The Dictatorship
Billionaires and Democrats paying lip service to Trump are in for a rude awakening
By Chris Hayes
This is an adapted excerpt from the Dec. 12 episode of “All In with Chris Hayes.”
We are in something of a weird period these days. On one track, the daily news out of Washington is the normal process of American governance, specifically the transition from one presidency to another. It’s the kind of thing you might expect after any election when the White House changes parties.
Some elected Democrats are out there acting like everything is normal. You may recall that President Joe Biden hosted President-elect Donald Trump for a friendly fireside chat in the Oval Office last month.
Democratic Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania now says he supports Elise Stefanik to be Trump’s United Nations ambassador because he supports her position on Israel. Democratic Gov. Jared Polis of Colorado praised Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Trump’s choice to run the Department of Health and Human Services. And a whole bunch of Democrats are paying lip service to Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency to slash spending.
I’ve seen this movie before: rich people currying favor with a powerful president. But this isn’t before, and Trump is different.
Basically, the message from some national Democrats and other public figures is, “Well, the people have spoken and now we’re going to get about the business of governing under Trump.”
There’s a similar vibe from the titans of industry. Tech billionaires are popping up all over the place trying to curry favor with the once and future president. We learned that Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund after meeting with him at Mar-a-Lago.
Not to be outdone, we learned that Jeff Bezos’ Amazon is also donating a million dollars to the inauguration. Bezos says he looks forward to working with the president-elect. “If we’re talking about Trump, I think it’s very interesting,” Bezos told Andrew Ross Sorkin at the DealBook Summit last week. “I’m actually very optimistic this time around. … I’m very hopeful about his — he seems to have a lot of energy around reducing regulation. My point of view, if I can help him do that, I’m gonna help him.”
Again, I’ve seen this movie before: rich people currying favor with a powerful president. But this isn’t before, and Trumpisdifferent. What’s so disturbing, enraging and alienating about the capitulation to Trump is that it ignores the gaping wound in American democracy. It’s just sitting there — festering — while everyone just goes about business as usual.
Just four years ago, one of the two major parties in this country largely withdrew from the consensus of democratic governance and rejected the peaceful transfer of power. But right now, it looks like that wound has healed because the party that has withdrawn, the Republicans, happened to win this last election and, because Democrats believe in preserving democracy, they accepted those results.
But the wound has not been healed. The problem has not been solved. Trump is just as committed to the big lie and the insurrection as he ever was. In his interview with NBC News’ Kristen Welker on “Meet the Press,” Trump refused to concede the 2020 election and once again pledged to pardon the Jan. 6 rioters.
What’s more is that Trump is instituting loyalty tests to make sure that the folks working in his administration also support his election lies. A recent New York Times report details the interview process at the Trump transition offices:
The interviewers asked which candidate the applicants had supported in the three most recent elections, what they thought about the events of Jan. 6, 2021, and whether they believed the 2020 election was stolen. The sense they got was that there was only one right answer to each question.
For at least one of Trump’s would-be employees, you don’t even need to ask those questions. Kari Lake, who Trump wants to lead Voice of America — the government’s state media network — is perhaps the politician most closely linked to the big lie outside of Trump himself. Lake not only insists that Trump won the 2020 election, but she also insists she won her own 2022 race to be governor of Arizona — which she lost to Democrat Katie Hobbs.
It’s not exactly clear if Trump can install Lake as the head of VOA, but he is certainly going to try. And Lake would most likely use every facet of her power to push election lies and create a domestic version of Russia’s infamous state media apparatus.
Lake believes, perhaps more than anyone else, in the core tenet of the modern Republican Party: Elections only count when we win them.
We’re actually seeing this play out right now in North Carolina. Last month, Trump won at the top of the ticket there but Democrats did pretty well down-ballot. Democrat Josh Stein won the gubernatorial race by 15 points, defeating Republican Mark Robinson. (The guy who reportedly frequented a porn forum called “Nude Africa,” where he allegedly referred to himself as a “black Nazi.” Robinson denies the allegations.)
