sure she damages him enough for a general election. everybody recognizes that this race is over. it was probably over before iowa and new hampshire. campaigns end when they run out of money or a candidate simply doesn't want to put up with the embarrassment of losing anymore. to her credit, she seems pretty dug in and wants to have this fight. the problem is, she's ceded this person 50 points in the polls and a year of campaigning before she wanted to do that, so it's not a great strategy. there may be billionaires out there who want her to continue doing this. obviously, elise stefanik, everyone else is moving on to figuring out who the vp will be. >> political analyst brandan buck, thanks for joining us. thank you for getting up "way too early" this friday morning and all week long. have a good weekend, everybody. enjoy the super bowl. "morning joe" starts right now. a while back, they found classified documents at joe biden's house, and merrick

garland appointed a special prosecutor to look into it. well, today we got the results of the investigation in a report. the special counsel will not seek criminal charges against president biden. so if you're in a fantasy league for presidential indictments, it's still, trump, 91. every other president ever, 0. you got that? clean that up. good morning. welcome to "morning joe." it is friday, february 9th. good to have joe, willie and me here together. along with us, the host of "way too early," white house bureau chief at "politico," jonathan lemire. nbc news national affairs analyst john heilemann. former u.s. attorney and msnbc contributor chuck rosenberg. and nbc news justice and intelligence correspondent ken dilanian is with us this morning. we have a lot going on. we'll start with the special counsel investigating president biden for his handling of

classified documents will not bring charges against the president. that's the conclusion. he wrote in the report, wrote, our investigation uncovered evidence that president biden willfully retained and disclosed classiied materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen. he goes on to write that the president's actions, quote, present serious risks to national security, but then later in the report, herr conceded the ed, quote, does not establish mr. biden's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. the special counsel wrote that the president could also portray himself at trial as an elderly man with a poor memory who would be sympathetic to a jury. herr's description -- >> a urologist and a lawyer. >> let me finish, but i agree. >> we kind of need to stop there. >> you're talking about herr.

>> from trump university. >> no. >> i mean, i have to stop right here. i know we want to go on and finish this report, but i have to start, ken dilanian, so bizarre. there were people who immediately heard these random conclusions, irrelevant conclusions, politically charge ed, trump-like ramblings. first of all, wondered why in the world he'd put that in a report. the assessment of joe biden. secondly, why merrick garland would release garbage like that in the justice department. it sounds like james comey in

2016 who, july, couldn't indict hillary clinton legally, so he decided to hold a press conference and indict her politically. >> joe, i understand where you're coming from, and people feel that way, but let me give you the explanation i've heard from the justice department officials and insight into why that was in there, though it seems gratuitous. if herr is saying, i have evidence that joe biden willfully retained classified information, he didn't just find the information in 2022, as we thought, but he found them in 2017. he's recorded saying that to his ghostwriter. why isn't he charging him? the explanation is joe biden said he didn't remember. he was recorded saying, "i found classified documents in my house in virginia" to the ghostwriter. he is recorded disclosing classified information to the ghostwriter, but he says he forgot that. rob herr has to explain that, in fact, the larger context here is

mr. biden forgot a lot of things. he forgot the dates he was vice president, according to this report. he forgot at one point in the interview when his son died. he forgot a key figure in the afghanistan debate he cared a lot about, which side of the debate he was on. rob hur felt there was a need to explain how it'd be in front of a jury. he has to go to congress and justify to angry republicans why donald trump is being charged with retaining classified documents but joe biden isn't. that's the explanation a lot of people may not like. maybe people thought he went too far. you know, i've obviously heard from people who speak for mr. biden who say, look, how did rob hur evaluate his memory in a five-hour interview? i've been with him for years, and i think his memory is better than that. that's a fair point, i think. rob hur is ultimately going to have to go to congress and

answer for this, but that's the explanation. >> i mean, it is so gragratuito. john heilemann, the word willfully, that he willfully retained the documents. well, natural to assume he put the afghanistan documents in the box on purpose and knew they were there. quote, there is, in fact, a shortage of evidence on these points. 200 pages earlier, he goes, he willfully, and then 200 pages later, he said, well, we actually don't have evidence on that point. he did that a couple times throughout here. it certainly seemed like a politically charged document. you know, used to be pre-james comey, you'd either indict somebody or you wouldn't indict somebody. now, in the political sphere, again, james comey can't invite hillary clinton during a presidential election legally,

so what's he do? holds a press conference and indicts her politically. same thing happened yesterday. he didn't have evidence. we're going to go through these. it is the one thing he did right, he talked about the distinctions between donald trump, who lied, stole, hid, obstructed, lied again, had his lawyers lie under oath, continued to lie, continued to hide, continued to obstruct, told his employees to lie, on and on and on. joe biden turned it over immediately. of course, i don't expect liars on other news channels or other parties to actually tell the truth. i don't expect them to do that, but there are the clear distinctions. even here, though, john heilemann, you have a situation where he says, time and time again, we don't really have any evidence that he willfully took and retained this evidence. >> right. well, first, joe, i'll say that, literally, before we started the

program, i was saying to chuck rosenberg sitting here, can you explain to me how this is different from what jim comey did in what we think of in 2016 as comey one, his first intercession in the election, in the case you're referring to in july, i think, of 2016, when he did what you just said. i, like you, am old enough to remember when prosecutors either charged someone, and issued a charging document, or they issue ed a declention, which is, we decline to prosecute. chuck will talk about the difference, which i don't know as much, the hidden statute and now special counsels and what the regulations are and what they have to do. i will say, without -- there's no doubt in my mind that this special prosecutor could have written the same report without using these words. elderly man with a poor memory.

like you, i'm a simple country journalist. you can say this without saying something like that. >> john, i'm a simple country lawyer, and i know, what's a headline? what should the head line from this report be? not indicted. >> not guilty, right. >> not the evidence to indict him. it's not there. the difference is between trump and biden. >> i thought -- >> hold on, john. do you think that this guy is so naive? do you think this guy is so stupid? do you think this guy is so clueless that he didn't know, by putting words in that donald trump would love for him to put in there, that that wasn't going to be the headline, that he

didn't know? he's a trumper who knew. >> right. >> why in the world, why in the world would the justice department allow the dicta to be in there. it's gragratuitous. he knew it. it was bad faith that he did it, and it was even worse judgment that the justice department allowed that garbage to be released. >> right. that's now raising it to the second point. joe, i'm continally stunned by people who i think should know better in washington, d.c., who turn out to be just that aive or stupid. i've never spoken to this man about it, but i'll say that you, i, jonathan lemire, willie geist, chuck rosenberg at least, we would have known if you wrote, "elderly man with poor memory," it would have ended up on the "new york post" and would

be echoed in advertising and donald trump's mouth. we would have known that. i don't know if the special counsel did know that. i do think that you've raised a really fundamental question, and it's a question that, you know, what i hear from inside the biden administration is that, you know, a lot of the fury last night was directed, maybe more at merrick garland. >> for good reason. >> yeah. >> than hur, i think because of the fact that i always thought this special counsel was unnecessary. the facts here suggest that they may be wrong about that, in the sense that things that biden is found to have done here, some of the evidence that the special counsel brought to bear just on terms of how badly he mishandled some of the classified documents were. they may be wrong, this probably was -- garland may have been right to appoint the special counsel to look into this for a variety of reasons, but they've been mad at him since then. now, they're really mad at him. the question of why you'd allow this report to come out with

this language in it rests in garland's hands, his lap, so to speak. that's where i think the buck may stop when we ultimately talk about who is responsible. >> it is so -- it is such a repeated james comey. and the fact -- you know, james comey writing the letter he did ten days beforehand, acting like, hey, i'm just playing it down the middle. really? and for merrick garland to not learn from 2016, that, actually, when you're involved politically, when you're involved in a political situation like this, that you don't actually take care to be careful at what you do. >> well -- >> he didn't. comey didn't. hur, like comey, decided, i want to put myself in the middle of this campaign. >> yeah. well, to your point, willie, hur wrote that, unlike the evidence involving mr. biden, the allegations set forth in the indictment of mr. trump, if proven, would present serious

aggravating facts. hur continues. quote, most notably, after being given multiple chances to return documents and avoid prosecution, mr. trump allegedly did the opposite. according to the indictment, he not only refused to return the documents for many months, but he also obstructed justice by enlisting others to destroy evidence and then lie about it. >> biden said, turn it over. >> willie, this is the clear information that should be important to the american people in reading this, but it is clouded by all of this information that this guy put in, hur included about the president's age, that seems very distracting. in many ways, the conclusion is the most important thing here. when you think of the alternative, which he mentions in this, donald trump and what he did with documents, you would think that's where the outcry would be. >> that's exactly right.

you nailed both of the important points. the first line of the executive summary, before hur gets into the report, reads like this, "we conclude no criminal charges are warranted in this manner." he goes on to say, "this isn't just because of a department of justice policy that you shouldn't prosecute a president, all those things, no charges are warranted." as you outlined, he goes into some detail to lay out how biden's case is different from trump's case, and all the ways joe biden did the right things. he opened himself up to a voluntary interview. he agreed to have his home and offices searched. he did not obstruct justice as donald trump did time and time again. then, chuck rosenberg, the special counsel here peppers in all of his personal observations, his views about joe biden's mental acuity and his ability to recall. obviously, joe biden's legal team has come out to rebut all that and point out that it is wholly inappropriate for any of that to be in here.

this is supposed to be a legal analysis of the case. when you first read through this, as somebody who has been through some of this, what was your reaction? >> yeah, so let me start down a path, willie, that will make me unbelievably unpopular this morning. so, number one, under the special counsel regulations, hur, the special counsel, has an obligation, he shall write a report. he must write a report. if you're writing a report to the attorney general of the united states and you're recommending that someone not be prosecuted, which i think is the right recommendation, then you would tell the attorney general why you think that person ought not to be prosecuted. i was a federal prosecutor for a long time. we assess our witnesses. we assess our cases. we talk about them. we talk about it. we talk about the factors that we think will and will not play in front of a jury. if rob hur's assessment was that mr. biden was sympathetic or

that he had a faulty memory, that is absolutely something you would tell the attorney general in a confidential report. when the report goes from hur to the attorney general, merrick garland, it is a confidential report. then it is up to merrick garland whether or not to release it, in part or in whole. i think this is a flaw in the special counsel regulations. when i was a prosecutor, if i decided a case was not meritorious, i would close it. period, the end. i wouldn't talk about it. i would close it. but as a special counsel, you can't do that. you must write the report. so it doesn't make sense to me, willie, if i'm telling the attorney general of the united states why someone ought not to be prosecuted, that i wouldn't also tell him exactly why i came to that conclusion. >> so i was speaking to senior biden officials all last night, and they shared a lot of this unhappiness with the report. they do feel like some of the comments were gratuitous. they do point out that when mike

pence, another former vice president who had classified documents, who also, unlike donald trump, didn't obstruct, simply returned them, there was no special counsel. there was no investigation of this magnitude like it was for president biden. they do feel like -- they made the same comey comparisons we are making all morning long. legally, this is a significant win for the president and it's a relief. politically, it is a very damaging day. the president was already for a few days pushing back against -- he'd mixed up foreign leaders with their deceased predecessors a couple different times in recent days. poll after poll shows that age is his biggest vulnerability. there are questions, even among democrats, as to whether he is up for the job, though those close to him insist, absolutely, he is.counsel, the details of the things he forgot will be damaging to the president. last night, president biden, i'm

told, was furious, in particular, about the claim he forgot when beau biden died. he spoke to lawmakers yesterday, privately cursed out the idea, saying this is nonsense, this is my son. you can see the anger in the hastily called news conference. that really struck a chord with him, and he felt that he had to respond. now, this is going to be, once again, a major political issue, as republicans, first of all, claim double standard pause trump got indicted and biden didn't, although, of course, we know the facts support those conclusions. again, they're going to lean on biden's age, even though trump, of course, himself, had many misstatements in recent days, as well. >> john, let's get to that point. you're right, in special counsel hur's report, he said president biden could not recall the day his son, beau, died. here in the quickly called press conference last night is how the president responded to that. >> i know there's some attention paid to some language in the

report about my recollection of events. there is even reference that i don't remember when my son died. how in the hell dare he raise that. frankly, when i was asked the question, i thought to myself, it wasn't any of their damn business. i don't need anyone. i don't need anyone to remind me when he passed away. simple truth is, i sat for two days of events, going back 40 years. at the same time, i was managing a national crisis. their task was to make a decision about whether to move forward with charges in this case. that's their decision to make. that's the counsel's decision to make. that's his job. they decided not to move forward. for any extraneous commentary they don't know what they're talk about, it has no place in this report. bottom line, it's closed. i can continue what i've always

focused on, my job, being president of the united states. i'm well-meaning, an elderly man, and i know what the hell i'm doing. i put this country back on its feet. i know what i'm doing. my memory is fine. take a look at what i've done since becoming president. none of you thought i could pass any of the things i got passed. how did that happen? i guess i just forgot what was going on. [ laughter ] >> sorry, that was funny. >> he said, yes, i am a well-meaning and elderly man, but in a moment that should have been a vindication for him, that there are no charges warranted against him, and let's turn the page, the white house, obviously, as john said, felt the ned to rush out there at 8:00 at night from the white house and get in front of and push back on some of the other language, the gratuitous language about his mental acuity. >> well, look, i think that when you look at a very bad day for president biden, and then you compare it to donald trump with

91 counts, sexual assault, fraud, sex with a porn star, and everything he says every day, the day that president biden had yesterday is, like, just another tuesday for donald trump. with far worse things that he's putting on the table, but whatever. >> it's actually another -- it's tuesday for donald trump without the 91 counts against him. >> exactly. minus the corruption. >> democratic member and -- and the judge saying he is guilty of rape. congressman goldman of new york, this seems an awful lot like 2016 and james comey saying, geez, i can't indict hillary clinton legally, so i'm going to indict her politically and hold a press conference and attack her. this language that he used, this gratuitous language that he used, again, given the sensitivities of the case, he knew it was going to end up on the front page of pro-trump

newspapers. he knew it. it's exactly what happened. what's your reaction? >> well, my reaction is there are a number of highly questionable and seemingly partisan and political assessments by the special counsel. first of all, the evidence that president biden knew he had, classified materials, while he was a private citizen, and that is important because, otherwise, he was perfectly legal -- it was perfectly legal for him to have it, was so thin. for him to even conclude that he willfully retained, i think, is a flawed conclusion. the evidence does not support that. so that's right off the bat, that you have this questionable conclusion. then he goes on to do a full analysis. while i agree with chuck, that the credibility of witnesses

matters, the credibility of the potential defendant is all together very different. especially when one volunteers for an interview. a jury isn't going to have to analyze joe biden. especially when you're saying that the charges or the evidence does not meet the charges, that is completely gratuitous and completely unnecessary. my understanding, as well, joe, is that during these five hours, president biden went through, in great detail, many conversations that he had with various other people from years and years ago. so he cherry-picked a couple of examples that perhaps, we don't know, perhaps are in context, perhaps are out of context, related to very sensitive issues, such as his son, really just to bash him, just to impugn him. it is excessive. it is gratuitous.

