my tie is too short today. why are you awake? the producer john are you awake? >> we have somebody with no tracy. i'm up early to have a yard sale at 7:00 and drink coffee. david on twitter. i haven't gone to bed yet and shopping online. i love the 21st century. i don't have to go outside and can buy all of the "star trek" memorabilia that i want. >> "morning joe" starts right now. ♪ >> when all of the living former presidents are together, it's also a special day for our democracy. we have been called the world's most exclusive club and we do have a pretty nice clubhouse. but the truth is our club is

more like a support group. the last timee all got together was just before i took office and i needed that, because as each of these leaders will tell you, no matter how much you may think you're ready to assume the office of the presidency, it's impossible to truly understand the nature of the job until it's yours. >> good friday morning. >> it is a good friday morning. >> you know what? it really is. >> look how beautiful the white house is. >> the lights are on. >> and it's getting light early! >> it is! >> we had a little bit of sunshine yesterday! >> yes! it was 39 and drizzling in connecticut two days ago and there was sun out yesterday. >> it's friday, april 26th. welcome to "morning joe." on the set is culture al some people say. >> not enough. >> the "the art of power thomas

jefferson." john meacham. >> harold is cultural. >> you know that's not true. >> visiting professor at nyu and former democratic congressman, harold ford jr. >> good morning. >> in washington, former democratic representative from california, now the director of president and ceo of the woodrow wilson international center for scholars, jane harman is back with us on the show. >> we have important stuff to talk about. first, willie, update in the gwyneth paltrow story. she got hacked, hacked up by "the daily news," and the new york post so she decided to say, huh-uh. >> she is embracing her role as the most beautiful woman. >> she is just practically naked. what is that? >> red carpet dress. >> let's put that down. >> is that a family photo?

>> that's crazy! >> high fashion. >> that is high fashion? >> that is high fashion. >> you know what? you know what? just -- >> harold is our fashion icon. >> all right. >> look at that tie! you look fantastic. >> no, i insist! >> you two guys, we got a lot to talk about today, mika. >> we do. >> including the dogs were barking yesterday. apparently nra. >> oh, yes! actually now i catch tsh that is just too bad because actually we were making requests to have some of the key players in this controversy on our show. we will have an update on what happened there. i think the future of this show is in question. >> it is, it is. also the nra is leaking -- the nra is leaking my questionnaire from 20 years ago. >> oh, my gosh! >> to website. >> they are going to the

scarborough congressional library? >> yes! and some people i never watch and apparently talked about me last night. >> oh? >> yeah. >> are they praising you? >> you would think they would! >> paying attention. >> you would think they would. i am the 90%. >> say again? >> my daughter was on the way home from the track meet and listening to it all, apparently. >> absolutely crazy. you know what, though? these are very difficult times. >> we will explain. >> for the 7%. we will explain that later. but we have got some really significant news coming out of the middle east. >> good thing jane is here. the obama administration is facing one of its toughest challenges. it appears it's goodyear. >> very needy. >> it appears the syrian government has used chemical agents against its own citizens. the white house told lawmakers yesterday that u.s. intelligence agencies have determined with, quote, some degree of varying

confidence that the assad regime has used chemical weapons. president obama is increasing america's involvement in the two-year-old conflict while speaking about the red line of chemical weapons. >> we have been very clear to the assad regime but also to other players on the ground that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chem wall weapons moving around that would change my calculus and we have put together a range of contingency plans. we have communicated in no uncertain terms with every player in the region that that is a red line for us, and that there would be enormous consequences if we start seeing movement on the chemical weapons

front or the use of chemical weapons. >> that was august. yesterday, secretary of defense chuck hagel spoke about the government's latest findings. >> we need all of the facts. we need all of the information. as to a red line, my role as secretary of defense is to give the president options on a policy issue. that's a policy issue. and we will be prepared to do that at such time that the president requires options. >> meanwhile, senator john mccain who has been a leading voice for u.s. military involvement in syria has expressed his development at the obama administration's handle rsing of the crisis. >> we should have intervened long ago, whether bashar assad was using them or not. he slaughtered 80,000 people while we have sat by and watched. it's been one of the most shameful chapters in american history. >> you know, mika, the books are