Democrat Jeff Jackson, a congressman who was gerrymandered out of his seat, also won the race to be the state’s next attorney general. That means Democrats won two of the top jobs in North Carolina politics, fair and square. But North Carolina Republicans aren’t happy about it.
Lake believes, perhaps more than anyone else, in the core tenet of the modern Republican Party: Elections only count when we win them.
Republicans lost their supermajority in the gerrymandered state legislature last month. They are in a lame-duck session right now, before that supermajority goes away. In these waning days, they just overrode a governor’s veto to force through a bill that strips power away from those newly elected Democrats and hands it to Republican officials instead.
Republicans lost the election in North Carolina and then they gave themselves power anyway. Believe me, if they had lost the presidential race in November, Republicans would likely be trying to overturn the election at the national level, too.
That’s the gaping wound. The rejection of democracy is still alive and well. Democrats bending the knee to Trump because they agree with him on Israel or cutting government spending is not going to address the problem. My strong belief is that everyone trying to will us toward normalcy by acting like everything is normal is in for a rude awakening.
Allison Detzel contributed.
Chris Hayes hosts “All In with Chris Hayes”at 8 p.m. ET Monday through Friday on BLN. He is the editor-at-large at The Nation. A former fellow at Harvard University’s Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics, Hayes was a Bernard Schwartz Fellow at the New America Foundation. His latest book is”A Colony in a Nation” (W. W. Norton).
ISLAMABAD (AP) — The United States and Iran reached an initial agreement early Monday to open the Strait of Hormuz and further extend a shaky ceasefire in the Iran warpotentially allowing desperately needed oil and natural gas to reach the global market.
Details of the deal were not immediately released and Iran signaled implementation would not start until the signing, which key mediator Pakistan said would occur Friday in Switzerland. It could provide a way to end a war that killed thousands across the Middle East, including the top leaders of Iran’s theocracy, and sparked a historic energy crisis.
But the memorandum of understanding over the war already faced intense challenges. Israel’s continued hostilities with the Iranian-backed militia Hezbollah in Lebanon, where Israel bombed Beirut’s southern suburbs Sunday, nearly derailed the negotiations.
Meanwhile, the deal gives just 60 days to resolve what to do about Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium and its atomic program. That took years to resolve in Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers. U.S. President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew America from that accord in his first term, setting the stage for the tensions that culminated in the war.
“Congratulations to all!” Trump wrote on social media as he celebrated his 80th birthday Sunday with a UFC cage match fight at the White House.
He added, “I hereby fully authorize the toll free opening of the Strait of Hormuz, and, simultaneously herewith, authorize the immediate removal of the United States Naval blockade,” which was imposed in retaliation for Iran’s grip on the crucial waterway.
He soon hedged, however, saying the strait wouldn’t open until Friday’s signing.
Iran’s deputy foreign minister, Kazem Gharibabadi, confirmed the agreement on state television but said Iran would not start implementing it until it was signed Friday. He said the deal followed talks with Qatar, another mediator.
Israel, which has insisted it be allowed a freehand to pursue Hezbollah as it occupies southern Lebanon and has extended its military operations into areas its forces haven’t been in a quarter century, did not immediately comment. Israel joined the U.S. in launching the war on Feb. 28.
Benchmark Brent crude oil fell more than $4 a barrel on the news as Asian stock markets rallied.
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Pakistan, a key mediator, announces deal
Pakistan first announced the deal, with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif saying “both sides have declared the immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon.” It remains unclear whether Israel, which relies on the U.S. but has launched in wars against its enemies since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israelagreed to that term.
He added that mediators this week will facilitate meetings to “lay the foundation for the technical talks.”
Broader negotiations on outstanding issues like Iran’s nuclear program would continue over the next 60 days, two senior Pakistani officials said earlier Sunday, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. If the sides fail to reach a resolution within that time, the timeline could be extended.