the last thing i'll say, joe, is it's wrong. i have had a number of conversations with president biden the last couple years, including on october 7th, the day before this interview when i was in israel and he called me. his mastery and understanding of the geopolitical situation on the ground in israel and in the surrounding region was remarkable. he was recounting to me all the various different things they had done in the first couple hours of the war. he was completely on top of everything that was going on. and his experience, because of his age and his wisdom, has been invaluable to this country as we have navigated through the russia/ukraine war and now the middle east. so there is a flip side to the age thing which joe biden has demonstrated very well over the last couple years. >> congressman, good morning. as we laid out the last 20 minutes or so, the headline is clear out of this report, which is no charges are warrantwarrand

also the distinctions between what former president trump did and what president biden did in terms of obstructing justice, sitting for an interview and all those things. like it or not, the special counsel's words are out in the public view. even democrats cringing a little because it raises an issue that's been out there. do you have any concerns at all, not just because of what we read in this report, which a lot of people on this show don't think should have been in the report, but do you have concerns right now about president biden's age as he moves toward the general election? >> no. i don't have any concerns. that's from personal interactions. he's got a terrific team around him. he is very knowledgeable and experienced. he has even recently completely dominated the republicans. you look at the fiscal responsibility act. he did a fabulous job. my understanding is that he was behind the scenes, and because

of his experience dpoeshtnegoti over so many different years, he knew exactly where the negotiation was going to go and he took kevin mccarthy's shirt. i think president biden is incredibly experienced, knowledgeable, wise, and i don't have concerns about his age. remember, the job of the president is to guide our country, not to be a cheerleader for the united states. it is to govern our country. i think when you see the juxtaposition of how he handled this case, fully cooperating, respecting the rule of law, respecting the independence of the department of justice, and you just pose that with donald trump, what you see is someone who really cares about our country and cares about our democracy. juxtaposed and different from a criminal, who is out for himself, doesn't believe the law applies to him, and is a danger to this country. that's the choice the american

people will have. >> democratic member of the house oversight and homeland security committees, congressman dan goldman, thank you for being with us this morning. chuck rosenberg, this was not the only major story yesterday. the morning was dominated by the supreme court. they heard oral arguments based on colorado's efforts to take donald trump off the ballot. it seemed, for those of us listening along, from the audio stream provided, that the justices simply weren't buying it. they were pretty sympathetic to what donald trump's lawyers were saying, and there is a suggestion donald trump will remain on the ballot. give us your assessment, your takeaways from what was a historic day at the court. >> fascinating day. i kind of nerded out a little on that, jonathan. the colorado voters, the plaintiffs, the ones who brought the case challenging mr. trump's eligibility to be on the ballot, had a very tough path to navigate. they had to win essentially on

seven or eight questions, including whether mr. trump took an oath that would subject him to the operation of that disqualification provision. whether the presidency is covered by the 14th amendment, section 3, removal provision. a whole bunch of questions. the odds of them winning at the outset were relatively small. but i was surprised a little bit by what seemed to be the unanimity of the court, liberal and conservative justices. for instance, justice katanji brown jackson stated the 14th amendment was not created to give more power to the states, such as colorado, to make determinations about federal elections, but to constrain the states. she thought the colorado voters' position was flipped, that they were off, that they were wrong. that the intent behind the

amendment, again, was to constrain the states. that was a position that elena kagan seemed to embrace, that chief justice roberts seemed to embrace. there's a lot of paths for trump to win here and for the colorado voters to lose. i was struck by the unanimity. it appears it'll be a lob-sided decision, not as close as some people imagined it to be. lots of reasons for that. i found it very interesting. i'd be very surprised, jonathan, as i sit here, if mr. trump didn't prevail. >> ken dilanian, "the new york times" headline says, "supreme court appears set to rule that states can't disqualify trump." the headline on the "wall street journal," "trump ballot spot appears safe." do you agree from what you heard yesterday. >> yeah, 100%. chuck got it completely right. it was so interesting listening to the liberal justices because,

you know, it's clearly against their partisan interest to argue the way they were and to see it the way they did. it is a lesson for us all, right? be intellectually honest. when elena kagan spoke first yesterday, i remember the moment, she really took the care out of the balloon of people that want to see donald trump excluded from the ballot. she said, wait a second, does it really make sense that one state could decide this for the rest of the nation? you know, then she went on to sort of argue and explain why she thought the 14th amendment didn't say what the plaintiffs said it did. and ketanji brown jackson said it's not in the provision, that it'd be excluded. it was a fascinating, interesting day of reading the text of the constitution and learning about the intent of the people who wrote the 14th amendment. the end of the day, if people want to get rid of donald trump, they'll have to vote against him. he's not going to be excluded

from the ballot. >> ken dilanian and former u.s. attorney chuck rosenberg, thank you, both, very much. >> thanks, guys. 60 years ago today, this happened. >> ladies and gentlemen, the beatles! [ cheers and applause ] ♪ close your eyes and i'll kiss you ♪ ♪ tomorrow, i'll miss you remember, i'll always be true ♪ ♪ and if while i'm away i'll write home every day ♪ ♪ and i'll send all my loving to you ♪ >> that is amazing. >> 60 years ago. >> 60 years? >> 60 years ago. i will tell you, my parents were young. 20-somethings when they watched

that. just shocked, telling me they were absolutely shocked by what they saw. i know billy graham stayed home from church that night. he heard that it was going to be such a big event. i guess, john heilemann, socon so concerned about it. it'd be easy to say, well, who would have guessed that these four guys from liverpool, playing on "ed sullivan show" on a sunday night in february would have changed music and culture and the world we live in? but it did! >> yeah. i mean, an audience that night, joe, almost as big, almost as big as the audience for jonathan lemire on "way too early," 73 million people. >> yeah. >> 73 million people. >> wow. >> they watched the first appearance on "ed sullivan." they did a bunch of them over the course of '64 and '65. they did "all my love" and

"until there was you," and "hand hold my hand." we had billy joel, tom petty. you think about that generation of people who shaped rock and roll and all of them say the same thing. of the people i mentioned, and you can make a list five times that long. they all say they watched the beatles that night, and it changed their life. the world shifted on its axis, and they decided this was what they were going to do. something new was being born. not just, you know, a new kind of music burks this is the moment when the american teenager was born. this is like the moment when youth culture in the world, global youth culture, born that night. there's almost -- i mean, you can't pin it to one single thing ever in these situations. these are large movements. but a rare circumstance, that

performance by that band at that moment, you can basically say that was where a lot of what the modern world is now in culture started. >> right. there were two events, willie, that changed different parts of america, different parts of american culture, american politics. three months before that was the assassination of jfk which changed american politics forever and so many other things, all, it seems, for the worse. three months later, you have the beatles there on "ed sullivan." talk to any musician, a young person who became a leader in a younger generation, chances are good they'll tell you they were watching that night and it really did, it shifted youth culture and, later, american culture on its axis that night. >> yeah, john, you have to underline the number that john said. it's 73 million viewers. that was in a country at the time of, like, 180 or 190

million people. you can do the math on that. absolutely incredible. you're both right. you listen to any rock star of the last 60 years now, and they will tell you that that night, february 9th, 1964, was like a lightning bolt that just came down and struck them and said, okay, the culture is different now. i want to be that. i want to be some version of that. also, joe, we always talk about the big moments. two days earlier, february 7th, the beatles arrive at jfk. >> oh, my god. >> you look now, we have such access to celebrities. we have such access to stars. they film themselves on tiktok eating breakfast and all that. just the very sight of these guys who were in some ways mythological, getting off a plane at jfk, brought out thousands of fans. then they had the famous press conference at the plaza. it was such a different time in culture, that to lay eyes on these guys was thrilling. it really was, joe, i think, a couple days that changed not

just american culture but global culture. >> the press asked george harrison, like, how did you get your hair that long? he said, you should have seen it yesterday. >> oh, my god. coming up -- >> then asked paul ccartney, everybody is here. are you guys really, you know, that good? what do you say to people who say you're not good? i think it was paul who said, we're not. so why are you here? everybody laughed. they were off to the races. >> all right. we'll talk about this more a little later. we do have four hours. coming up on "morning joe," we have a packed show ahead. israel has stepped up air strikes in gaza even as the white house warns against an israeli offensive in one southern city. we have the latest on the ongoing war and how the president's comments last night impact that. plus, our next guest says the republican party appears to have entered a new level of capitulation to donald trump. mark leibovich joins us to explain. also ahead, nfl legend

emmitt smith will join us with his super bowl predictions ahead of sunday's big game. >> pensacola's own. and a "pretty in pink" reunion almost. actors jon cryer and molly ringwald will both be here, separately, with their previews of their brand-new shows. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. you ready? surprise! i don't think you can clear this. i got this. it's yours now. i have moderate to severe crohn's disease. now, there's skyrizi. ♪ things are looking up, i've got symptom relief. ♪ ♪ control of my crohn's means everything to me. ♪

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faithful to the constitution. >> that was texas senator ted cruz back in 2016. remember him? he was booed for refusing to endorse donald trump as the party's presidential nominee. instead, famously telling americans to vote their conscience. fast forward eight years later, and cruz has fallen in line, along with the vast majority of the republican party, behind trump, endorsing him to be the party's presidential nominee for a third cycle in a row. joining us now, staff writer at "the atlantic," mark leibovich. his latest piece is entitled, "the validation brigade salutes trump." you write, quote, "the gop once prided itself on being an alliance of free-thinking frontiersmen who embraced rugged individualism, a term popular

popularized by herbert hoover. this is no longer that time. full welcome back ak essence to. this near total submission to the former boss has persisted no matter how egregious his actions are or how plainly he states his authoritarian goals. yet the republican party now appears to have entered a new level of capitulation to trump. a kind of ho-hum acceptance phase, where full support has become almost mundane, just like a grocery line. there's a certain power in bland and seemingly harmless gestures from people who know better. permission structures strengthen over time. complicity salsifies in obscurity." go ahead, you'll do the list. >> i was just saying, it used to

be that republicans in the early days would have to justify mean tweets. if you listen to what a certain senator said from utah, mike lee. now, he's classifying as, quote, mean tweets, rape. donald trump raping a woman according to a judge. >> defaming her. saying nasty things about a lot of women. >> well, also saying nasty things about generals. >> it's not okay. >> generals he's going to execute. talking about being a dictator on day one. talking about terminating the constitution. talking about using s.e.a.l. team six to assassinate a political opponent being okay for him. and, of course, talking about banning news outlets. we can go down the list. the bar keeps getting higher, and republicans keep jumping.

mark leibovich, what say you? >> oh, joe, hi guys. >> hey. good morning, mark. >> good morning. >> did you want to talk about the beatles? is that why you're here? >> i mean -- >> elderly man with us. >> he is a kind, elderly man. >> short memory. thought he was here to talk about the 60th anniversary on "ed sullivan." >> imagine how big they would have been if one was dating travis kelce's sister or something like that. anyway, my piece. >> yeah. >> taking it back to ted cruz, i wanted to juxtapose what was a spirited, relatively speaking, internal fight in the republican party about what trumpism certainly was looking like then or what people's worst visions of trumpism was, and what it's become now. what i wanted to look at was, frankly, the mundane, adding to the list the likes of john

cornyn, marco rubio, cruz, tom emmer, your garden variety, quote, unquote, prominent republicans, who in the last few weeks have sort of, almost as a matter of rout, put releases out, "i stand with donald trump." ignore everything they said about him after january 6th or in the last however many years. this is just what they do now. what it is emblematic of when you look at what cruz said eight years ago, and i remember being in the hall that night, one of the most riveting things i've seen in politics, because, even then, quite rare to see someone stand up as fulsomely. really, it's so mundane now. ted cruz put his name on a list. everyone else just sort of went along. that's kind of the nature of complicity in general. you lose your fight over time. you become totally numb to it. this is what the republican party is. >> mark, then there are the people who have taken it a ste

further, those who want to be donald trump's vice presidential running mate perhaps. elise stefanik, the congresswoman from new york, was on cnn last night where she said she would not have done what mike pence did on january 6th. meaning, she would not have certified the election. she went on to say, just repeating the lies about the 2020 election. this is a prominent member of congress who could potentially be vice president of the united states. setting themselves up now, that if donald trump loses, if donald trump doesn't like the results he gets when he becomes president, that you have a group of people who will go along with whatever he says. there will be no guardrails. a group of people who will perhaps violate the constitution in the service of donald trump. >> yeah, i mean, you can focus on the elise stefaniks, the vivek ramaswamys of the world, but they're sycophants. in an undignified way, they're competing for his affection,

maybe to be his running mate or some high-level position in the administration. if elected, he'll have a level of greater authority, certainly in the party. it is not like a senate or congress made up of his party, whether they're the majority or not is going to not sanction that. he'll have the sycophants around him. again, i want to focus on the people who know better, the quote, unquote, serious republicans. the people who have said as much in the past, who certainly said this privately and continue to say it privately, who continue to go along. that's really where the strength of his power is, in just how he's sort of led an entire party of people who know better to bend their collective need. >> mark, do you think there's a -- i mean, you've written about this a fair amount and did a book which was essentially about this. it's been a gradual -- the capitulation of the party to trump has been an unfolding horror story over the last x number of years. when you think about the ways

that that emboldens trump, you know, there were guardrails that constrained him, especially, importantly, at the end of his term in office and around january 6th, the courts, et cetera, et cetera. trump's aware of the -- that the supplication is deeper and deeper. he is a cagey reader of his own power and the sycophancy around him. how does it affect him tangibly in terms of how he actually governs and how far he's willing to go in the next four years if he gets re-elected and he sees all of this around him? >> yeah, the fact is, as far as he can. i mean, i still to this day don't think enough attention is paid to the people that allow him to happen. donald trump, for all the obvious reasons, is a singular figure, dangerous figure, but he would not exist if there was not a major political party to sanction him.

he understands it. i remember eight, nine years ago when trump used to talk to people like me. he was talking about how weak politicians are. he said, i've been in real estate and entertainment. in these early months, in this, like, early sort of part of my career in politics, i'm shocked at how easy it is to turn around politicians. they really are just really weak. if trump had one well-developed sense of himself, it is how to identify weakness in people to exploit it and, in some cases, entire political parties. >> it's crazy. mark, that's what i've been telling republicans since early 2016. the only way you have a shot of him respecting you is by standing up to him, being tough. >> 100%. >> and giving back as much as he gives you. i remember having a conversation with paul ryan after he became speaker. he just sort of slumped his shoulders and said, i just want to pass policy.

there's just been -- i don't know what it's been. just a lot of people just wish he was going to go away. most republicans think he is a joke, but they're just going to pay lip service to him, and hopefully they'll get their bills passed, their highway funded. but the consequences are just catastrophic for the republican party. if you want republicans to win elections, for the conservative movement, if you believe in balanced budgets, the free markets, and the sort of things that i believe in. then, finally, for america, for the republic. i mean, each one of those steps, those, you know, mundane statements, you know, just one more hammer in the nail of conservatism and the republican party. >> you know, people, the nature of politics in many ways is that

people figure out a way to rationalize decisions they want to make anyway, and usually it comes out in a way that will be politically beneficial to them. ultimately, you can listen to all the tortured logic here, this is the decision they've made. this is where donald trump is. again, it's impossible to think that this could have existed or gone on this long without the backing of a major party. again, that's made up of individuals who think of themselves as well respected leaders, and many of them in some world, some very isolated worlds, are. ultimately, you would hope that history, if there is some kind of reckoning for this, will condemn them in some way. it is certainly not the republican party that is condemning donald trump or stopping him at this point. >> the new piece is online now for "the atlantic." mark leibovich, thank you very much for copping on the show. we appreciate it. >> thanks, guys. >> we're okay with your memory gaffe there. >> he's well-meaning. >> elderly. >> kind, elderly writer.