going to be written five years, ten years from now about how the united states did nothing while 80,000 syrians were slaughtered. it's just we know that's going to happen. of course, those books won't have the feel for the time that we were just coming out of two wars, a decade of wars and we were exhausted, but that is the case and i think at this point this really leaves the president with few options as far as -- he can't have a hands-off approach. >> no, absolutely not. jane harman, what are some of the stumbling blocks in terms of jumping in, you know, full on in this -- in this problem? >> well, let me say, first, that i saw the iraq wmd intelligence failure up close and personal. i read the intelligence. i talked to analysts.

i believe the intelligence, it was wrong. that was a long time ago. we have improved the way we do intelligence and this time, no kidding, while there is a range of certainty across the intelligence community, they all believe that there are chemical weapons there and it's time to roll out the tingtsy plans. we have done the vetting. now we need to act and this is what i would do. first, we have to get u.n. inspectors in there and first, syria was going to allow them in and then they changed their minds. they have to come in and in order for them to come in safely people on the ground have to protect them. that means we have to alie with the region and others to help arm the people we trust. i know, "we trust," is a funny phrase but we can select among the groups out there and help them protect the inspectors on the ground and help them and the inspectors secure the chemical weapons. we can't do it by air and i think we are not going in on the ground so we have to enable those on the ground to get the

job done. if we do those two things quickly and if we have back channel conversations with the russians who, by now, i would hope, would begin to decide that it's time to change this regime and save another 100,000 people from getting slaughtered, i think we can get somewhere. >> yesterday, a library was dedicated in texas for a president who responded to the challenges of the 9/11. he responded in some ways that, obviously, history is browned upon. ten years later, you've got obama who has waited much longer to get engaged than syria would in regular times but he is also framed by ten years of war and a war weary public. that said, if chemical weapons have been used and if the red line has been crossed and this is the president who said before

assad must go, the president can't bluff any more. he said assad must go and then did nothing. he said if there are chemical weapons, we have to do something. he can't bluff a second or third time. >> there is not a lot of wiggle room when you lay down those lines and this seems much clearer, you know? the way in which the president, whoever the president was, frames the conversation is decidedly different and for people who think it might not matter who the president is here is exhibit a about why it matters. if a president chooses to make an existential question out of a development like the one we have seen in syria or thought we were seeing in iraq, lives are at stake. and vital security interest of the united states. so it will depend on what the president does now. >> harold, there's some language in the statement from the white house yesterday that gives everybody a little pause, which is varying degrees of confidence

which means they can't say for certain what it is or how much of it there is. the next words you have to look at is taking action. that's a very loaded term. what does that mean exactly? does it mean putting boots on the ground? jane says no. does it mean arming the air power or air strikes from aircraft carriers? first of all, check out the intelligence. if you believe it's a red line has been crossed then what does the united states do? >> i think jane's congresswoman harman who served on intelligence committee her intelligence is probably as smart an outline as one could follow. i don't believe that the white house is going to sit idly by. i do think that john's description of what we saw yesterday with president bush how he made decisions and stood by them and moved forward, this president, whatever you want to say about him, has been as strong and as resolute aany president on international matters that some call dubious

methods on drones. the ball is now in the president's court, the white house's court. they have defined what action -- what has to happen for action to take place and now they have to define what that action will be and i hope they follow the lines that congresswoman harman has laid up. >> we will revisit this. chilling details surrounding the tsarnaev brothers alleged plot to attack the heart of new york city after causing so much damage in boston. according to city officials, the two marathon bombing suspects discussed driving to new york to detonate their remaining explosives in a spontaneous assault on times square. at the time, their arsenal included five pipe bombs and one pressure cooker bomb similar to the ones used in last monday's deadly attack. police say the younger brother had visited times square once last year but their plan fell