Iranian state television cited the secretariat of the Supreme National Security Council saying the war on all fronts “will end immediately and permanently beginning tonight” — but that the U.S. blockade “will be terminated immediately and in full.”
Qatari mediators later left Tehran following 17 hours of negotiations, said an official briefed on the developments who spoke on condition of anonymity due to sensitivity of the talks. Separate preparatory meetings with each side will take place in Doha this week, the official said.
It was not clear who from Iran would sign the deal on Friday. U.S. Vice President JD Vance told Fox News the White House was still figuring out who would attend: “I certainly plan to be there, but it’s possible the president himself could be there.”
But concern among Republicans in the U.S. already could be seen. They included U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who described Vance as “the architect of the deal.”
“I am somewhat concerned that Iran’s view of the agreement seems different than what the American negotiating team is claiming,” Graham wrote online.
U.S. Rep. Gregory Meeks of New York, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said Congress would exercise oversight on any accord with Iran.
“We have seen time and again: War cannot change the Iranian regime,” he said.
Interim deal faces intense scrutiny
The first strike of the war killed Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khameneiand Khamenei’s son, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khameneiis now supreme leader. He has not been seen in the public since the war began, but his approval was needed for Iran to sign off on the deal.
There was apparent friction inside Iran in the hours before the announcement, as the government warned that division at home over the deal weakened its negotiating position.
The deal likely returns the region to a status that existed before the war, but with Iran having proven its ability to disrupt shipping in the strait. The waterway is crucial to significant shipments of oil, natural gas and related products like fertilizer, and its effective closure rocked the global economy.
Even with a deal, it will take months for oil and gas supplies to flow freely enough for the world’s needs to be met because shipping and insurance companies want to be confident the agreement will last, energy experts said.
Tehran also still has a ballistic missile arsenal and enough highly enriched uranium to build several nuclear weapons, should it choose to pursue them.
Iran has long maintained its nuclear program is peaceful and has not publicly committed to giving up the enriched uranium, which is believed to be buried under three nuclear sites that were badly damaged by U.S. strikes last year.
The U.S. has sought the removal of the enriched uranium from Iran as part of a deal. Russia has offered to take it. But Iran insists it wants to keep the uranium.
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Frankel reported from Jerusalem, Sewell from Beirut and Weissert from Washington. Associated Press writers Melanie Lidman in Tel Aviv, Israel, Cathy Bussewitz in New York and Cara Anna in Lowville, New York, contributed to this report.
PARIS (AP) — From the outset, China wasn’t included when major powers gathered in 1975 at a chateau outside Paris to fix the slumping global economy, the first of what have become annual summits by the G7 club of wealthy nations to forward their interests.
No surprise there. Imagining Chinese revolutionary leader Mao Zedong brainstorming with U.S. President Gerald Ford and other leaders would have been unthinkable.
China was in turmoil, nowhere close to becoming the economic giant it is now. Mao had also helped defeat France and U.S. forces in Vietnam, by militarily supporting Ho Chi Minh’s communists that took power. So Mao would have been the odd man out had he been at the inaugural Rambouillet summit of six nations, growing into the G7 when Canada joined the following year.
But as U.S. President Donald Trump and his G7 counterparts gather again in France from Monday, China’s exclusion from the informal club’s summits also looks odd, given its now immense sway over the world’s economic well-being and affairs.
Put simply: Without China, does the G7 make sense?
Here’s a closer look:
By the numbers, China would be a shoo-in
If determined only by economic success, China would already be in the club.
Its economy, swollen by decades of growth since Mao’s death in 1976, now dwarfs those of G7 nations Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, France, Italy and Canada — leaving only the United States to catch. By this measure, a G7 summit without China is arguably like a soccer World Cup without 5-time winner Brazil.
From being “only a tiny, benign, panda bear” in 1975, ”China has become a great global dragon,” says John Kirton, a University of Toronto specialist on the G7.
“So many understandably ask: Would the G7 and the global community be better off if China became a member of the G7 club? A plausible answer is ‘Yes.’”