>> it's all right. coming up, a scathing profile. >> you read it, and he was like, wait, did i -- i wrote that. >> yeah, he'd forgotten. a scathing profile on someone who was very close to donald trump, robert draper with "the new york times" magazine joins us to talk about his piece on former white house chief of staff mark meadows. first, it's time to talk football with pablo torre. we'll get his takes on the super bowl, story lines, and his pick for the pig game. we'll be right back with much more "morning joe." ♪ voya ♪ there are some things that work better together. like your workplace benefits and retirement savings. voya helps you choose the right amounts without over or under investing across all your benefits and savings options.

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with comcast business, reliability isn't just possible. thanks. it's happening. get started for $49.99 a month. plus, ask how to get up to a $1000 prepaid card with a qualifying internet package. don't wait, call and switch today! the super bowl in vegas is a great moment for the nfl and a terrible moment for nfl gambling suspensions. i'm serious. you can bet on anything here.

anything. even my monologue. for example, the odds of a joke about the cowboys not making it past the wild card round, 5-1. 5-1. and, of course, the biggest lock of the night, will we keep cutting to an influential blonde superstar? you bet we will. roger goodell. there has never been a season like this, everybody. i mean, who would have thought we'd see a year when taylor swift went to more playoff games than bill belichick? >> that is keegan-michael key in his opening monologue as host of last night's nfl honors award ceremony, where ravens quarterback lamar jackson won his second most valuable player award as expected. now, the league's full attention turns to this sunday's big game in las vegas, where the kansas city chiefs and san francisco 49ers will face off in a super bowl rematch of a few years back.

joining us now, the host of "pablo torre finds out" on meadowlark media, espn's pablo torre. great to see you, my friend. this has everything you want. two great teams. superstars all over the field. of course, the taylor swift factor. give us a viewer's guide. what are you watching for on sunday? >> i'll start with 1967, willie. super bowl i was 1967. it was a funny thing. the game wasn't sold out. the teams didn't really want to play. it was the nfl and the afl before the merger. what we get to here, just to complete the arc, is peak nfl. this is 115 million people, last year, a record that will be broken pretty obviously this year because of taylor swift, the 18 to 34 demographic and younger among women in america. then you have the actual football, right? it's las vegas. it's a place the nfl, once upon a time, was loathe to be at, for

all the reasons around competitive integrity and so forth. so you lather that all alongside patrick mahomes, the most talented, young quarterback we've ever seen, and the 49ers, actually favored in the game. let's start with the top line. the chiefs are the national story, the historical story, the pop cultural story, and the 49ers happened to be favored by two. all of these things are happening. >> so you mentioned the first super bowl in '67. the chiefs also played in that super bowl. >> yes. >> joe and i wouldn't be doing our duty if we didn't mention, that's when chiefs quarterback len dawson was ripping a cigarette on a metal folding chair with a fresca at halftime. you can probably find that photo online. pablo, the game itself, what to you expect to see? mahomes has been there a million times, kelce, they know what it means. there's no shock value to him at this point. how do you see it playing out? >> i want to start, again, with the chiefs offense, because as

good as the 49ers are, what patrick mahomes has done, willie, he's done what's hardest in the nfl. the nfl, football is defined by its randomness. the ball itself is oblong. it is meant to bounce randomly and unpredictably. what he's done, mahomes, andy reid, travis kelce, what they have done together is impose predictability on this game in a way we haven't seen since the new england patriots of jonathan lemire's youth, right? >> boy. >> this is the obvious successor to that. we got it immediately, and it is astounding. the defense of the kansas city chiefs, i'll highlight them. i don't want to bury the lead, what is the difference in the chiefs team? this is the best defense of andy reid's tenure in kansas city. they are really, really good. all you need to know is theexce. combine mahomes, talented young quarterback, with a chiefs defense unlike any we've seen in

their run, to imposing predictability on unpredictability, and i like the chiefs. i do like the chiefs. >> yeah. boy, you know, 1967 super bowl with lynn dawson. you know, the beatles "ed sullivan." >> that's right. >> then you have the new england patriots, that when they actually were good of jonathan lemire's youth. i don't know what's more in the rear-view mirror, actually. they all seem like -- >> poor lemire. everybody is punching him today. >> let's flip the script a little bit, pablo, and talk about how great the san francisco 49ers are, as well. >> sure. >> the story of brock purdy. nick saban would call him a great point guard. he knows how to spread the football around and across the field. he's been, talk about consistent. for the most part, extraordinarily consistent.ccaf.

go down the list. they have one superstar, deebo, after another. >> yeah. when those three guys play, when it's brock purdy and deebo samuel and mccaffrey, i believe they've lost one game. they're, like, 22-1. all of which is to say that i understand if there are people who are watching this this early in the morning and thinking to themselves, i thought that the 49ers had some pretty good story lines, too. joe, in a more meager super bowl, narratively speaking, brock purdy is the number one story. let's be honest about this. the guy was the last pick of the draft, and he ends up being the guy who might, count my chickens here, but might fulfill the whole thing about kyle shanahan being the boy genius coach running this offense as a perfectly oiled machine. he's tried many quarterbacks. this guy, the least likely of them, ends up being the guy who

might be the perfect point guard, as your good friend nick sban would say. brock purdy being here and blending into the scenery as if he is supposed to be here is one of the most unlikely things in the history of the sport. he is the guy who, yes, helped christian mccaffrey potentially be the mvp of the league and deebo samuel be this weapon where there is no answer, as he can run and catch inside this system which is the most terrifying game plan in the nfl. >> brock purdy started slow in the previous playoff games. this is a fear he could turn one or two over. if the niners win, it's mccaffrey, mccaffrey. i think chiefs win, 23-17, my pick. i want to finish on -- >> john is moving betting lines. >> yeah, draftkings, working for them now? >> shooup bowl, make a pick. the niners defense is not as

good as we thought it was. mahomes in the end for a winning score, making plays on a defense that's not as good as it used to be. >> my pick for the record year is chiefs, 32, and niners, 26. a score that's never happened in nfl history. a score-a-gami. a unique score historically happens, and i think they'll get there. heilemann is laughing at me. >> what -- i like the idea, but is there any underlying logic, or are you picking numbers out of the hat? >> i want to be regarded as a prophet on cable news forgetting this correct. i'll bring you behind the magician's curtain. i'm in this for self-interest and ego boosting. >> there's nothing that leads those scores, basically. >> how dare you. of course there is. in all honestly, it gets to this notion that i think it'll be

close. niners favored by two. i think it'll be less close than that. to me, here's the stat, okay? patrick mahomes has been beaten by more than eight points, i believe four times in 120 games. so the guy does not get blown out, right? do you believe in -- look, there is an interesting philosophical -- i'll go on a tangent briefly. are you an individualist or collectivist? do you believe in the great man quarterbacking, or do you believe in a larger collective unit? the chiefs have the guy who transcends. >> pablo, this is a lot. >> i'm sounding like aaron rodgers, talking about my idealogical theories. >> no. >> mahomes, 32-26. that's my pick. >> there you go. >> you are a believer in the henry luse version of super bowls. >> that's right. time life. >> let's go around really

quickly. pablo, again, your prediction is? >> 32-26, joe, and for america to mark it down. >> lemire, what is yours? >> i have the chiefs, 23-17. >> i also, and i'm embarrassed because, of course, the 49ers are favored, i have the chiefs 20-16. john heilemann? >> taylor swift, 41. san francisco 49ers, 11. >> that's crazy, okay. >> that is crazy. sounds like heilemann has a safety in there or something to get to the 11. >> a score-a-gami square. >> patrick mahomes has been

there and knows how to win. 31-27, chiefs. >> here's the crazy thing. pablo, you have a great 49ers team. they are favored. we've all picked the chiefs. let's go, though, to mika's pick. maybe she'll go with the niners. mika predicts? holy cow. the chiefs, 49. the 49ers, 6. whoa. >> yes. >> mika and i are in the same vain here. >> you kind of are. >> team of destiny. >> i love that. america wants points. america wants points. mika has the pulse of the nation clearly read better than us. >> i do. >> there we go. >> so two things. one, if you were a betting person, you now definitely know the niners are going to cover the spread because we have all gone the opposite direction. >> yup. >> so you can bet on that.

this is what the pros call a sucker's bet. >> yeah. >> we all fell for the sucker's bet. kind of like everybody that bet on alabama in the rose bowl. >> there it is. >> number two, willie geist, here's the picture the launched 1,000 football careers, right there. >> history. >> willie, young kids across america said, if dawson can do it and make it to the super bowl, mom, so can i. >> who is that? >> lynn dawson. >> to be clear -- >> american hero. >> -- that's during the game. >> that's how far we've come, yes. >> not celebratory. >> smoking something? >> cigarette, yeah. >> okay. you can listen to more of pablo through his podcast, "pablo torre finds out," on meadowlark media. espn's pablo torre, thank you so much for coming on this morning. we will be talking about the big game on monday, right? going to be watching. we'll have the super bowl party, right, willie? you ready?

>> yeah. >> okay. >> we'll all be there. it is just a few minutes past the top of the hour. >> one or two. >> just a smidge over the top of the hour. jonathan lemire and john heilemann are still with us. joining the conversation, we have pulitzer prize winning columnist at "the washington post," eugene robinson. co-host of msnbc's "the weekend," former chair of the republican national committee, michael steele is with us. and former senior aide to the biden campaign and clinton campaign, adrienne elrod joins us this morning. >> michael, i'll start with you. obviously, the big news should be -- well, there should be a couple big headlines from last night. the first one should be that joe biden cleared of any wrongdoing. the second one should be that biden announced last night that it was his belief that israel was overstepping the boundaries of what they should be doing in gaza. two massive stories. nobody is talking about it this

morning. i'm sure on certain channels, because the special counsel decided to add some verbiage that has nothing to do with, well, joe biden's innocence. >> absolutely, joe. the word of the day is obviously gratuitous. the other word is unfortunate. i think that, you know, as you guys just discussed the last hour, you know, there are lines that are clearly drawn for the special counsel and his reporting back to the attorney general. what i find completely stunning, for the second time, our justice department has allowed a report by a special counsel, a special prosecutor, to weigh in on in a political space, to upset that particular balance, if you will, by allowing personal opinion to be a part of an official report.

not only personal opinion, but unnecessary personal opinion. the kind of opinion you don't give a damn about because it's your casual observation, which has nothing to do with the trying -- excuse me, you know, the investigation into the allegations and the facts that were before the special prosecutor. there was that piece of this, and so there's got to be some internal, you know -- i don't know how they get at it, but they have to do some internal work to clean that mess up. the fact that merrick garland allowed that report to go out the way he did, and it's not like he doesn't have control over it. it's not like he can -- they can dial back, certainly pull out the really, you know, gratuitous personal observations. the second piece, which is actually, i think, a more important story, was the clear line that this president is seemingly now prepared to draw with netanyahu, to move the

events in the middle east, specifically israel, to a different place than netanyahu currently wants them to be. i think that's going to be something that's going to be very, very important over the next couple of days, few weeks. a, to get the reaction out of israel. more importantly, to see how the administration backs those words up. i don't think it was a one-off by the president to sort of change the conversation. i think on a number of occasions recently, joe, the president has found a voice that he wants to inject into this debate about whether they move in one direction or they stay where they are with israel. i think it's high time the president does exactly that. >> yeah, it was an extraordinary moment last night at the white house. the press conference called to address the special counsel report about classified documents as president biden was leaving, some were shouted about gaza. he returned to the podium to say

that israel has gone too far. we'll talk more about that in a moment, gene. do want to get your take on the special counsel's report. we should underline, the very first line of the report in the executive summary before he gets into detail, the special counsel, reads, "we conclude no criminal charges arewarranted in this matter," full stop. then he goes on to itemize all the ways in what joe biden did, how he handled the classified documents, how he handled the investigation, were completely the polar opposite of what donald trump did. yet, a lot of the conversation is about the extra thoughts, the musings this special counsel had about the mental acuity and the age of president biden. >> yeah, that stuff was totally inappropriate. you're right. the headline from the report is that there are no charges pause no charges are warranted. robert hur knew exactly what he was doing. he has to have known exactly what he was doing.

it reads as if, you know, bruj grudgingly, he decided there is no bases for any kind of prosecution. he was going to throw in this dig at biden, and he threw it in. so he presents this to merrick garland, and so the question is, what does merrick garland then do? he had the authority, certainly, to edit the report before it was released to the public. >> but i am pretty confident that had he edited out the groo gratuitous references to biden or his observations of biden and his acuity, had he idited that out, it would have leaked. the story then would have been that merrick garland, you know, edited out all of this damaging stuff about joe biden and is covering it up.

and so i think he was kind of dammed if he did and dammed if he didn't in that situation. special prosecutors, we give them a lot of license, and this special prosecutor abused that license in an explicitly political way. >> well, again, adrienne, he knew exactly what was going to happen, just like james comey knew exactly what was going to happen in july of 20 when he held that press conference. just like james comey knew exactly what was going to hapten days before when he wrote a letter. there were a thousand different ways he could have written that letter, to not actually impact the outcome of the election. let voters just decide instead of putting it in suspended animation. but i would guess, adrienne, there are a lot of democrats, a lot of democratic workers, a lot of democratic voters, a lot of democratic volunteers that had

to be thinking yesterday, my god, this never -- this just never stops. we're forever going to have special prosecutors who can't indict a democratic candidate, so they're going to try to politically damage them. that's exactly what hur was trying to do yesterday. >> exactly right, joe. my phone was blowing up last night from former clinton colleagues. if reminded us so much of what we witnessed james comey do july 5th of 2016, which was to take the unprecedented step at the time of using a report like this to essentially share his public opinion to the american people. he spent, of course, 15 minutes ridiculing hillary clinton, you know, completely slamming her, and then saying, "oh, by the way, we don't recommend the doj go forward with the charges." what hur did yesterday, this is the own modern day version of that same situation. it makes my blood boil.

