party refusing to admit he is a former president, refusing to be described as a former president, contending implicitly that what he's still in office. He's not a former president. Are you going to make Republicans back you up on that and use that as a litmus test and campaign against them if they don't think they don't pretend that you're still president and the House really did make Democrats clean up their mess. House Republicans really did make Democrats clean up their mess by just letting it ride, assuming it really wasn't that bad, believing the denials and deciding to continue to lend the imprimatur of the US House of Representatives to the craziest stuff imaginable, including a member who has publicly urged the murder of the House speaker.

Mean, the split screen here is not like watching two different parties at work, it's like watching two different planets circle, two different stars. And the consequences resonate here way beyond D.C. in a lasting way. And that's next. Stay with us. Among the 11 House Republicans who broke with their party and voted with Democrats to strip Representative Marjorie Taylor Green of her congressional committee assignments tonight, three of those 11 Republicans represent South Florida. In fact, it's all three of South Florida's House Republicans.

South Florida, of course, is home to Parkland and Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School, which was the site of an unimaginably horrific school shooting in February. Twenty eighteen in which 17 people were killed in breaking with most of their party tonight. Those three South Florida House Republicans stood instead, quote, with a group of Parkland victims families who urged them to vote yes to strip Congresswoman Greene of her committee's Congresswoman Greene, of course, it said online that that shooting in Parkland didn't really happen, that it was staged.

Media Matters found a Facebook thread from twenty eighteen, which has since been removed, where Congresswoman Greene enthusiastically agreed that Parkland was a, quote, false flag planned shooting. She tried to backtrack from that today on the House floor before the vote to punish her. But South Florida's House Republicans were not buying it out of tragedy in Parkland, a movement was born thanks to students who survived the massacre, who turned their grief in their rage into activism with those unbelievable marches all across the country.

That tragedy also galvanized parents, turned them into activists to parents like Fred Gutenberg, whose daughter Jamie was among the 17 victims of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High for nearly three years. Mr. Gutenberg has worked as an activist against gun violence and as you can imagine, Congresswoman Greene agreeing that the mass murder that took his daughter's life was some staged event is not something that he has taken lightly. Joining us now is Fred Guttenberg, who lost his daughter Jamie in Parkland nearly three years ago.

Mr. Gutenberg's an activist and Mr. Gutenberg's an activist and author. His new book is called Find the Helper's Fred Gutenberg's Real Honor to have you with us tonight. Sir, thanks for taking the time. Thank you for having me. I'm honored to be on your show tonight, Rachel. I will tell you, I have struggled in recent days and I really struggled today with whether or not to play sound from Congressman Greene purporting her theories, whether or not to highlight the things that she hit, the false things that she has said and propounded and advocated that have built her into the sort of celebrity that she is, because I don't think she's worth the attention and I don't want to give her a bigger spotlight than she ought to have.

At the same time, it feels wrong to ignore her. Do you struggle with that at all? How do you balance those feelings? No, I'm so glad you did, because, listen, I've been sharing those videos now for weeks. She is a fraud and everyone who was paying attention knows she is a fraud. Those videos do exist. So to hear her lying to the members of Congress and to hear, I guess, the current version of this Republican Party, buy into the fraud, buy into the lie because they are so afraid of their voters, boy, it makes them pathetic.

But I'm glad you showed the videos because she did say these things. And not only did she say things like Parkland or Sandy Hook or Las Vegas or 9/11 are false flags and didn't happen. She had these conspiracies around them. I mean, and you can't say she's crazy because everything she said is so intentional. In terms of the position that she's got in Congress, she's going to hold a press conference tomorrow. She's been raising lots of money based on the attacks from the liberal mob.

She's got lots of support in her caucus, although I think a lot of people were surprised to see 11 votes against her. What do you what do you think is the best potential outcome here? She is an elected representative. She now has officially no work to do in Congress. Where do you hope this lands and how this ends?

Listen, if she wants to keep referring to people like me as a liberal mob, how about my dad? My daughter died in Parkland and I will keep responding. Every dollar she brags about raising is costing the GOP money. There's no question this is hurting their donations. If this is the path they want to go down, let them go down it. I am shocked. I remember a day in this country not long ago where two parties maybe disagreed on policy and they would argue things out.

But they didn't disagree on facts. They didn't disagree on working for the American people. This party today gave up on that. It is it is shocking. So if they want to keep her around, if they want to continue to give her this platform, it only hurts the bigger party, which is why you saw some folks in the Senate and even 11 in the GOP say we don't want this. Hmm, Fred, I would say that one thing that I have found very heartening is the ability of individual people and people of like mind working together in small numbers to change people's hearts and to move people on this subject.