But it’s only for democracies
A year ago, Trump mused about possibly expanding the club to include China, saying “ it’s not a bad idea ” when a journalist asked him.
But an unwritten G7 rule has always been that it’s only for democracies.
“We are each responsible for the government of an open, democratic society, dedicated to individual liberty and social advancement,” the founding leaders declared in Rambouillet in 1975.
China wouldn’t have cleared that bar then, during Mao’s rule that claimed many millions of lives through famine and revolutionary upheaval.
Nor, under President Xi Jinpingwould China do so now. By multiple measures, including the annual Freedom in the World study the World Press Freedom Index or the Canadian Fraser Institute’s ranking of economic freedom, China lags far behind G7 nations for civil liberties.
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China a priority subject for the G7
China’s clout impacts all G7 countries, in myriad ways. It sells far more goods than it buys, announcing a record trade surplus of almost $1.2 trillion in 2025, which is a source of friction with other industrial powers. It controls supplies of crucial rare minerals. Its technological advances and growing military strength are giving rivals cold sweats. And it is the world’s biggest emitter of climate-warming pollution.
All this means that China will be an elephant in the room at the Monday-to-Wednesday summit in the Alpine spa town of Evian-les-Bains.
As host, French President Emmanuel Macron has carved out time for the leaders to talk about how to rebalance trade with China, amid fears that soaring Chinese exports of cars and other products could wreck G7 industries.
The chemistry between Trump and other G7 leaders has been bad of late — over the Iran war and other bones of contention — but China could be an issue that unites them, said Cédric Dupont, who specializes in international politics at the Geneva Graduate Institute.
“They agree on the same thing, you know: China is a problem,” he said.
Beijing looking on warily
China’s Communist Party-led government has in the past criticized the G7’s exclusiveness and painted it as a relic of the Cold War when the world was more divided along ideological lines.
But in a statement to The Associated Press ahead of the Evian gathering, the Chinese Foreign Ministry took a more nuanced view, saying “the G7 should serve as a catalyst for solidarity and cooperation rather than an amplifier of division and confrontation.”
Beijing-based analyst Wang Zichen says that “Beijing is wary of the G7 because it sees the group as structurally aligned with U.S.-led Western power, and increasingly as a venue where China is discussed as a challenge or threat.”
But Chinese leaders cannot ignore it.
“China recognizes that the G7 still represents a very significant concentration of economic, technological, military and financial power,” said Wang.
China seen as a threat to G7 cohesion
Analysts say that admitting China into the club could wreck its cohesion, not only because Beijing’s authoritarian system of government, interests and its positions on Russia, Iran and other major issues don’t align with those of G7 democracies but also because its presence could test their long-standing alliances.
“China inside would indeed be a Trojan horse,” said Kirton. With a Chinese leader at the table, “individual members might be tempted to break G7 ranks to secure special favors from him on the economic, critical minerals, digital technology and other issues they address.”
Chris Alden, an international relations expert at the London School of Economics and Political Science, said that adding China “would make it very difficult for it to function.”
Russia’s example is also a barrier to China
The G7’s last expansion — accepting Russia as a member in 1998 — didn’t end well.
The club froze out Russian President Vladimir Putin when he seized Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, foreshadowing the full-scale war now raging since 2022.
Trump said last year that excluding Russia “was a very big mistake.”
But Kirton said the experience convinced other leaders “that they should never take a chance on a less than fully democratic power becoming a full member of their fully democratic club again.”
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Associated Press writers Ken Moritsugu and E. Eduardo Castillo in Beijing and Jamey Keaten in Geneva contributed.
Iran and the United States reached a deal Sunday aimed at ending the Middle East war, according to President Donald Trump and Tehran’s deputy foreign minister, marking a major breakthrough after months of conflict and on-again, off-again negotiations.
The statements from Trump and Tehran raised hopes for an end to fighting that has left more than 7,500 dead, most of them in Lebanon and Iran, and rocked the global oil market.