this is a maga appointed, former trump appointed, you know, u.s. attorney from maryland who did this, and he knew exactly what he was doing, joe. you're exactly right. it is almost like he is giving a wink-wink, nod-nod, to donald trump, saying, i'm not going to recommend we go forward with any charges, but i am going to try to publicly tear down president biden in a very gratuitous, incorrect way to score some political points maybe with donald trump in the future. here's the bottom line, joe, not that we need to sit here and defend president biden because he is perfectly capable, perfectly competent. you don't put 14.2 million jobs on the card, which he's done as president, if you don't have the strong mental acuity to do it. you don't pass strong economic bills, two bipartisan. you don't put the first black woman on the supreme court. the list goes on and on in terms of president biden's accomplishments. you don't manage a complex situation in the middle east if you don't have your strong mental acuity.

completely inexcusable by hur, and i think this really does, unfortunately, continue a precedent that james comey started back in 2016. again, i mean, we're not worried about president biden's competency or mental acuity, but it is very unfortunate, what happened yesterday. president biden made news at the end of the news conference last night. he walked away from the podium, returned to it to answer a reporter's question about israel. let's take a look at that now. >> i'm of the view, as you know, that the conduct of the response in gaza, in the gaza strip, has been over the top. i've been pushing really hard, really hard to get humanitarian assistance into gaza. there are a lot of innocent people who are starving, a lot

of innocent people who are in trouble and dying. it's got to stop. >> joe and mika, this was another moment when president biden's private frustration at israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu bursts into light. this is reflective of behind the scenes conversations that the president has had with netanyahu, that secretary of state blinken has had with his israeli counterparts. he was just in the region in recent days. president went on to say last night, really stressed the efforts he's made to get more humanitarian aid into gaza. he talks about the death toll simply being far too high. at least for now, netanyahu is showing no signs of wavering. israel now conducting military operations in the city of rafah on the egyptian border after explicitly, john kirby, the nsc, said they shouldn't do that. >> it's the last place, michael steele, the gazans have to go, to get away from the battle. but i'm looking at the words, and i'd love for you, gene,

anybody else that wants to talk about this, to just talk about how significant it is that joe biden last night said what netanyahu has done is, quote, over the top in gaza. there are a lot of people suffering and dying in gaza. quote, "it's got to stop." again, lost in all of the noise of yesterday, actual policy about joe biden saying publicly what he's been saying privately for a very long time. that netanyahu has overreached, has gone over the top, and there are a lot of people in gaza that are suffering because of netanyahu's excesses. >> yeah. i think it is a significant moment, joe. i think on a number of levels, joe biden, who has a long relationship with israel, which we all know, has a relationship

with netanyahu, both as vice president and president, has now gotten to a point where i think he recognizes in netanyahu an intractability, an inability to think about moving beyond where he is in the course of his battle. yes, we get, you know, in the aftermath, the immediate aftermath of october 7th, there is a response. there will be a response. we understand that. but there comes a point where the tide in this turns, where you then try to move to a space where it's resolved. this is not an ongoing battle. you know, that this goes on in perpetuity. there is an end point here. what i think the president is finally reaching is the end point. okay, you made the point. we know the advantages you have in pressing the case. we all want to deal with hamas, and we will deal with hamas together. but we cannot lose sight of the humanitarian impact your efforts

to get rid of hamas are having on the wider population. and i think not just president biden but a number of our allies have been stressing this privately, and i think you're going to see more public pressure rise up. not to mention how the folks in israel feel. israelis themselves are very, very concerned about this continued, relentless sort of almost dogged hunting down of palestinian people. you know, as lemire noted, they're in a space where, you know, this is supposed to be a safe haven. how many times have there been safe havens carved out in this battle, joe, where netanyahu has pursued into those spaces? so i think the president is now making it very clear. he is drawing that line, beginning to draw that line. i think a lot of us would like to see him draw it more boldly and more clearly with netanyahu to say, this far and no further.

now, the question on the other side of that, as you know, is, okay, so what are the consequences for the administration? how do they eventually get that to happen? >> yeah, gene. >> absolutely. i think the timing of biden's remarks is significant because netanyahu, just a day or so ago, gave a defiant speech, essentially saying, we will never stop. we are not going to stop what we are doing until, you know, hamas is completely eradicated. that means, or certainly suggests, that that means killing a lot more innocent civilians in gaza. the president showed frustration, exasperation perhaps, and so the question that michael asks is exactly right. given that this is where joe biden's head is right now and where a lot of other people,

including western leaders are, where is the red line? how is the red line enforced? how is israel made to understand that they have gone too far, that they are going too far? that's the big question. i guess i'm waiting to see what the policy follow-up to that reaction will be. >> right. all right. still ahead on "morning joe," who is the least trusted man in washington? our next guest says that title belongs to mark meadows. we'll talk about what robert draper calls the talented mr. ripley esque projectry of donald trump's former chief of staff. later this morning, award winning actors jon cryer and molly ringwald will be our guests to discuss their new shows. before we go to break, willie, what do you have planned for "sunday today?" >> i think you guys are going to

like this one as fans of "schitt's creek," of all the mocumentaries, the great catherine o'haa is my guest. >> she came to the 30/50 summit last year. she is amazing. >> incredible. as hilarious as you want her to be, funny, smart, thoughtful. she has a new movie, "argyle," with a star-studded cast. we talk about "second city" at 18 years old in toronto, to "beetlejuice," "home alone," "best in show," and "schitt's creek." we talk about the celebrity who inspired that bizarre accent on hers on that show. "sunday today" with catherine o'hara this weekend. we'll be right back here on "morning joe."

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"the new york times" magazine charts the career path of former white house chief of staff mark meadows and how he became, quote, the least trusted man in washington. contributing writer robert draper spoke with real estate agents who worked with meadows before he turned to politics and with some of his colleagues after meadows switched to politics. draper says, quote, the recurrent feature of meadows' career assent is that he persuaded people to trust him, leaving them later to regret having done so. robert draper joins us now. this is so interesting. i saw that happen. i'm not going to say elijah cummings regretted befriending mark meadows because he had love in his heart for everybody, but i saw him in real time just, i don't know if i can think of a less crass way of putting it, but he just turns on people to

his own necessity. crying and claiming he's not a racist and using elijah in ways that i thought was so, so inappropriate. and, yet, he ascended to the highest office of the land, working alongside the president. what's the deal with this guy? >> yeah, it's straight out of a flannery 'connor short story. in his mid 20s he showed up to highlands, north carolina, with his wife. he'd been a customer service salesman for the tampa electric company. opened up a sandwich shop in highlands. then just kind of, year after year, began conning people and moving his way up in doing so. he began with the sweet little old christian lady who helped him get a job, helped him with money, and then, ultimately, moved on and up, leaving her feeling very embittered.

that behavior continued until he became a member of congress, where he showed this propensity for telling people things they wanted to hear, not because he was a chronic people pleaser but for self-advancement. it worked. in a decade's time in washington, he rose from being this obscure, first-term congressman to being the white house chief of staff, and the very last chief of staff for donald trump. but it's a story of duplicity and a story of an artful dodger who now found himself in a box, which is the box of being under indictment in fulton county and perhaps having to testify in the federal january 6th trial. >> robert, good morning. you led me to my question, which is, look where it's gotten him, trying to please everybody at once. he finds himself in trouble and finds himself as one of the primary sources of evidence against donald trump in some of these cases. though he wouldn't testify, he turned over tons of texts and emails to the january 6th committee. what is your sense, i know he wouldn't talk to you for this

piece, but your sense of where he is now, how he is doing now? >> yeah, well, how he's doing is he's well-off. he has a job paying him roughly $850,000 a year at this maga sort of thinktank called the conservative partnership institute. it is unclear what he does for all that money, but he has a $1.6 million lake house in south carolina. in a broader sense, willie, i mean, he's in deep trouble. i mean, he received an immunity order to testify before the federal grand jury, and it seems pretty evident to me that the game that meadows is playing here is that he wants to stay out of trouble. he doesn't want to be prosecuted by jack smith's team. at the same time, he doesn't want to take the witness stand, so he provided a road map during six hours of testimony he gave to the grand jury on march 23rd of last year. my suspicion is that smith's team is going to want him on the

witness stand. because he was the man in the room next to donald trump when trump apparently knew that he had lost the election but proceeded to try to overturn it anyway. of course, if smith's team puts meadows on the witness stand, they're putting a habitual liar on the stand, meaning he could be eviscerated on cross-examination. the problem meadows has is now jack smith's problem, too. >> among the many virtues of your work, you have deep reporting, wonderful writing, and a historical perspective. you've been around the block a few times. so i always take note when i read that you said that -- having seen meadows' charm offensive in the past, you were struck by how deeply he is loathed by many people who once admired him. for something to strike you, given that there are a lot of loathsome people in washington, right, i'm curious, where does he rank in the -- on the scale

of loathsomeness in your experience, in terms of the other people who he -- that this happens in washington, people betray their trusts and they come to be loathed by those who once loved them. like, where is he in the pantheon of greatly once loved and now loathed political figures you've covered? >> in a class of his own is the answer, john. over 30 years of reporting on politics, i have never encountered someone who is so loathed. a lot of people feel that way because they felt lied and swindled by him. many of these people, i should add, are, like himself, conservative christians who took him at his word, who saw him as cut from the same religious cloth as it were, as they are, and then found that he was a shyster. so many of them remain embittered by meadows, they simply didn't want to talk to

me, as if it was an act of self-defilement to revisit those years. he really is -- obviously, to say anyone is the least trusted man in washington, i mean, that's a distinction you have to work hard to earn. let's say, mark meadows is a hard working man. >> yes, he is. he really works very hard. it is a good point. the new piece is online now for "the new york times" magazine. contributing writer at "new york times" magazine, robert draper. thank you very much for being on this morning. also yesterday, the senate voted to open debate on a foreign aid bill yesterday, just one day after voting down the bipartisan national security package that included aid for israel and ukraine. 17 republicans joined democrats in voting for the bill in total. 13 republicans voted against the original package that included border security provisions they demanded, voted for an aid package president biden asked for months ago. the senate will now undergo 30

hours of debate on amendments, which the senate republican conference says will be related to ukraine and the border. gene, in your new piece for "the washington post," it's entitled, "move aside, jonathan and mcconnell, trump is now in charge." actually, it's a great point. in "morning mika," i call these republicans maga munchkins. donald trump is the wizard of oz, and he is in charge, though he is not president, over these people who, there seems to be no bottom in terms of how they will demean themselves and this country and our process. >> yeah. i stopped looking for a bottom a long time ago. donald trump not only is the wizard of oz, but he is the speaker of the house and the senate minority leader. they respond to him.

they don't respond to mike johnson. they're not responding to mitch mcconnell, which is amazing. the way the border/ukraine package collapsed, of course, it was always going to have these problems in the house, but the way it collapsed in the senate, the way that senators who support it, who in their hearts supported that deal and recognized it was a once in a lifetime deal they were getting on immigration, and that ukraine desperately needs this money and it really should be passed, and because donald trump told them not to pass it, not to do it, they abandoned what they knew to be right. they abandoned mitch mcconnell, which doesn't usually happen. he has been, you know, as you know, one of the operators in

washington for a long, long time, but he's not in control of his senate republican caucus right now. donald trump is. and so heaven help us all. how does congress get anything done, including fund a new government, because we're up against another deadline in march, how do they get anything done with donald trump calling the shots? >> yeah, michael steele, i mean, this is trump's power on full display. he killed those bills. we had elise stefanik openly auditioning to be his vice president in an interview last night, saying she disagreed with what mike pence did. if she had been vp in the moment, she wouldn't have certified joe biden's victory. and we see that trump is well on his way after a couple more caucus wins this week to securing the gop nomination. weigh in on that. as a second part, do you think there is any scenario here where this foreign aid bill, which now there is some optimism might get through the senate, but could it possibly get through the house of representatives when we know that mike johnson is going to do

what donald trump wants, and donald trump doesn't seem inclined to help ukraine? >> yeah, there's nothing like slathering yourself all over donald trump. elise, really, find some dignity. seriously, just stop it. find some dignity for once, for god's sake. >> slathering. >> you know, you get to a point, and you get sick and tired of hearing this crap from these people. if i was vice president, i would haveviolated my constitutional oath. okay, okay, so you won't be vice president. the reality is, that's the problem inside this caucus, this body, this thing that donald trump has created in his own image. yeah, you know, you have them find the moments where the bright light comes on and they say, we need to do the right thing for the country, and donald trump goes, no, we're not doing the right thing for the country, and they go, okay, and

slink off to their corners and wait for the next instruction. that's been their game. there does come a point, and i think with respect to the foreign aid bill, that this carveout will allow them at least to get this on the floor. the reality -- the harsh reality, jonathan, is that you've got to deal with what's happening in ukraine right now. irrespective of the maga heads that are all up putin's behind, the reality of it is, there's nato alliances. there is the reality of bringing that war here, meaning our troops at some point having to go fight there. so how do you begin to sort of stem that particular tide? this foreign aid bill has to get addressed. yeah, you know, you take it off the table with the border, but i think the reality there is more pressing at the moment because you have zelenskyy out there doing his thing. zelenskyy is trying to get it done, so they have to back up

there. the other part of this, though, is the house. i think, as crazy as it seems, there's going to be a lot of noise on this, but, you know, i think hillary clinton is right in her interview on msnbc the other day. that, yeah, i think the house will come around on this. the votes will be there. it'll be close, but i think, again, the realities of ukraine will push this thing forward in a way that it gets done. >> adrienne elrod, there was -- i've never seen a freak out like last night in a long time. let's put it that way. democratic freak out. everyone is so upset about these comments about joe biden's age, and he came out and he was okay. yes, he misspoke, but you completely understood where his heart was. he was really pissed off. >> sure. >> i personally -- i don't know. i'm feeling kind of mindful about this.

i'm not as freaked out as anyone else is. especially when the alternative is a known entity and a complete wrecking ball who seems to be overseeing a ship of fools in the republican house, who will do anything for him, no matter how demeaning or self-destructive. so i'm curious, you know, how you think the white house ought to play this moving forward. i have a couple sub questions to that. i think, you know, they're holding him in tight for bigger momens because he's dealing with such big issues right now. >> correct. >> do they let biden out a little bit? he goes out to america and talks to people, but do they have him do more public-facing events? does he reconsider the super bowl interview? he will, you know, have his moments. he slurs his words. he stutters. i think people know who he is.