apart after realizing the mercedes-benz car they hijacked did not have enough car to get to new york. a pre-miranda rights interrogation of 19-year-old dzhokhar tsarnaev it appears the younger brother has stopped answering questions about the bombing since he was read his rights on monday night and that has sparked a debate among lawmakers how the government should handle domestic terror cases. >> we can't have, in a case like than, the judiciary deciding because it's on tv and it might look bad for them to allow the public safety exemption that is deemed legal by the united states supreme court that they would somehow intercede in this, it is confusing and it's horrible god awful policy and danger to the greater community and we have got to get to the bottom of this and we have got to fix it right now. >> tsarnaev was reportedly

questioned by investigators up to 16 hours over the course of two days and answering questions mostly in writing due to the severe injury to his neck. >> jane harman, there would be some people that would look at the fact that the plot in times square was foiled because they didn't have enough gas in their tank to get down to new york as a sign -- as a good sign that this was half-baked plot. it actually scares me that guys -- this ill-prepared could be running around with bombs. it's the sort of thing you're not going to pick up chatter. you're not going to pick up any clues from overseas. this is a sort of a random violence that we should all really be child by even more so than if they had some contacts overseas. >> i agree. mike hayden said the other day, the former director of the cia,

that this is the new normal. in this case, i think we will learn that some mistakes were made. we should have been on these guys earlier than we were, but this type of thing, self-radicalized people, in this case, maybe this fellow misha had a lot to do with radicalizing these kids. self-radicalized people who go on the internet and you can find the recipe for building pressure cooker bombs or pipe bombs or other kinds of small weapons can maybe sometimes get lucky and pull it off in this country. they have to be right once. we have to be right 100% of the time but on something that mika said just before, joe, she said mike rogers, among other things, perhaps, are complaining that this fellow was mirandaized. a liberal named george will had an op-ed in "the washington post" yesterday talking about incarcerating the japanese during world war ii and made the

point if we live by our values and we follow the rule of law, we do better and, in this case, i think when we look back on all of this, the way we handled the investigation and the prosecution of this fellow who for sure, i think based on the evidence we know who likely will be convicted, will be a model for the world and it will show people that we followed the rule of law here and that is what we have to do. >> as congresswoman harmon is talking we are getting word that dzhokhar tsarnaev has been transported from beth israel hospital to prison. we are talking about his physical condition. apparently it's upgraded to the point they have taken him out of the hospital new and he has been moved to a prison in massachusetts. one of the people we haven't talked about a lot but we have heard about is this guy who was car-jacked a week ago. he is a 26-year-old chinese man in this black mercedes suv and come to boston to go to grad school and now working on a start-up.

he lives in boston. he gets car-jacked around 11:00 last thursday night and taken on an interview with "the boston globe" a 90-minute ride. remember it was reported 30 minutes? he says it's 90-minute ride. you have to talk about this key to these two brothers being caught. he said finally after this 90 minutes they realized they don't have enough gas to get to manhattan and pull up to a gas station and turns out it's cash only. so they have to go inside. one of the brothers has to go inside the gas station to pay. at that point, this guy who calls himself danny, didn't want to give his real name, makes a decision even though the other brother is in the back seat that is going to bolt. this is life and death. he unbuckles the seat belt and he said he ran in an angle that would be hard for the brother to shoot him. he runs across the street to another gas station and tells

the attendant to call 911. he left his iphone in the car so it could be tracked and traced. it's a remarkable account if you have a chance to read "the boston globe" about two and a half hour interview where he gives a moment-by-moment recap and he is critical to these two guys being caught. >> no doubt. that is when everything started unraveling for them and there was even the moment where his friend kept calling him up and he said if you speak in mandarin, i'm going to kill you right here. you get to the part where the brother was doing an english mandarin translation to tell him what to text back to his friend and the guy just kept his head and was responsible for these two terrorists being caught. >> the reason the i phone was left in the car? the two brothers wanted to listen to music so he plugged in his iphone to the car. >> oh, my lord! >> so the phone was not on his body, it was plugged into the car. >> runs across the street to a

