-Welcome back to "Late Night." We're here with Rachel Maddow.
We were talking about empathy, and I feel like one of
President Biden's best qualities
insofar as what attracted voters to him
is that he's very conciliatory in nature,
which I think a lot of people were looking for in this moment.
I believe I'm an empathetic person.
I don't know if I'm as conciliatory as President Biden.
Do you think that's the right tone for this moment?
-Well, it's better than the opposite, you know?
I mean, if we had a president coming in right now
who was bent on vengeance and hunting down those
who disagreed with him and making sure they were
run out of civilized life like some presidents I know,
I think that would be a bad thing for the country right now.
I mean, Biden -- the thing about Biden
is that everybody knows who he is.
He's been consistently that person
and that type of politician his entire life.
The country voted for someone who they knew.
And part of what they know they're getting from him
is somebody who does want to be a president for everybody,
who isn't out to set people against each other
and to make it the haves versus the have-nots
and vengeance on my enemies.
So, I mean, I feel like every president at the outset,
Democrat, Republican, conservative, liberal,
and everything, deserves sort of our best hopes
and our support at the beginning.
And I think a lot of my hope for Biden
rests in that radical empathy.
I mean, he is way more empathetic than I am,
and I feel like I have things to learn from him on that front,
and I hope it serves us well.
But there is stuff from the Trump era that needs cleaning up
and I also hope he's going to be able to do that.
-Look, I'm not saying that COVID was an easy problem
for any president to deal with, right?
A worldwide pandemic is, you know, is going to test anyone.
But it did seem like we were dealing with a lack of a plan,
and now there is a plan in place.
We don't know how successful it will be.
But it doesn't seem that difficult,
the steps that Biden is asking us all to take.
-Yeah. Like, there's, you know, the very basic A-B-C
public-health approach to dealing with
a respiratory, transmissible, potentially fatal virus.
Like, it's not like they've invented new things to do.
They're just starting to do the stuff
that we should have done from the very beginning.
There ought to be a national plan for tackling COVID.
There ought to be a national vaccination plan.
Trump never had one of those.
There ought to be a contact-tracing plan
and support for implementing that.
There ought to be support for schools who are having to change
everything about the way they do in order to contend with this.
I mean, all this basic stuff that should have been
put in place a year ago, Biden is now putting in place
for the first time a year late,
because the only thing Trump ever did was a travel ban.
And, you know, meanwhile, banning people
from other countries didn't stop us from becoming the country
with the largest death toll and the largest epidemic on Earth.
So, I mean, I do not envy Biden and Harris
the job that they are inheriting.
But I do think that one benefit they have is that the guy
who they're replacing didn't even do the easy stuff.
And so they don't have to invent
new complicated trickery in order to come up with what
U.S. government policy ought to be.
It's just the basics.
-Obviously a lot of very serious things happened
during the Trump administration, things that, as you pointed out,
are going to take years to undo.
With that said, do you have a favorite stupid scandal
of the Trump administration that only brought you joy
that you're going to miss?
-Oh. Like, go back to the Trump scandal orphanage
and choose one? -Yeah.
You can bring one with you.
Like, I would love if a President Biden also, like,
used a Sharpie to adjust maps.
I think that was a fun thing.
I don't think enough presidents have done that,
and I think that should be a thing presidents do from now on.
-Do you remember -- Well, okay, it's a tie.
First of all, Trump had the Interior Secretary guy
who had a flag made for himself that every time
he was in the Interior Secretary headquarters,
a staffer would have to run up to the roof and fly his standard
to alert the peasantry that the Interior Secretary was there.
That was pretty good.
But then there was also the EPA guy --
I don't even remember his name --
who built a super secure "Get Smart" spy telephone booth
in his office so he could have uber top secret
EPA conversations with the White House.
That was -- and then he had, like --
he hired himself a 24/7 security guard,
and things that turned up on the, like, reimbursement sheet
were things like ballistic pants for his EPA security team
that, you know, would keep him safe
when he was going into the phone booth.
-I feel like every Cabinet member for the next like
three months is going to keep reporting back like, "Hey,
do you know there's a solid gold microwave in my office?"
-[ Laughs ] That's right.
-So that'll at least be something to look forward to.
Have a great day tomorrow.
Very happy you'll be covering it live throughout the day.