>> yup. >> the alternative is completely different. i wonder if we need to see that more. >> yeah, mika, you just nailed it, per the usual. i mean, the contrast could not be more clear between donald trump and joe biden. by the way, let's not forget, donald trump confused nikki haley and nancy pelosi. he had this bizarre rant recently about magnets. you know, he forgot what town he was in in iowa. the gaffes that donald trump has are far more egregious and, frankly, alarming than anything president biden says. we've got to make it clear and remember that, number one, the interview that he did with special counsel hur was the day after -- october 8th, so the day after israel was invaded. there was a lot going on. also, he was so angry last night, rightfully so, that his son, beau biden, was mentioned in this report. he was asked, do you remember the date your son passed dealin dealing with so much, and we have to keep that in

perspective. joe biden is at his best, i think, when he is out there talking to people, when he is pressing the flesh, having conversations with voters, going to their states, you know, on their turf. i think you'll see more and more of that. i think it's also important, you know, we're talking about some of the major news he made last night, that he is really holding netanyahu's feet to the fire, that he is making changes in terms of his policy toward handling netanyahu and handling the situation in israel. you know, that's the real news that came out of last night. you know, someone's opinion about, you know -- hur's opinion in the special counsel report, that's one guy's ridiculous opinion who, by the way, is a trump acolyte. let's keep all of this in perspective. the white house is doing a good job, and you'll see joe biden do what he does best, talk to the american people. >> adrienne elrod, thank you, once again, for coming on this morning. and eugene robinson, we'll be reading your latest piece online for "the washington post." and michael steele, we will be

watching "the weekend" saturday and sunday mornings, 8:00 to 10:00 a.m., right here on msnbc. it's good to have you with us here on "morning joe," as well. thank you, michael. coming up, tonight marks the anniversary of what's been called the first seismic event in american television history. when some 70 million viewers across the country tuned in for the beatles' tv debut on the "ed sullivan show." we'll talk about the band's iconic performance and what still stands out 60 years later. "morning joe" is back in a moment.

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♪♪ it was a watershed moment in music and pop culture history, the beatles performing on the "ed sullivan show" exactly 60 years ago today, february 9, 1964. the live performance drew a record audience of 37 million viewers. it also launched america's beatlemania, and had a major influence on american culture and rock 'n' roll with tom petty later saying, quote, culturally it changed everything in america, and probably the world. joining us now, michael tomasky,

the editor of the style section, john windolph, and kennett womack who is one of the world's leading authorities on the beatles and their enduring cultural influence. >> michael, i'll start with you because you said you weren't going to do the beatles '60th anniversary being on "the ed sullivan show." how remarkable that 60 years later, a guy that's an editor for a political magazine and so much more, of course, would be stopped in his tracks looking at the date going, oh my gosh. we're coming up on the 60th anniversary of a four-piece band playing on a variety show in america in the mid-'60s. talk about just the lasting impact. >> well, here we are 60 years later, still talking about this, and still talking about, you know, as you said, what a watershed moment. it was just a stick of dynamite in the culture that just

really -- >> yeah. >> -- really changed everything. i guess the way i would put it about them was this. they were just so thoroughly different from anything anybody had seen before in the way they acted, in the way they looked, in the way they talked and of course, in the way they sounded. i, in advance of coming on here, joe, i pulled a couple of old books off my shelf to look a couple of things up. it's instructive i think to look at the number one single and number one album in the united states before the beatles exploded on the scene. the number one single was a bobby vinton song called "there i've said it again" which was actually a cover of a 1940s, like, crooner song that bobby vinton did in the same style as vaughn monroe and his moonlighters, i think they were called. there was nothing edgy at all about it. it was just a little piece of froth. the number one album was "the singing nun" if you remember the singing nun called dominique.

this was music that really belonged to an earlier era, and then the beatles come along and just bam, knock them off the charts for weeks and weeks to the point they had all top five singles in early april, i think it was, and all the groups followed and everything changed. >> jim, i'll ask you just about this because we talked about it a little bit earlier today on the show. it's, like, this is a musical event. it's the beginning in some ways, the beginning of youth culture. it's a seismic thing. often things happen in larger movements, but this is a very precise thing. elvis did his performance in '56. they wouldn't show him below the waist it was so threatening to people. by the time the beatles get here, you have this mania. now it seems innocent to watch them. they were a symbol of youthful abandon and sex and everything. talk about the way in which the musical phenomenon, this was the

birth of the teen -- the global teenager. we didn't have teenagers before the beatles and after this you do. >> that's really true, and now the sheer numbers of people who watched them, 73 million people watched the broadcast which was on from 8:00 to 9:00 p.m. on cbs, and that's as many people who watch tv at one time since the kennedy assassination, but that was over three networks so that was covered all day long. >> right. >> this is the first time an entertainment show, so many people watching something all at once. they started off with "all my love" which was kind of jaunty, and then they did a ballad and then they did, "she loves you" after that, and they were playing with the teenagers and were careful not to alienate the adults in the audience. >> it's such a phenomenon, that moment, and the fact 60 years later we're still talking about it speaks to how unduring this

-- enduring this all is, and still talking about that excitement, new people are discovering the beatles each and every day. it's everyone since. talk about why you think that is. >> i think that this is as close as we can get to a miracle in popular culture at this moment, and i think this miracle is made possible because they made good on it, right? they didn't just come here and be the subject of all this fuss and adulation. what they did was follow up with one landmark record after another. we're only five years from the band, but in that time, we'll get "rubber soul," "revolver," "abbey road." who actually does that? >> the beatles did it, and she's extraordinarily remarkable, but michael, i was alluding to what paul mccartney had said when, you know, they're basically in press conference accused of not being good, and they basically were not. why are you here? george harrison saying,yeah.

we're basically crummy musicians. paul mccartney said, we can't play. we can't sing. we're just having a good time. again, always sort of the classic understatement. they knew how to keep their heads down as they were about to change the world. >> they did, and they were pretty funny. they were pretty witty and charismatic, and, you know, they had a good sense of perspective on things, and, you know, i think a lot of that has to do with coming from liverpool, things i've read that, you know, if you got pretentious in liverpool, you got it shoved back in your face, but -- >> yeah. >> the talent was so there. i mean, i remember, joe, i took up guitar when i was about 15. i went out and bought a bunch of songbooks, bob dylan, the stones, and everybody i liked. bob dylan, and i would say i could probably play that. i would look at the beatles song and i'm, like, there's 10, 12 chords in these songs.

they had the charisma, but they also had the talent. >> more chords and still a beautiful, simple melody going through all the songs. kenneth, you talked about what they did musically. culturally though, again, it continues from '64 until their breakup in '70, and again, just always one step ahead of everybody musically and culturally it seemed. if the beatles grew, you know, the beatles had long hair, kids had long hair six months later. if they grew mustaches, you know, for sergeant pepper or, you know, everybody was just -- it just continued throughout the '60s and still, we still the impact today. >> we really do, and what's beautiful about that impact is it's almost exactly the same, right? so kids discovered the beatles late 1963. of course, january, 1964 on the

wings of an amazing song, "i want to hold your hand." that is the same thing that happens today. a kid will hear the beatles. maybe it's spotify, maybe it's on youtube. maybe it's on television, right? and the world changes. suddenly there's technicolor, and i remember hearing them and thinking, where have these songs been? >> jim, kenneth said the word, that the triggering word, wings which allows me -- which of course, is what jim and i love of all things. paul mccartney, linda mccartney, wings. i just have to say, and we have been talking about this for some time. we're also coming up on an anniversary of what i think is the best post-beatles album, the 50th anniversary right now. >> that's when paul really hit his stride.

>> god, we're old. >> yeah. hit his stride and heilemann, made worse under the circumstances. >> yeah, you know, they went down to africa to do that record and all kinds of stuff. the nightmare of producing that record. it is just an incredible thing, and i think it's just a, you know, the legacy of those guys is extraordinary, and it is just in our current context, we talked earlier about, you know, all these people like bruce springsteen and tom petty and their lives were changed when they saw the beatles, and we talk about how big taylor swift is right now. enormous, maybe the most influential cultural figure in the world right now. >> oh yeah. >> and yet just when you look at some of these images from back then, '64, the world was different, but man, she still is -- she is still small in her impact in the world right now compared to just how big these

guys were. >> yeah. and she's massive, and of course, there have been so many acts in bands who were supposed to be the next beatles. one of my favorite lines comes from george martin who wrote the liner notes on a beatles album in '78, beatles live at the hollywood bowl where at that point, the bay city rollers were going to be the next big thing. maybe it was in '77, and george martin said his daughter came up to him and asked, hey, daddy. were the beatles as big as the bay city rollers and george martin didn't even bother trying to get into it. he said, probably not, dear. probably not. michael, jim, and kenneth, thank you so much. our third hour of "morning joe" starts right now. remember how a while back, they found classified documents at joe biden's house and merrick garland appointed a special prosecutor to into it?

well, today we got the results of an investigation in a report and the special counsel will not seek criminal charges against president biden. so if you were in a fantasy league for presidential indictments, it's still trump, 91, ever other president ever, zero. you got that? can you clean that up? [ cheers and applause ] >> good morning, and welcome to "morning joe." it is friday, february 9th. good to have you joe, willie, and me here together. joining us, jonathan lemire. nbc news national affairs analyst john heilemann, former u.s. attorney and msnbc contributor chuck rosenberg, and nbc news justice and intelligence correspondent ken dilanian is with us this morning. we have a lot going on. we'll start with the special counsel investigating president biden for his handling of classified documents.

they'll not bring charges against the president. that's the conclusion. in the report released yesterday, quote, our investigation uncovered evidence that president biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen. he goes on to write that the president's actions, quote, present serious risks to national security, but then later in the report herr conceded that the evidence does not establish mr. biden's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. he also said that the president could also portray himself at trial as an elderly man with a poor memory who would be simp -- sympathetic to a jury. >> a neurologist and a lawyer. >> let me just finish, but i agree. it's -- >> but we kind of need to stop there. a neurologist? >> you're talking about herr.

>> herr from trump university. i'm sorry. i've got to stop right here. i know we want to go on and finish this report, but i've just got to start. ken -- ken dilanian, so bizarre, and there are so many people that immediately heard this -- these random conclusions, irrelevant conclusions, politically charged trumplike ramblings who first of all, wondered why in the world he would put that in the report. his neurological assessment of joe biden, and secondly, why merrick garland would release garbage like that in the justice department report. can you give us any insight? because it sure sounds like james comey in 2016 who july couldn't indict hillary clinton

legally so he decided to hold a press conference and indict her politically. >> joe, i understand where you are coming from in that. i think a lot of people feel that way, but let me give you the explanation that i have heard from justice department officials and from insight into why that was in there, though it did seem gratuitous to a lot of people. if bob herr is saying i have evidence that joe biden willfully retained classified information, then, in fact, he didn't just find those documents in 2022 as we all thought. he actually found them in 2017, and he's recorded saying that to his ghostwriter. so why isn't he charging him? he has to explain that. his explanation is joe biden said he didn't remember. he was recorded saying i found classified documents in my house in virginia to the ghostwriter. he's recorded disclosing classified information to the ghostwriter according to this report, but he says he forgot that. so rob herr has to explain that, in fact, the larger context here is that mr. biden has forgotten

a lot of things. he forgot the dates that he was vice president according to this report. he forgot at one point during the interview when his son died. he forgot a key figure in the afghanistan debate that he cared a lot about, which side of the debate he was on, and so rob herr felt like he had no choice i'm told, but to lay out in detail the faults he found with joe biden's memory and explain how that would be perceived in front of a jury because he's going to have to go up to congress and justify to a bunch of angry republicans why donald trump is being charged with retaining classified documents, but joe biden isn't. so that's the expla police station. a lot of people might not like it and a lot of people thought he went too far, and i've heard from people who speak for mr. biden who say, how did rob herr evaluate his memory in a five-hour interview? i have been with him for years, and i think his memory is a lot better than that. that's a fair point, and rob herr will have to go to congress

and answer for this, but that's the explanation. >> it's so gratuitous, and something else that jumped out, is again, the word willfully, that he willfully retained the documents and then you go a couple of hundred payments in, it's natural to assume he put the afghanistan documents in the box on purpose and knew they were there. quote, there is, in fact, a shortage of evidence on these points. so 200 pages earlier, he goes, he willfully and then 200 pages later says, well, we actually don't have evidence on that point, and he did that a couple of times throughout here. it certainly seemed like a politically charged document. >> and poorly written. >> it used to be pre-james comey, you would either indict somebody or you wouldn't indict somebody. now in the political sphere, again, james comey can't indict hillary clinton during a presidential election legally so what does he do? he holds a press conference and indicts her politically.

the same thing happened yesterday. he didn't have any evidence. there's so many -- and we're going to go through these. it is the one thing that he did right. he talked about the distinctions between donald trump who lied. stole, lied, obstructed, lied again, had his lawyers lie under oath, continued to lie, continued to hide, continued to obstruct, told his employees to lie, on and on and on. joe biden turned it over immediately. of course, i don't expect liars on other news channels or liars in other parties to actually tell the truth. i don't expect them to do that, but that is -- there are those clear distinctions, but even here though, john heilemann, you have a situation where he says time and time again, we don't really have any evidence that he willfully took and retained this evidence. >> right. well, first, joe, i'll say that literally before we -- before we started the program i was saying that chuck rosenberg sitting

here, can you explain to me how this is different from what jim comey did in 2016? it was his first session in the election, in july of 2016. when he did what you just said. i'm old enough to you remember like you, when prosecutors either issued an indictment or an ascension, and declined to prosecute. the difference between back in those days when we had the independent counsel statute and what we have now, and the special counsels and what the regulations are, and what they have to do. i will say there's to doubt in my mind that this special prosecutor could have written the same report without using these words. elderly man with a poor memory. i'm, you know, like you, i'm a

simple country journalist. i could find -- >> hey, hey, hey. john -- >> i could find a way to say this without saying something like that. >> i'm a simple country lawyer and i know, what should the headline for this report be? not indicted. >> not guilty. >> no evidence to indict him. it's not there, and the clear difference is as he wrote between trump and biden, that should be -- >> i would have thought, joe. >> hold on, john. do you think this guy is so naive? do you think this guy is so stupid? do you think this guy is so clueless that he didn't know by putting words in that donald trump would love for him to put in there, that that wasn't going to be the headline for the "new york post"? that that wouldn't be on every -- you think he knew? he's a trumper who knew.

