Big Picture Interview: Dr. Mark Weisbrot, Center for Economic and Policy Research (C.E.P.R.)/Just Foreign Policy/FAILED: What the "Experts" Got Wrong about the Global Economy. Jeremy Corbyn - the head of the UK Labour Party - has just proposed instituting a national maximum wage in his country. That’s right - a MAXIMUM wage. It sounds crazy - but is that idea really as radical as it sounds? Plus….

Big Picture Fact Of The Day...

In tonight's Lone Liberal Rumble, Thom talks to Charles Sauer of the Market Institute and Dave McCulloch of Capitol Media Partners about how Trump is creating a kleptocracy, how Trump is right about what we need to do to deal with big Pharma, and Bernie's expose of the Republicans Party's big lie. Later on in the show, Thom talks about how we can create a rational trade system.

Big Picture Interview: Alan Tonelson, RealityChek/The Race to the Bottom. With the Trump administration just 9 days away - are we on the verge of a new era in American trade policy? Or will Reagan's fever dream of "free trade" continue to wreak havoc on our economy?

Big Picture Fact Of the Day...

Big Picture Panel: Charles Sauer, The Market Institute & Dave McCulloch, Capitol Media Partners. Things got even weirder when Trump started talking about how - as president - he was going to deal with the giant conflict of interest presented by his personal business empire. After refusing once again to release his tax returns - Trump brought some tax lawyer named Sheri Dillon on stage to explain why he's not doing the constitutional thing and divesting himself from the Trump Organization. According to Dillon - his plan is to instead just hand things off to his sons Eric and Donald Jr. for the next four years. Eric and Donald Jr won't be allowed to make any new foreign deals - and will theoretically have to have domestic deals reviewed by an ethics advisor - but Daddy Donald will still be the official "on paper" owner of the Trump Organization. In other words - he still has a giant conflict of interest on his hands. Republicans just spent the past 8 years railing against President Obama and so-called crony capitalism - how can they possibly feel comfortable with this situation?

Big Picture Fact Of The Day….

Big Picture Interview: Naomi Ages, Greenpeace USA. And, with disaster looming in Antarctica as a direct result of global warming, how will former ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson deal with the international crises that rapid sea-level rise would cause? And how close are we in time to such a crisis?

Big Picture Panel: Bryan Pruitt, RedState & Kai Newkirk, Democracy Spring/99Rise. The war on drugs, according to the Nixon aide who largely put it into place, was an intentional war on African Americans. The biggest crack in that has been states legalizing marijuana, even though it's still illegal at a federal level. Would an Attorney General Jeff Beauregard Sessions crank back up Nixon's war on black people by throwing pot users in federal prisons?

Thom talks with Red State Contributor Bryan Pruitt and Progressive Organizer Kai Newkirk about Jeff Session’s Attorney General confirmation hearings, whether Republicans will replace Obamacare, Bernie Sanders’ continuing progressive push. Then, Naomi Ages, Climate Liability Project Lead at Greenpeace USA, discusses what to expect under a potential Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

Thom talks with The Intercept journalist Zaid Jilani and freelance journalist Lynn Parramore about the mainstream media’s obsessive coverage of Donald Trump’s every tweet, and the dismantling of labor unions in America. Then, Ann Marie Benitez of the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health tells Thom why the president-elect and his Republican allies are a threat to women’s reproductive rights.

Big Picture Interview: Ann Marie Benitez, National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health/AllAboveAll. With Donald Trump's inauguration just under two weeks away - reproductive groups are gearing up for a big fight to protect abortion access. Are Republicans playing with fire by pushing for a repeal of Roe v. Wade?

How Many Voters Were Suppressed?

The Big Picture Progressive Panel - Zaid Jilani, The Intercept & Lynn Stuart Parramore, Freelance Journalist. Corporate media handed Donald Trump between $2 and $3 billion in free coverage, making him president, just to jack up their ratings, is the biggest story of the year, perhaps even the biggest story of our lifetimes. The directors and managers and producers of a small handful of immensely powerful and profitable media corporations made the decision, in 2015, that The Donald Trump show was more important to put on TV every day and night than any actual news. And why did they do this? They did this because The Donald Trump Show brings ratings, and ratings determine their profitability. This sick, symbiotic relationship won Trump the White House, and it's what will keep his presidency afloat long after it reaches its past due date. Oh yeah, and if you're expecting some kind of mea culpa from the mainstream media for installing Trump, then good luck. That would mean that mainstream corporate television media would have to admit that its primary goal is to make money, not keep people informed about what really matters. Not going to happen. So, can America survive the Donald Trump/Corporate Media industrial complex?

Big Picture Panel: Jason Russell, Washington Examiner & Kate Aronoff, In These Times Magazine. The truth is that we don't need any border wall - whether it's the Great Wall that Trump promised on the campaign trail, or the few miles of barbed wire he's pushing for right now. Border crossings are way down - and a good percentage of undocumented immigrants don’t even come to the US by sneaking over from Mexico - they overstay their visas after flying into big cities like New York and Los Angeles. So - is Trump going to build a wall at Terminal A at JFK Airport? Of course not. All this talk about a wall is just the velvet glove around the iron fist of Republican racism. It’s way to blame poor brown people for a situation that we could easily solve if we started doing what Reagan stopped doing back in the 1980s: prosecute largely wealthy white employers who hire undocumented immigrants.