So to see Congressman Diaz-Balart and Congressman Jimenez and Congressman Salazar, all Republicans from South Florida, all three of them as a bloc, all the Republican in South Florida saying we are not going along with our party on this. We're instead citing or instead siding with the Parkland parents. That, to me, feels like a vindication of the kind of work that you and other families have done and in the wake of the tragedy that you have been through. But it also feels like a template for all of us in terms of thinking about how to get through hard things.

You know, listen, I'm super proud of what they did, and I'm shocked that it was only 11. You know, her story is so clear and her lies are so obvious. And the idea that it was only 11 and I have to comment on something else that she said, because a big part of her story that convinced a lot of these Republicans to vote her way is she has talked about something that happened to her 30 years ago. It's all part of the fraud, because 30 years ago, she says she was a victim of gun violence.

And I'm not denying that. But here's the thing. We have four hundred million weapons on the street today. It was a fraction 30 years ago. So the risk is so different today versus what she went through and there was no chance of an AR 15 coming into her high school the way what happened with my daughter. So to use that as an example for why she is the person she is is dishonest. But I'll say one more thing. She says it convinced her that she had to be a good guy with a gun.

That's what she took away from her insistence 30 years ago. Who says she's the good guy with the gun? She's threatened to put a bullet in Pelosi's head. She's threatened other elected leaders. She chased down the kids like David had, telling them, I have a loaded weapon in my purse. She's not a good guy with a gun. She is a threat. If she lived in a state like Florida with red flag laws, she would be losing her weapons.

Now, wonder why she's so against them, but we can't let her get away with using that incident as part of her recovery. She is a fraud. Fred Gutenberg, author, the father of Parkland shooting victim Jamey Gutenberg, coming up on three years since that happened. Sir, thank you so much for speaking with us tonight. I know that this is personal and hard. And you being here and being so articulate about what you know on the subject is an invaluable public service.

Thank you, Rachel. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. Have a wonderful night. All right.

You too. Thank you. Senator Chris Murphy is going to join us ahead tonight. Stay with us.

It reads, quote, I urge you, do not let yourselves be intimidated, do not let yourself be fooled by illusions of power and toughness. What kind of power do they have if they need to secretly poison people and lawlessly imprison them? Where is their nationwide support? If they can only win elections by preventing independent candidates in the race, they can only hold on to power using it for their personal gain by relying on our fear. Therefore, we, by overcoming our fear, can free our motherland from the handful of thieves who occupy it.

The truth is on our side, stay free. That is a portion of a letter from prison released today by Russia's main opposition leader, Alexei Navalny. Navalny survived an assassination attempt months ago. That very much appears to have been the work of the Kremlin, only to wake up from his coma, fight through his rehabilitation, and then defiantly announced a return to Russia, even though Putin's regime threatened they would arrest him as soon as he crossed the border.

He did it anyway and they followed through. They did lock him up in two days ago. They sentenced him to years in prison. His letter from prison today comes after Navalny gave an impassioned speech from the dock in court justice. He was sentenced before he was whisked away in handcuffs. Since then, that speech has circulated far beyond Moscow. It was reprinted today in The New York Times. Here was President Biden today during his first in-person visit to any agency since he has been president.

Today, he went to the United States State Department.

I made it clear to President Putin in a manner very different from my predecessor, that the days of the United States rolling over in the face of Russia's aggressive actions, interfering with our elections, cyber attacks, poisoning its citizens are over. We will not hesitate to raise the cost on Russia and defend our vital interests and our people. The politically motivated jailing of Alexei Navalny and the Russian efforts to suppress freedom of expression and peaceful assembly are a matter of deep concern to us and the international community.

Mr. Navalny, like all Russian citizens, is entitled to his rights under the Russian constitution. He's been targeted, targeted for exposing corruption. He should be released immediately and without condition.

He should be released immediately and without condition words directly from the president of the United States on camera looking straight into the camera, speaking directly to Moscow. Those remarks from the president came within hours of the new secretary of state, Anthony Blinken, saying that he'd had a one on one with his counterpart in Russia, their foreign minister. According to the readout of that call, Blinken made it clear that the Biden administration will, quote, act firmly in defense of US interests in response to actions by Russia that harm us or our allies.

It's only been two weeks, 15 days since President Biden took office. But, boy, you could not mistake this administration for the last one, even in the dark. Joining us now is Senator Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a leading light in his party on foreign affairs. Senator, I really appreciate you taking time to be here tonight. Thank you. Thanks for having me. So President Biden today had those sharp words about Navalny and about the Russian government generally.

We also saw a big policy announcement today from the Biden administration stopping all support for the war in Yemen, which you've been so outspoken about. Just wanted to get your reaction. Today was such a huge day on foreign policy.