>> right. >> why in the world would the justice department allow that dicta to be in there? it's gratuitous. he knows it's gratuitous, and it was bad faith. it was bad faith that he did it, and it was even -- it was even worse judgment that the justice department allowed that garbage to be released. >> right. that's not raising the second point. i mean, i'm continually stunned by people who i think should know better in washington, d.c. who turn out to be just that naive or just that stupid. i've never met this man. i'm not going to impugn his motives and i've never spoken about it, but i think you, probably you, i, jonathan lemire, willie geist and chuck rosenberg at least would have known if you wrote that, elderly man with poor memory, that would end up on the front of the "new york post" and echoed in advertising out of donald trump's mouth, et cetera, et

cetera. we all know that. i don't know if the special counsel did know that. i do think that you've raised a really fundamental question and it's a question that, you know, what i hear from inside the biden administration is a lot of the fury last night was directed -- it made me more at merrick garland. >> for good reason. >> at herr, because of the fact that they have always thought that this special counsel was unnecessary, but the facts here suggest that they may be wrong about that, and since the things that biden was found to have done here, and some of the evidence that the special counsel brought to bear just on terms and how badly some of these classified documents were handled, garland may have been write to appoint the special counsel to look into this for a variety of reasons, but they have been mad at him since then, and now they're really mad at him because the question of why you would allow this report to come out with this language in it, that does rest in merrick garland's hands. that does rest in his lap to

speak, and that's where i think the buck may stop here when we ultimately talk about who's responsible. >> it is so -- it is such a repeat of james comey, and the fact, you know, james comey writing the letter he did ten days beforehand, acting like yeah, i'm just playing it down the middle. really? and for merrick garland to not learn from 2016 that actually when you are involved politically, when you are involved in a political situation like this, that you don't actually take care to be careful at what you do. >> well -- >> he didn't. comey didn't. just like comey, herr decided i want to put myself in the middle of this campaign. >> yeah. well, to your point, willie, herr wrote that unlike the evidence involving mr. biden, the allegations set forth in the indictment of mr. trump, if proven would present serious

aggravating facts. herr continues, quote, most notably after being given multiple chances to return classified documents and avoid prosecution, mr. trump allegedly did the opposite. according to the indictment, he not only refused to return the documents for many months, but he also obstructed justice by enlisting others to destroy evidence and then lie about it. >> whereas biden said, turn it over. >> this is the clear information that should be important to the american people in reading this, but it's clouded by all this information that this guy put in. he included about the president's age that seems very distracting. in many ways, the conclusion is the most important thing here, and when you think about the alternative, which he mentions in this, donald trump and what he did with documents, you would think that's where the outcry would be. >> that's exactly right. you nailed both of the important

points. the first line of the executive summary before herr even gets into the report reads like this. we conclude that no criminal charges are warranted in this manner. he goes on to say, and this isn't just because of a department of justice policy that you shouldn't prosecute a president. all of those things. no charges are warranted, and then as you just outlined, he goes in some detail to lay out how biden's case is different from donald trump's case and all the ways in which joe biden did the right things, that he opened himself up to a voluntary interview, that he agreed to have his home and offices searched, that he did not obstruct justice as donald trump did time and time again, and then chuck rosenberg, the special counsel here peppers in all of his personal observations, his views about joe biden's mental acuity and his ability to recall. obviously joe biden's legal team has come out to rebut all that and to point out that it's wholly inappropriate for any of that to be in here. this is supposed to be a legal

analysis of the case. so when you first read through this, as somebody who's been through some of this, what was your reaction? >> so let me start down a path, willie, that will make me unbelievably unpopular this morning. so number one, under the special counsel regulations, herr, the special counsel, has an obligation -- he shall write a report. he must write a report. if you are writing a report to the attorney general of the united states and you're recommending that someone not be prosecuted, which i think is the right recommendation, then you would tell the attorney general why you think that person ought not to be prosecuted. i was a federal prosecutor for a long time. we assess our witnesses. we assess our cases. we talk about them. we talk about it. we talk about the factors that we think will and will not play in front of a jury. if rob herr's assessment was that mr. biden was sympathetic or that he had a faulty memory,

that is absolutely something you would tell the attorney general in a confidential report. when the report goes from herr to the attorney general, merrick garland, it is a confidential report. then it is up to merrick garland whether or not to release it, in part or in whole. i think this is a flaw in the special counsel regulations. when i was a prosecutor, if i decided a case was not meritorious, i would close it. period, the end. as a special counsel, you can't do that. you must write a report. it doesn't make sense if i'm telling the attorney general of the united states why someone ought not be prosecuted, i wouldn't also tell him exactly why i came to that conclusion. >> so i was speaking to senior biden officials all last night, and they shared a lot of this unhappiness with this report. they do feel like some of the comments were gratuitous. they point out that when mike

pence, another former vice president, who had documents, there was no special counsel. there was no investigation of this magnitude like it was for president biden. they do feel like they made the same comparisons that we are making all morning long. at the same time, they recognize that though legally this is a significant win for the president, it's a relief, politically it's a very damaging day. the president was already for a few days pushing back against it. he had mixed up foreign leaders with their deceased predecessors a couple of different times in recent days. poll after poll shows that his age is his biggest vulnerability. there are questions from democrats about whether he is up for the job, and now this characterization by the special counsel, the details of the things that he forgot are going to be damaging for this president, and president biden, i am told, and reported last night, willie, was furious in particular about the claim that

he forgot when beau biden died. he spoke to some house lawmakers at a retreat privately and cursed out this idea. he said, this is nonsense. this is my son. you can see that anger. that really struck a chord with him, and he felt like he had to respond, and now this is going to be once again, a major political issue. as republicans first of all claim, double standard because trump got indicted and biden didn't. the facts support those conclusions, but they, again, they're going to lean on biden's age even though trump himself has had many misstatements in recent days as well. coming up next, we will get to that point by jonathan. president biden lashing out at the special counsel for raising the death of his son, beau. that moment just ahead when "morning joe" comes right back. k when migraine strikes, you're faced with a choice. accept the trade offs of treating? or push through the pain and symptoms? with ubrelvy, there's another option.

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i know there's some

attention paid to some language in a report about my recollection of events. there's even reference that i don't remember when my son died. how in the hell dare he raise that? frankly when i was asked a question, i thought to myself, it wasn't any of their damn business. i don't need anyone -- i don't need anyone to remind me when he passed away because he passed away. the simple truth is i sat for two days of events going back 40 years at the same time i was managing an international crisis. their task was to make a decision about whether to move forward with charges in this case. that was their decision to make. that's the counsel's decision to make. that's his job. and they decided not to move forward for any extraneous kpen -- commentary they don't know what they're talking about. it has no place in this report. the bottom line is the matter is now closed and we can continue

what i've always focused on, my job of being president of the united states of america. >> i'm well meaning and i'm an elderly man and i know what the hell i'm doing. i put this country back on its feet. my memory is fine. take a look at what i've done since i've become president. nobody thought i could pass any of the things i passed. how did that happen? i guess i forgot what was going on. >> so joe and mika, the president echoing the language in the report when he said, yes, i am a well-meaning and an elderly man, but in a moment that should have been a vindication for him that there are no charges warranted against him, and let's turn the page, the white house obviously as john said, felt the need to rush out there at 8:00 at night from the white house and push back some of the other language, the gratuitous language about his mental acuity. >> look. i think when you look at a very

bad day for president biden and then you compare it to donald trump with 91 counts of sexual assault, fraud, sex with a porn star and everything he says every day, the day that president biden had yesterday is like just another tuesday for donald trump with far worse things that he's putting on the table. whatever. >> it's actually another -- it's tuesday for donald trump without the 91 counts. >> exactly. minus the corruption. >> the judge saying he's guilty of rape. let's bring in democratic member of the house oversight committee, congressman dan goldman of new york. congressman, this seems an awful lot like 2016 and james comey. they can't indict legally clinton legally, so i'm going to indict her politically and hold a press conference and attack her. this language that he used, this

gratuitous language he used, given the sensitivity of the case, he knew it was going to end up on the front page of pro-trump newspapers and he knew it. this is exactly what happened. what's your reaction? >> well, my reaction is there are a number of highly questionable and seemingly partisan and political assessments by the special counsel. first of all, the evidence that president biden knew he had classiied materials while he was a private citizen, and that's important because otherwise he was perfectly -- it was perfectly legal for him to have it. it was so thin, and for him to even conclude he willfully retained i think, is a flawed -- a flawed conclusion. the evidence does not support that. so that's right off the bat that you have this questionable conclusion. then he goes on to do a full

analysis, and while i agree with chuck that the credibility of witnesses matters, the credibility of the potential defendant is something altogether very different, especially when one volunteers for an interview because he's not going to testify. a jury is not going to end up having to analyze joe biden, and especially when you're saying that the charges or the evidence does not meet the charges, that is completely gratuitous and completely unnecessary. my understanding as well, joe, is that during these five hours, president biden went through in great detail, many conversations that he had with various other people from years and years ago. so he cherrypicked a couple of examples -- we don't know. perhaps are in context and perhaps are out of context related to sensitive issues such as his son really to just bash him. just to impugn him, and it is

excessive. it is gratuitous, and the last thing i'll say, joe, is it's wrong. i have had a number of conversations with president biden over the last couple of years, including on october 7th, the day before this interview when i was in israel and he called me, and his mastery and understanding of the geopolitical situation on the ground in israel and in the surrounding region was remarkable. he was recounting to me all the various different things they had done in the first couple of hours of the war. he was completely on top of everything that was going on, and his experience because of his age and his wisdom has been invaluable to this country as we have navigated through the russia/ukraine war and now the middle east. so there is a flip side to the age thing which joe biden has demonstrated very well over the last couple of years. >> congressman, good morning. as we just laid out for the last 20 minutes or so, the headline

is clear out of this report which is that no charges are warranted and that also the distinctions between what president biden did and what former president donald trump did, instructed sitting voluntarily for all of those things. like it or not, all that stuff from the special counsel about the age now is out in the public view. even some democrats cringing because it raises an issue that's been out there. do you have any concerns at all, not just because of what we read in this report, which a lot of people on this show don't think should have been in the report, but do you have concerns right now about president biden's age as it moves toward the general election? >> no. i don't have any concerns, and that's from personal interactions. he's got a terrific team around him. he is very knowledgeable and experienced, and has even recently, completely dominated the republicans. you look at the fiscal responsibility act. he did a fabulous job, and my

understanding is that he was behind the scenes? with because of his experience negotiating over so many different years, he knew exactly where the negotiation was going to go, and he took kevin mccarthy's shirt. i think president biden is incredibly experienced, knowledgeable, wise, and i don't have concerns about his age. remember, the job of the president is to guide our country. it is, you know, not to be a cheerleader for the united states. it is to govern our country, and i think when you see the juxtaposition of how he handled this case, fully cooperating, respecting the rule of law, respecting the independence of the department of justice, and you juxtapose that with donald trump, what you see is someone who really cares about our country and cares about our democracy juxtaposed and opposite to a criminal, to someone who is clearly out for himself, does not believe the law applies to him, and is a

danger to his country, and that's the choice the american people are going to have. coming up, we'll talk about the other big legal headline yesterday, the supreme court case on whether donald trump can be excluded from the primary ballot in colorado. that conversation is next on "morning joe." colorado that conversation is next on "morning joe." (♪♪) there's two things a young man wanna be - a cowboy or a gangster. and a gangster's outta style. i got back to my roots... we come from a long line of cowboys. my grandfather, my great-grandfather, my aunt even rode horses. when i see all of us out here on this ranch, i see how far our legacy can go. (♪♪)

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so chuck rosenberg, the morning was dominated, of course, by the supreme court and they heard oral arguments based on colorado's efforts to take donald trump off the ballot, and it seemed for those of us listening along, from the audio stream provided, that the justices just simply weren't buying it. they were sympathetic to what donald trump's lawyers were saying, and certainly there seems a suggestion that donald trump is going to remain on that ballot. give us your assessment, some of your major takeaways from what was truly a historic day at the court. >> a fascinating day. i kind of nerded out a little

bit on that, jonathan. the colorado voters, the plaintiffs, the ones who brought the case challenging mr. trump's eligibility to be on the ballot had a very tough path to navigate. they had a win on essentially seven or eight questions, including whether mr. trump took an oath that would subject him to the operation of that disqualification provision, whether the presidency is covered by the 14th amendment, removal provision. a whole bunch of questions. so the odds of them winning at outset were relatively small, but i was surprised a little bit by what seemed to be the unanimity of the court, liberal and conservative justices. for instance, justice ketanji brown jackson suggested, i think stated that the 14th amendment post-civil war was not created to give more power to the states

such as colorado, to make determinations about federal elections, but really to constrain the states, and so she thought that the colorado voters' position was flipped, that they were off, that they were wrong, that the intent behind the amendment, again, was to constrain the states and that was a position that elena kagan seemed to embrace, that john roberts seemed to embrace. there are a lot of paths for trump to win and the colorado voters to lose. i was a little surprised by the apparent unanimity. it strikes me that it's going to be a lopsided decision, not as close as some people might have imagined it to be. lots of reasons for that. i find it very interesting. i would be very surprised, jonathan, as i sit here, if mr. trump didn't prevail. >> ken dilanian, "the new york times" headline says, supreme court appears set to rule that states can't disqualify trump,

and the headline on "the wall street journal," trump ballot spot appears safe. do you agree from what you heard yesterday? >> yeah, 100%. i think chuck got it completely right. it's really -- it's so interesting listening to the liberal justices because, you know, it's clearly against their partisan interests to argue the way they were, and to see it the way they did. so it's a lesson for us all, right? be intellectually honest, and when elena kagan spoke first, i remember the moment. she took the air out of the balloon of people who want to see donald trump excluded from the ballot. does it make sense that one state could decide this for the rest of the nation? and, you know, then she went on to sort of argue and explain why she thought the 14th amendment didn't say what the plaintiffs were saying it said, and ketanji brown jackson said the presidency is not one of the lists of office in that

provision so it would be excluded. it was a fascinating and interesting day reading the text of the constitution and learning about the intent of the people who wrote the 14th amendment. at the end of the day, if people want to get rid of donald trump, they're going to have to vote against him. he's not going to be excluded from the ballot. coming up, 60 years ago today, the beatles performed on "the ed sullivan show" and changed music in the world forever. we'll talk about that next on "morning joe." we'll talk about "morning joe." ♪♪ whoo! ♪♪ light work! ♪♪ next victims. ♪♪ you ready for this? ♪pump up the jam pump it up♪ you founded your kayak company because you love the ocean-

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60 years ago today, this happened. >> ladies and gentlemen, the beatles! [ cheers and applause ] >> one, two, three, four. ♪♪ ♪ tomorrow, i'll miss you ♪ ♪ remember, i'll always ♪

♪♪ [ cheers and applause ] ♪♪ ♪ and i'll send all my loving to you ♪ >> that is amazing. >> 60 years ago. >> 60 years? >> 60 years ago, and i will tell you my parents were young. 20- somethings when they watched that, and just shocked telling me they were just absolutely shocked by what they saw. i know billy graham stayed home from church that night. he heard that it was going to be such a big event, and i guess john heilemann's so concerned about it. so it would be easy to say, well, who would have guessed that these four guys from liverpool playing on "the ed sullivan show" on a sunday night in february would have changed music and culture and the world we live in?

but it did. >> yep. i mean, an audience that might, joe, almost as big -- almost as big as the viewers from "way too early" for jonathan lemire, 73 million people. they did a bunch of them. they did "all my loving," they took a break and came back and sang five songs. >> chrissy hine from the pretenders. billy joel, and tom petty. you think of that generation of people who shaped rock 'n' roll. they all say the same thing. the people i just mentioned and you could make a list five times that long. they all say, they watched the beatles that night and it changed their life.

the world shifted on its axis and this is what they were going to do. something new was being born. not just a new kind of music, but this was the moment when the american teenager was born. this was the moment when the youth culture, born that night. there's almost -- i mean, you can't pin it to one single thing ever in these situations, right? these are large movements, but in a rare circumstance in which that performance by that band at that moment, you can basically say that was where a lot of what the modern world is now, in culture. >> and there were two events, willie, that changed different parts of america, different parts of american culture, american politics three months before that. just three months before that was the assassination of jfk, which changed american politics forever, and so many other things for all it seems for the worse. three months later, you have the beatles there on "ed sullivan,"

and you talk to any musician, you talk to any leader, young person who became a leader in the later generation, you know, the chances are very good they'll tell you that they were watching that night and it really did. it shifted youth culture and later, american culture on its axis that night. >> yeah, john. you have to underline that number that john just said. 73 million viewers. that was in a country at the time of, like, 180 or 190 million people. you can do the math. that's absolutely incredible. you're both right. you listen to any rock star of the last 60 years now, and they will tell you that that night, february 9, 1964, was, like, a lightning bolt that came down and struck them and said, okay. the culture's different now and i want to be that. i want to be some version of that. also, joe, we always talk about the big moments. two days earlier, february 7th, the beatles arrive at jfk, and i think -- >> my god.