“The Deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran is now complete. Congratulations to all! I hereby fully authorize the toll free opening of the Strait of Hormuz, and, simultaneously herewith, authorize the immediate removal of the United States Naval blockade,” Trump announced on Truth Social. “Ships of the World, start your engines. Let the oil flow!”
Oil prices fell in the hours following the announcement, with U.S. crude oil tumbling nearly 5%. Stock futures rose and Asian-Pacific stock markets traded higher Monday morning as investors appeared hopeful for a long-term peace deal.
Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi confirmed on Iranian state media that a deal had been reached and would be signed Friday in Switzerland. He said Iran’s agreement came after 14 hours of talks with mediators from Qatar.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, whose country has also worked as a mediator, announced on social media that “both sides have declared the immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon,” where Israel has been battling the Iran-backed Hezbollah militant group.
“With the agreement now in place, mediators will facilitate a series of meetings this week,” Sharif said. “These pre-implementation discussions will lay the foundation for the technical talks and the official signing ceremony.”
The announcement comes after weeks of intensive negotiations mediated by regional partners after both sides had signaled in recent days that an agreement was close.
The memorandum is not a final peace treaty. Instead, it outlines commitments by both sides as negotiators work toward a broader agreement, establishing a framework for a 60-day negotiating period. That window is meant for U.S. and Iranian officials to resolve outstanding disputes and negotiate a more comprehensive agreement.
A senior administration official told reporters on a background call Friday that the framework includes commitments related to reopening the Strait of Hormuz and lifting the U.S. blockade on Iranian ports.
The proposed agreement, the senior administration official said, also calls for the dismantling of Iran’s nuclear program, with highly enriched nuclear material to be destroyed on-site by the U.S. and a guarantee of “long-term peace in the region.”
A senior Iranian officialhowever, told Reuters that the U.S. had agreed to allow Iran to dilute its stockpile of highly enriched uranium on Iranian soil under a final deal.
“I am somewhat concerned that Iran’s view of the agreement seems different than what the American negotiating team is claiming,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said as news of the deal emerged Sunday.
The senior Trump administration official said the agreement would include Israel and Iran’s terror proxies — a notable element given that renewed attacks between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon on Sunday threatened to derail the deal entirely.
The war began Feb. 28 with joint U.S. and Israeli airstrikes that killed hundreds, including Iran’s longtime supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Trump and others in his administration repeatedly promised it would be over in weeks and that deals to pause the fighting were imminent, only to walk back those statements.
Early in the fighting, dozens of children died when an airstrike destroyed a school. Despite reports from within the U.S. intelligence community that American forces were likely responsible, and that faulty intelligence may have played a part, the Pentagon has yet to acknowledge that, saying only that it was under investigation.
As combat wore on, Iran repeatedly fired missiles and drones at U.S. allies in the region and attacked ships trying to transit the Straight of Hormuz. Israel bombarded Beirut and other areas and sent ground troops into southern Lebanon in pursuit of Hezbollah leadership.
As gas prices in the U.S. soared, Trump’s approval ratings plummeted, piling tension on his relationship with congressional Republicans, especially those up for re-election.
Expectations for a deal had risen in recent days as officials from the U.S. and Pakistan, which has been acting as a mediator, indicated that progress was being made behind the scenes.
Though the deal is set to be signed next Friday, Trump said over the weekend that he expected a deal would be signed Sunday, which he first declared on social media a day earlier. He also shared a post from Sharif — who has played a key mediating role — announcing that an agreement was expected to be finalized “in the next 24 hours.”
Iranian officials poured cold water on the expected deal up until the last minute. Citing state media, Reuters reported Saturday that Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baqaei denied that the memorandum of understanding would be signed Sunday, which also happened to be Trump’s 80th birthday.
“We will have to wait and see about the exact date of the signing of the memorandum of understanding, although it will not be tomorrow,” Baqaei said, according to Reuters.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
Ebony Davis is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW based in Washington, D.C. She previously worked at BLN as a campaign reporter covering elections and politics.
Julia Jester covers politics for MS NOW and is based in Washington, D.C.
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