Listen, it is really wild to see how much has changed in a short period of time rejoining the World Health Organization, the Paris accord, extending the new start nuclear agreement with Russia for the next five years. And now these announcements today, you mentioned the strong words about Navalny. Russia should let him go and we should take action. If they don't, that could include sanctions. But the bigger news was the decision today to pull the United States out of the disastrous civil war in Yemen.

This has been a national security nightmare for the United States. We've been helping the Saudis bomb Yemen for about six years. One hundred thousand kids have died of starvation and disease. Yemenis are being radicalized against the United States because they perceive us to be bombing them. And al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula has gotten stronger. So it was a real clear signal that our policy in the Middle East is going to change, that we're not going to be part of war crimes, and that we may sort of step back and think twice about constantly getting involved in these proxy battles in the region between the Iranians and the Saudis.

A really great speech today, a signal that Biden is moving past, moving fast to try to restart American influence around the world. Senator, one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you tonight is that I really do. I'm not just flattering you. I really do think that you are in many ways, the future of the Democratic Party on foreign policy issues, not only because of your clarity on these issues and your intense interest in them, but because I think you hold sway with a lot of your colleagues in terms of people just respecting your views.

Given that given what Biden has done thus far, making his first agency trip to the State Department, cutting off those arms sales to Saudi and cutting off all offensive support for that war in Yemen, putting the pause in terms of the global force drawdown, which also stops pulling US troops out of our ally, Germany, the decision on on Russia, the potential leaving the potential open for sanctions, maybe specifically on the Navalny issue, seeing all those actions so quickly, I have to ask if there are other things that you want to be sort of in the first 10 things that you want to be in the first month of action that you think the administration should be doing?

Or do you think they are taking all the right steps?

Well, I would add two more things to this list. I think it's important that we get back into the Iran nuclear agreement really fast. Iran's, you know, about a month away from a nuclear weapon. And it's important for us to show the world that we still believe in diplomacy. So I think that that's important, that they continue to move on a path to re-entering the agreement. The second thing, Rachael, though, is I think the intersection of administration policy and what we can do here in Congress, this president needs new tools.

We are not properly resourced for around the world today when we're spending 20 times as much money on military hardware as we are on smart power, especially when we have just seen a virus attack us. I think it's time for a complete reorientation of foreign affairs spending, putting more money into non-military tools around the world, including pandemic prevention. And my hope is that the administration very quickly is going to make some of those recommendations to Congress. I think every president is probably going to fail in protecting America so long as we have more members of military bands than we have diplomats in the State Department.

Senator Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, at work tonight as the work continues there on the covid relief bill. Sir, thanks for taking some some time in the middle of all these votes tonight. I appreciate getting in a few moments with you. Thanks, Rachel. All right, coming up, we've got some actually encouraging developing news about a new option for a covid vaccine. Stay with us. That's next.

Last night here for the interview, we had the new director of the CDC, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, we talked about comments she made at the White House yesterday about schools reopening, specifically about teachers and vaccinations. Dr. Walinski said yesterday at the White House, to consternation for many quarters, that when it comes to schools reopening, it may not be necessary from a scientific perspective for teachers to all be vaccinated before schools can safely reopen. She reiterated that here last night and said there are other mitigation efforts that are definitely necessary for safety for schools to safely reopen.

And those are a must do even if teachers are not vaccinated first. I asked her about that last night and she told us here that CDC is working on official comprehensive guidelines for how and when schools can safely reopen. Those are not ready yet. But today, asked on this, asked about the subject. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said pointedly that the White House will wait for that official guidance from the CDC as an agency to decide whether or not teachers do need to be vaccinated as a prerequisite for school reopening.

They will wait for the CDC to make its recommendation as an agency before they make any pronouncement on that as the administration. So we're keeping an eye on that. Obviously, lots of teachers around the country are very worried that schools haven't taken the other mitigation measures that would make things safe for them to go back into the classroom. And if you can't solve things like density and kids mask wearing and ventilation, particularly in February, then moving from those on to the issue of vaccination may be premature in terms of thinking about how to protect teachers anyway.

This is the first big substantive policy fight of the Biden administration on covid. We are watching that other big, big, big piece of covid news that broke today is on the vaccine front. Johnson and Johnson officially applying for emergency use authorization with the FDA. If their vaccine is granted that authorization, it would be the third vaccine approved for use here. Unlike the two that are deployed right now, Johnson and Johnson only requires one dose. It can be stored in a regular fridge.

The chief science officer at Johnson and Johnson says as soon as they received authorization from the FDA, they'll be ready to start shipping vaccine immediately. We now think this is going to proceed as follows. We think the FDA is going to meet February twenty six to discuss that application. That means the authorization could come by the end of the month and vaccine to ship immediately thereafter. That would be a very big deal. Watch this space. That is going to do it for us tonight on this Friday Eve.

I will see you again tomorrow.

The Rachel Maddow Show weeknights at 9:00 Eastern on MSNBC.