>> you look now we have such access to celebrities. we have such access to stars. they film themselves on tiktok eating breakfast and all of that, that just the very sight of these guys who were in some ways mythological, getting off a plane at jfk, brought out thousands of fans and then had this famous press conference at the plaza. it was a different time in culture that to lay eyes on these guys was thrilling, and it really was, joe, i think, a couple of days that changed not just american culture, but global culture. coming up, a preview of super bowl running back emmett smith, who knows his way around the super bowl, will be our guest next on "morning joe." bowl, will be our "morning joe."

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how much was the ticket? >> i got off with a warning. >> did you cry and tell him that your mom died? that's what i do. come on. where's the victory smile? >> my victory smile is in hibernation because we have an issue named trey. >> how is trey the issue? >> your fiance got me off. out. he got me out of the ticket. >> that bastard. >> that was a scene from the new nbc sitcom "extended family." the show follows a divorced couple, jim and julia, who continue to raise their kids at their family home, but the pair faces an unexpected twist when julia falls in love with trey, who owns jim's favorite sports team, the boston celtics. the show's executive producer john crier joins us now. where did this concept come

from? >> it came from life, mika. >> there you go. it's inspired by the man who owns the boston celtics. he and his wife share an apartment with her ex-husband george. they have somehow managed to remain the best of friends despite their divorce. what drew me to the show was that they've managed to retain that wonderful bit of friendship that brought them together in the first place for the sake of their kids. so we're hoping that it's kind of an out of the box divorce that people can fall in love with. >> i'm just curious what this show you think does to the whole concept of divorce being so negative. there are a lot of couples that coparent that remain friends who are divorced.

i wonder if there is, i guess, an attempt here or a focus on looking at that kind of relationship and not always in the most negative way? >> yes. obviously divorce can be brutal and it's very tough on people. we're not trying to make light of that. but we are saying, you know, you can find positives in any new phase of your life and that's what we're trying to do. obviously this is a very specific situation. not everybody's ex-wife marries the owner of their favorite sports team. i mean, i'm sure it happens, but it's fairly rare. >> was the owner of the celtics part of this? talk to us about this process.

>> they absolutely do. wick and amelia and george absolutely chime in on the show. george gear, the man who my character's based on is in the writers room all the time. they come up with story ideas. at one point george promised a friend he would help him get into their kids' school, and george realized he forgot and had to call his ex-wife to come in and save the day. we have an episode about that. it's about the bonds of friendship that still keep them together. >> here's an image from the show demonstrating the challenges of coparenting. >> what's up? >> can i have a sleepover? >> i'm off duty. that's up to your mom. >> i texted her, but her do not disturb is on. >> that's okay.

your mom has entrusted full responsibility to me. as your future stepdad, i say, commence the sleepover. >> thank you, trey. >> sleep overs are the best. >> you're doing a sleepover without any data. you don't know how many kids are coming. >> i need some data. how many kids are coming? >> just katie, the katie i brought to your suite at the lakers game. >> i love that katie. do you know that katie, jim? >> i do. i've met her conservatively 9,000 times. >> first of all, why are you dressed like that. tell us what that's like each and every day? >> he just dresses like that all the time. >> dresses like a revolutionary war hero. they reenact revolutionary war

scenes. the cast is donald faison and abigail spencer. she'd be like trudging along the picket line, like my show is the number one show on earth. it was as surprising to her as it was to everybody. >> extended family airs tuesdays at 8:30 p.m. on nbc and streams on peacock the next day. john crier thank you very much for coming on the show. molly ringwald will be joining us later this hour to talk about her new project as well. we're going to roll right into it. exactly the top of the hour, the fourth hour of "morning joe" on a friday.

it's 6 a.m. on the west coast, 9 a.m. in the east. president biden last night addressed the special counsel report that cleared him of any criminal charges for mishandle ing the classified documents, but the politically charged language in the report is raising more concerns about the president's age. peter alexander has the details. >> reporter: president biden angry and defiant. >> my memory is fine. >> reporter: in an evening news conference, the president responding directly to special counsel robert hur's report on his handling of classified documents. it included a blistering assessment of the 81-year-old's age and what the report called his diminished faculties in advancing age. the president slamming hur's assessment that he did not remember when his son beau died. >> how in the hell dare he raise that. i don't need anyone to remind me

when he passed away. >> reporter: the remarks coming hours after the special counsel said the investigation uncovered evidence that president biden disclosed classified materials after his vice president, but said no criminal charges are warranted, adding the jury would likely see the president as a sympathetic, well-meaning and elderly man. >> i'm an elderly man. i know what the hell i'm doing. >> reporter: the president confusing mexico and egypt in discussing gaza. >> the president of mexico, sisi, did not want to open the gate. this assertion is not only misleading, but just plain wrong. >> reporter: prosecutors say these photos show classified

documents improperly stored in a badly damaged box near a collapsed dog crate in the president's delaware garage. a separate counsel is investigating former president trump's mishandling of classified information found at his mar-a-lago estate. former president trump is blasting the lack of prosecution of president biden, calling it a two-tiered system of justice. but there are clear differences. president biden cooperated with the investigation, while mr. trump allegedly did the opposite enlisting others to destroy evidence and then to lie about it. >> peter alexander with that report. joining the conversation, we have claire mccaskill. she and jen palmieri are cohosts of the podcast "how to win

2024." we have the great walter isaacson with us this morning, and jill wine-banks, an msnbc legal analyst. and also with us, state attorney for palm beach county, florida, dave aronberg is here. >> claire, why don't you just go ahead and talk about the chiefs and how they're going to do this weekend. >> i feel a little awkward. i was ready to weigh in on the special counsel. i think shanahan is saying he's going to focus on the running. it's a tell that he doesn't have the confidence in brock purdy that we have in mahomes. i'm predicting that we win and i think it will be a close game, a

nail-biter and probably make me want to pass out from anxiety. >> speaking of passing out from anxiety, let's talk about democrats' reaction to joe biden and the special counsel report yesterday. what is the impact of yesterday on the biden presidency? >> well, i think what i'm hearing is there is an acknowledgment there was no need for the special counsel to bring in some of the things he put in the report. frankly, it's trying to say that the reason a jury wouldn't convict him is because he's elderly and didn't mean to do it or whatever. he cooperated and immediately wanted to give over the

documents and never tried to mislead them or hide the documents. the guy with the orange face down at the golf club did with the documents he took was different. they weren't taken on purpose. i think trump's were. clearly there were efforts to hide them afterwards. that wasn't the case with biden. that's why a jury wouldn't convict him. it has nothing to do with how old he is or whether or not he has gaffes. i think most democrats are angry that special counsel did what he did, which was clearly political. >> walter isaacson, your reaction to what you saw last night? >> i do think that the senator is correct, but what happened with the report is it fed into a narrative that a lot of people worry about, which is that president isn't as sharp, saying

he's too old. that narrative, like all narratives is overblown, it's over some things that people crammed into it. what i think biden has to do is go out and confront the narrative. if i were him, i'd call the cbs people and say, okay, i'm going to do that super bowl interview and i'm going to do town hall meetings and i'm just going to show how engaged i am. a lot of the criticisms are unfair, but if he's going to debunk this, he's going to have to confront it. >> part of the white house pushback is these things happen. in fact, just the other day, new speaker mike johnson, who's a decade younger than president biden, well, he made a similar blunder. take a look. >> let's make a couple of things

clear here. immediately after i became speaker, we sent the necessary resources there. >> the speaker confusing countries' name. it happens. so claire, a lot of pushback from the white house and democrats last night believing the special counsel went out of bounds. this is a narrative that's been out there. it predates this report. polling backs it up. there was a devastating nbc poll just a few days ago saying the vast majority of americans don't believe president biden is up for the job anymore, that they think he is too old and not mentally fit. president trump too, but maybe the blunders don't stick to him as much. >> confusing nancy pelosi nikki haley is pretty darn bad. they couldn't have two people

further apart in terms of who they are and what they represent. listen, i think this is going to be a binary choice. i'm more worried about the third-party candidates, frankly, than anything else. as long as it's a binary choice between what donald trump represents to this country and to women and freedom and our democracy versus joe biden, i'm comfortable with that. i agree with walter that he's got to get out there and the staff has to be less worried about his gaffes and more worried about him showing his enthusiasm, his passion, his emotions. i thought last night, you know, you could tell he was angry. you could tell that was real and authentic. there's nothing wrong with that. he was really angry about the notion that somehow he would forget probably the worse thing that ever happened to him in his life, and that was the death of his son who had such promise and

who he put so much faith in in terms of his future in leading this country. >> as peter alexander mentions, the report made clear distinctions between a potential case against biden and the pending case against donald trump. hur wrote that unlike the evidence involving mr. biden, the allegations set forth in the indictment of mr. former president trump, if proven, would present serious aggravating facts. most notably, after being given multiple chances to return classified documents and avoid prosecution, mr. trump allegedly did the opposite. according to the indictment, he not only refused to return the documents for many month, but he also obstructed justice by enlisting others to destroy evidence and then to lie about it. >> thank god for small favors. we have a special counsel who instead of trying to be a

neurologist who graduated from trump university actually laid out the facts and how they were so radically different in joe biden's case and donald trump's case. the question is, will anybody notice today given his extraneous remarks? >> good point. it was a report that should have led to a headline that said no indictment, no facts support the evidence to indict her. it has long been the policy of the department of justice not to indict unless there are aggravating facts. hur went so far beyond the line and so deliberately, it was comey redux. there's no question what he said was improper. not only was what he said not relevant to a decision to indict or not indict, evidence is why you indict or don't indict. it is standard procedure to say we decline to indict because

there's a lack of evidence. then to put the knife in and twist it to create a political narrative also is merit garland's fault. first of all, biden will not testify, and so his credibility before a jury is not relevant. if he's not going to testify, we don't need to look at that. we need to look at what the prosecution can prove on its own. you've said there isn't evidence, and all of the things we might have are easily refuted and we cannot refute those claims. i think it was really wrong on both people's part. hur had a political motive to do it. i don't know why merrick garland let him do it. >> it is really surprising the way that he's been handled from

the beginning. dave aronberg, you're a prosecutor. maybe you can explain to us. has something changed in the law for prosecutors over the last five, six, seven years? it used to be you'd either indict or not indict. what we saw with james comey in 2016 was a guy who couldn't indict hillary clinton legally, so he held a press conference trashing her politically. didn't indict her legally, but he did indict her politically. now we have the same thing with hur yesterday, who admitted this is not indictable. these are not indictable offenses. so he can't indict him legally, so he trashes him politically. talk about crossing the line.

what's your take? >> joe, when i thought this was such a political gift to candidate donald trump, that he may have to list it as a campaign contribution. robert hur's appointment as special counsel is another example of merrick garland appearing apolitical. that's why he kept on a republican trump appointed u.s. attorney in david weiss to investigate hunter biden. that's why he appointed a republican trump-appointed u.s. attorney in robert hur to investigate president biden. merrick garland didn't have to put all this extraneous stuff out there. how different is this than bill barr who refused to show the public the mueller report and then issued that three-page memo that mislead the public.

this investigation should have been relatively easy. there was full cooperation. the only reason they found out about the documents is joe biden told them about it. it's a sloppy report. summary on page one says that there was willful retention and disclosure, but then on page 215 it says there's a shortage of evidence on these points. which is it? the question to me is why did he do this? i think the reason is he was motivated to avoid david weiss fate. david weiss is hated by his own party. i think that's why robert hur did this. it's comey 2.0, and it doesn't look good. >> the special counsel in charge of the hunter biden investigation, another trump

appointee, as was robert hur. jill wine-banks, let's talk about the other major story yesterday that got overshadowed by this report. that was the historic morning at the supreme court. there were oral arguments heard think by the state of colorado, which tried to move donald trump off their ballot in the state, citing the insurrection act put in place after the civil war. trump's attorneys, of course, fought to keep him on. a reading of what we heard from the justices yesterday seemed like they were pretty sympathetic to trump's side in a surprisingly unanimous way. it seems he will remain on the ballot in colorado and likely everywhere else. give us your take on what you heard yesterday. >> i was not persuaded except to agree with you that it seems likely that there's going to be a very large majority, at least 8-1 for keeping him on the

ballot. i was surprised at some of the arguments and some of the arguments that weren't made. for example, this argument of how could one state be allowed to make a decision, it's not one state. one state took an action that has been challenged in the supreme court, and the supreme court will make a national decision on what the constitution means. it's certainly contrary to the argument of why could texas make a decision about mifepristone for the whole nation? it's okay for texas to make that decision. well, if texas can decide about the legal remedy of a medical abortion, then why can't colorado bring up after a trial in which donald trump had the opportunity to present any evidence he wanted and in fact didn't even use all the time a lotted to him, the court made a

very careful decision and the supreme court wrote a very clear opinion. so why can't one state bring a case to the supreme court and let the supreme court decide what the constitution means? i think the constitution must be enforced, or we are not a country of law. we would now be something else. for us to say, well, this part of the constitution we're not going to enforce seems to me very wrong. but i still agree with you that it did seem like the court was having serious problems. they didn't even discuss the insurrection issue, which means they aren't going to take a stand on whether or not he's actually guilty of what would be a constitutional insurrection as opposed to being charged under 2383 with a criminal insurrection.

>> jill wine-banks and dave aronberg, thank you both very much. turning now to business before the bell, open ai ceo sam altman is reportedly in talks with investors to raise funds for an ambitious tech initiative that would boost the world's chip building capacity and expand its ability to power ai. the reported price tag, 5 to $7 trillion. let's bring in andrew ross sorkin. >> this is a remarkable headline, because it really reflects where ai is going and the cost of it and the fact that sam altman who has become the leader and pioneer of this space has been making his way frankly to the middle east in large part to try to raise, as we said, this number in the trillions of

dollars. it's a remarkable number. at the same time that the white house announced this morning, for example, that it along with the commerce department is putting together a $5 billion package for chip manufacturing in the u.s. so here you have sam altman, who already runs the largest large language ai model out there trying to raise trillions of dollars. there's questions of what does that ultimately look like. does that create true artificial intelligence? is that the number that's required, 5 to 7 trillion to get to this artificial generalized, which is as smart, frankly, as humans are. also the question people throughout the world are going to be asking is if you have one individual who's in charge and we saw that big governance issue around open ai owning the chips

at the same time that they own the model, what does that mean in terms of power and influence of big tech on our world and whether one person or company or group should be able to have all that power. >> walter isaacson, you've been writing about innovators for such a long time. you see headlines break every day during the middle of this ai revolution. as somebody who studied this, what are we in the middle of right now? >> andrew talked about the chips you need, whether they're nvidia or amd. the stock is going up because of the chips. and now sam altman wants to do it. the other fuel for this is data.

who has the data that these ai systems are going to train upon? this affects us in the world of journalism. one great piece of data is what you're staring at right now, which is the live feed of a new show that nbc owns. so the question is whether local newspapers, television stations can take that data feed and monetize it so that it can help train ai with what we hope would be reliable data. when i was writing the book on elon musk and he decided to buy twitter, one reason in the back of his mind is that the high mind of humanity is represented in the 1 billion tweets per day or so and everybody, including open ai that sam altman and elon musk founded, was using that to

train ai. musk cut off the api for twitter feed so that he would have control over it. we look at who controls the chips, who controls the processing power, but mainly who controls the data on which this will be trained, both word data, but even like the data from tesla cars. how are they going to be used to train and create what andrew called agi. >> there are huge social implications to what walter just said, because the incentive structure changes immensely. a news organization may break a story, but that currency only lasts seconds, because other news outlets may try to rereport on that. if ai can do that and can do it

almost instantaneously. it's going to degrade the value of everything. >> andrew ross sorkin, thank you very much. coming up on "morning joe," emmett smith is our guest ahead of sunday's big game. before we go to break, we just posted the brand new episode of "morning mika" on youtube and peacock. this week we talk about taylor swift. talk about taylor swift.

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look at the hole. first down. >> emmett breaks a tackle. ten, five, touchdown! >> those were just three of emmett smith's 30 carries in super bowl xxviii. he was super bowl mvp in the victory. the cowboys won three super bowl rings in four years in the '90s. sunday patrick mahomes and travis kelce and the chiefs will be going for their third super bowl victory in the last five years when they take on the san francisco 49ers led by running back christian mccaffrey. pro football hall of famer and '87 graduate of escambia high

school, pensacola's own emmett smith joins us now. great to have you here. >> good morning. how you doing? >> i'm doing very well. so great to have you on, because as you look at the matchups, the niners are a great team, the chiefs are a great team, but you've been there. how important is it in the super bowl to have the kind of experience that you had? how much will that help mahomes and the chiefs, being there before? >> i'm sure the chiefs are not feeling all the nerves they once felt in the super bowl because of the experience of being in multiple super bowls before. the niners on the opposite side, they have all of the butterflies. there's things that you truly want, but also things that can

zap your energy and affect your play. the chiefs are a very strong football team, and the niners are very competitive. i like the niners myself, because they represent the nfc. i like christian mccaffrey and deebo samuels. i think the niners have enough weapons and the defense is very good. they both are very good teams. >> this is going to be a real flash from the past. you spoke at downtown rotary in pensacola. you explained to us the first time you ran through the line playing for the gators and the first time you got hit in college, how it was so different. then, of course, you go to the pros and, again, that's a shock. can you explain to us what it's like the first time you run onto the field and you're actually in

the super bowl? how does that impact your mindset, your focus, your play? >> well, let me just say this to you. my first super bowl experience was a very unique one for me. up in the stands not only did i have my family, but also coach nickels and the whole family up there. in 1987, we were in pasadena, california, where i did the rose bowl, watching the new york giants and denver broncos play. it was a surreal moment. when i walked through the tunnel that day, it was if an earthquake hit because my legs were shaking and i was just that nervous and excited. the one thing i did not want to do is be the guy that made the big mistake that caused our team to lose. coming from pensacola, it was a journey for me to get there to be at the biggest stage ever. i'm so glad that our team

performed at a high level and buffalo made a number of mistakes and we capitalized and won our first super bowl. >> let's go to claire mccaskill, former senator and completely unbiased witness to the upcoming game with her kansas city chiefs flags and pendants all over the place. >> great to talk to you. i've noticed that shanahan has talked about how he's going to rely on mccaffrey as opposed to purdy and a long ball. i think you're going to see the chiefs relying much more on pa check pa checkco than people realize. >> i think they both are very dynamic. they're different players now.

he's a very hard-nosed running football player. he's what i call a valid runner. he doesn't shy away from contact at all, but he's a very, very explosive runner. if you don't wrap up, he will bounce off and keep going. when you think about mccaffrey himself, he's a very diversified player. out of the backfield, they can line him up in different positions and he's a very effective runner as well. i like mccaffrey. i think the niners' defense is pretty solid. the line backing corps can run pretty well as well. i think both backs have an opportunity to make an impact in this game, but the difference will be over the last two weeks most defensive coordinators find ways to stop the run. that is the most important thing

they try to do during games like this. if they do that, they're going to force the quarterback to be the very best. if they do, patrick mahomes has proven he can be the best at every level. it's going to be a good matchup, but i still think the niner niners will win. >> the "morning joe" crew is unanimous in picking the chiefs. if they take away the run, it comes down to the quarterbacks. certainly mahomes has the advantage and experience and resume other purdy. if mahomes were to win a third super bowl, where do you think that puts him in terms of nfl greats? >> i think he's already solidified as a hall of fame football player. there have been so many great quarterbacks in the national hockey league -- national football league. onal

hockey league -- national football l he would beeague. mentioned wit of the bests. we have not seen this kind of dominance from a quarterback since obviously tom brady. so right now i think mahomes creates separation between him and the rest of the league. >> emmett, you're also here on behalf of emergent biosolutions to discuss the ready to rescue campaign, which is raising awareness about the opioid epidemic. what can you tell us about the initiative. >> emergent and i are continuing our messaging, trying to spread the word and let everyone know that there's narcan, the nasal spray, available over the counter. if you want to get it, we suggest and recommend that everyone get ready if you're not already ready. it's better to stay ready than be getting ready. we want you to get narcan nasal spray, carry it on you, put it

in your car or your purse or gym bag, because no one knows when an opioid emergency will occur. so being ready is one of the things we want people to do. it's very important that we understand that it's not just pills, it's also fentanyl and other things that this narcan nasal spray can actually work with. we're just trying to get people keenly aware of the dangers of opioid addiction and fentanyl and other drugs. >> with the opioid and fentanyl epidemic, narcan is the difference between life and death. >> yes, it is. if you find someone unresponsive, oftentimes we don't know why. we may think someone is actually sleeping when they can actually be having an episode. the quicker you can get in the narcan nasal spray, the quicker

you know where this person might be at. you definitely have to call the emergency folks to get them over there as quickly as possible. it's all about timing and providing a solution that's not harmful to you, that can only help you. >> so you can learn more about the ready to rescue initiative at narcan.com emergent biosolutions partner and nfl hall of fame running back emmett smith, thank you very much for coming on this morning. >> take care. coming up next, there could be movement on ukraine on capitol hill. ukraine on capitol hill hi, i'm michael, i've lost 62 pounds on golo and i have kept it off. most of the weight that i gained was strictly in my belly which is a sign of insulin resistance.

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know, that the conduct of a response in the gaza strip has been over the top. i've been pushing really hard, really hard to get humanitarian assistance into gaza. there are a lot of innocent people starving and in trouble and dying. it's got to stop. >> president biden answering questions last night. of course, he came out there to talk about the special counsel report that had these very random details making comments about his age. but he was about to leave and he came back and answered that question. even though he did misspeak in it, his knowledge of the issue is obviously well known, given how he's been managing the war. and now you can see sort of a tilt happening against

netanyahu, not israel, but how netanyahu is waging this war against hamas. some 27,000 to 30,000 palestinians have been killed in this. president biden is calling the response over the top. >> that's striking language, claire mccaskill. what's it mean? diplomatically, what's it mean? >> i think diplomatically, it is a shot to netanyahu that he is not going to stay in his corner over the next six months. politically in israel, netanyahu stays in power as the far right. the only way he stays in power is with the furthest most right extreme people in israel. that's how he got there. that's how he stays there. so he is afraid to do the right thing, because he loses his power.

i think that the president is saying to him in no uncertain terms, i'm coming, i will be there. i believe before too much longer he is going to call for netanyahu to step aside, because i think most people in israel feel that way. it is, in fact, the far extreme right of his coalition that is driving him to this over the top response. >> members of congress disgrace themselves each and every day, but there's some optimism in the senate that even though the border bill is dead, but a standalone foreign aid bill is still alive. the odds of it passing the house is not impossible, but slim. >> it will be very interesting

to see if the house is going to allow a vote on that package. the ukraine aid is particularly important, because we're at a moment that if that ukraine aid ends, it's devastating for ukraine. russia realizes that it can outlast and win the war. one interesting thing putin said in that rambling interview he did yesterday was he could go back. he raises the istanbul parameters, which is let's have a ceasefire in place, let's have a truce. it's a recognition he's not going to get all of ukraine, but ukraine is not going to get crimea back and you're going to have to keep the donbas as disputed territory. the only way you can get atruce along those lines is if a ukraine aid bill passes. i think at that point we have to realize there's not going to continue to be year after year

u.s. military aid. so there's got to be a negotiated settlement on ukraine. >> that's what is frustrating the white house so much. it's also frustrating republicans in the house who are leaders of committees who understand we're at an inflection point where if aid goes through the ukrainians are in a far better position to negotiate a truce. >> right. >> but if the republicans in the house block this bill, vladimir putin has no reason to negotiate. >> walter isaacson and claire mccaskill, thank you very much for being on. coming up on "morning joe," actress molly ringwald is standing by. she joins us next with a look at her new limited series. "morning joe" is back in a moment. series "morning joe" is back in a moment emergen-c crystals pop and fizz when you throw them back.

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. truman capote. >> our great protector, our best friend. >> we tell him everything. >> awful things we've all done to each other. >> you earn the face you deserve. >> yes, i think so. >> oh, my. >> truman. >> these ladies. >> your swans. >> why'd you right about them? >> because they are beautiful and predatory. >> why can't it be everything all at once, sex, money, and an endless adventure? >> that's perfume she wears, too much for a woman with her face. >> secrets and lies. this is the best thing i've written. >> you have to focus. these are portraits of friends who have shared their deepest

secrets with you. why would you want to hurt them? >> this is what a writer does. this is bloody and true and real. >> those are your friends you supplied out on those magazine pages. >> that is a portion from the trailer from director ryan murphy's latest project are centered around the iconic southern writer truman capote and how he lost his social standing with new york's most fashionable and wealthy women in 1975. feud: capote versus the swans details the disastrous fallout, capote faced after he wrote a tell-all article in esquire revealing the scandalous secrets of his high society friends. i love this. this is very exciting. >> it looks great. >> joining us now, talented actress who has starred in everything from "the breakfast club" and "pretty in pink" to "the bear," molly ringwald is

with us, she plays joann carson, the second wife of the late tonight show host johnny carson. great to have you. >> great to have you. >> great to see you. >> i know mika and i are going to both be riveted to this. talk about the extraordinary story. truman capote, he has the party of the century in 1966 about a decade -- like the highest heights of manhattan high society, about a decade later, he gets kicked out of it unceremoniously after an esquire article. take us through it. >> well, i mean, you pretty much covered it. that's what happened. he was really good friends with these women. he was part of their group. he was a little bit of a sort of court jester, if you will, and then he wrote this tell-all for originally i think it was going to be a book called answered prayers, but it came out first as an article in esquire

magazine, and it was called the coat bask, which was after this place where they all used to meet. and yeah, he -- it was fiction, but he basically spilled all of their secrets. >> wow. >> and lost all of his friends. and my character is joann carson, who was married to johnny carson, and she divorced johnny carson and sort of in a way was kicked out of her group. so they were both kind of in exile together, and she was really like his last friend. i mean, it was really towards the end, it was just the two of them, and i think that she was one of the only people who really loved truman capote unconditionally. that's who i played. that's what i think. of course i wasn't able to talk to joann carson because she's already passed away, but when you listen to her talk about

truman capote, that's really -- she really adored him and respected him a lot. >> in this clip, your character joann welcomes capote to her california home for thanksgiving after he has been socially cut off by the swans back in new york. take a look. >> hi, honey. >> oh, hi. >> i come bearing gifts. >> ooh, gracias, thank you, thank you. >> happy thanksgiving. >> muah. >> why is your friend sitting in the car? >> john wants me to buy him a house in malibu, little prince pauper, he's pouting. once he realizes there's a manhattan waiting for him, he'll come in. when's dinner? >> in an hour, but there's lots of snacky, drinky things. i hope you like nachos and tamales. >> do you know what that is? >> that looks delicious, i should note my wife's losing her

mind that i'm talking to you right now. so tell us what drew you to this part? and tell us your connection -- previous connection to truman capote. >> the first thing i ever did as an actor, my very first role was playing one of baby loves illegitimate children in the grass harp, which was a play based on the story written by truman capote, so he was really sort of one of the first authors that i ever knew. i mean, you know, most kids were reading, you know, i don't know, dr. seuss, which i was also reading, but i was very aware of truman capote. so he's an author that i have followed my entire life. so i was really well aware of the story with the swans and really wanted somebody to make this. so when i heard that ryan murphy was making the show, i was really excited just to be able to watch it, and then when i was asked to participate, it was like a dream come true. >> what were the challenges for you and the rest of the cast playing, you know, real people and real people who were so

well-known. people have such already preconceived images of? >> yeah, well, it was challenging because, you know, it's always a bit daunting to play a person who was real, so i did what i could to, you know, research and find what i could. i also happen to know two people, ali she tee who i did the breakfast club with knew her and was friends with her as was annie potts, and they both said she was incredibly warm and very down to earth and, you know, ultimately i was just playing an interpretation by john robin bates who wrote the screen play. i should also point out, mika said it was from director ryan murphy, and although ryan murphy is a wonderful director, these episodes were directed by gus vanzant, who is an incredible director. >> thank you. >> all right. new episodes of the limited

series "feud: capote versus the swans". >> how excited are you about that? >> i am watching. i can't wait. it is on if, x every wednesday and streams on hulu the next day. congratulations on this. >> thank you so much. great to see you. >> it looks fantastic. >> great to see you too. >> i like stuff that's after real life. >> i know you do. and so -- and you're going to love this. >> can i end the show with a reminder for everybody? >> sure. >> okay. >> what's that reminder? >> it's valentine's day next week. that's all. just helping out. >> thank you. i appreciate that. >> that does it for us this morning. >> hold on. you say next week. >> make sure you get that right. >> that does it for us this morning, ana cabrera picks up the coverage right now. right now on "ana cabrera reports" a fiery president biden slamming a scathing special counsel report, a report that appeared to question his mental acuity and memory. new details