mob mobil station and they call 911. >> it speaks to a new normal which congresswoman harman was touching on. i find your sentiment far more alarming than anything else. deval patrick, the governor, i thought handled it so well. he said the next day the young tsarnaev went to school and went to the gym and paertrtied with friends as if nothing had happen. going forward for law enforcement, how do you track this and what steps to prevent this from going forward? an e in the course challenge for law enforcement and intelligence officials going forward. >> one of the tragedies, though, is president kennedy saw this. he said if someone wants to trade their life for mine, no way i can be protected. men with guns change history, whether it's sarajevo or memphis

in 1968. the day before, you broke in and you said this guy, these people are going to do than, everybody would go, come on, they could never pull this off, but they did. >> jane? >> yeah. the nypd has a lot of tools that other local police departments may have to learn about. of course, new york is a much bigger target and so is washington. perhaps than boston or someplace in the midwest. but they have a thousand intelligence officers. they have a huge police department. 35,000 people compared to 2,000 in boston. i think that's the number. obviously, a bigger population. but they can detect signs early. for example the older brother was thrown out of his mosque and there was behavior there they would pick up because they built trust with the muslim community. let's be clear that all would-be radicalized people are not

muslim but nonetheless they can pick up signs and follow these people much more closely and they have thwarted a lot of plots. we have been successful more than we have failed in blocking plots against our country. >> yes. >> and these small bore plots, i know a lot of people were hurt but this is nothing like 9/11, are going to be in our future and if we have better intel in our local police departments, we're going to do better getting ahead of the curve, even with people like this who are substantially invisible. >> jane harman, thank you so much. on monday, we will be marking six months since superstorm sandy devastated the eastern seaboard. we will be live from some of the hardest hit spots and see how they are recovering. coming up, mike florio will

join us to break down the nfl draft. >> thanks, willie. >> trickalso chemical war fare syria. richard haass weighs in on the significant developments in that conflict. chadwick boseman describes his role as the great jackie robinson. >> great movie. >> a new article "the atlantic" says changing technology means we may never run out of oil. james bennett is here to explain. >> there you go! >> the top stories coming up next and the political playbook. first, bill karins with a check on the forecast. bill? >> good morning. it's a nice happy forecast for so many people in this country as we head to a nice, warm weekend for once. just about everywhere on the map. we are going to have some rain to deal with but first recap

yesterday. one of the warmest days we have seen in montana, colorado through the central plains. it was beautiful. the last spot to warm up is minneapolis, north wards and up through the great lakes. that warm air coming your way this weekend. we do have a little bit of rain this morning. kansas city and st. louis that's going to head for louisville, nashville, memphis, little rock and tulsa during the day today so you need your umbrellas. tomorrow a lot of that rain will be in kentucky and tennessee. although it's warm, it will be, unfortunately, a little bit wet. here is your forecast into the weekend. starting with today, another great day from new york to boston to d.c. it is a little chilly in the northeast this morning but this afternoon, perfect. then the weekend forecast look at minneapolis. about time! 72 warm degrees! you're going to be the same temperature as atlanta because the southeast you're going to be dodging the raindrops all weekend long and maybe even a few thunderstorms mixed in too and wrap it up with your sunday forecast and notice kansas city, you deserve that after the spring you had. 74 and sunny beautiful degrees!

overall, this is a thumb's up weekend. the only exception being the rain in the southeast. you're watching "morning joe," brewed by starbucks. ♪ take the long way home take the long way home ♪ [ female announcer ] how do you define your moment? the blissful pause. just before that rich sweetness touches your lips. the delightful discovery. the mid-sweetening realization that you have the house all to yourself. well, almost. the sweet reward. making a delicious choice that's also a smart choice. splenda® no calorie sweetener. with the original sugar-like taste you love and trust. splenda® makes the moment yours™. the act of soaring across an ocean in a three-hundred-ton rocket doesn't raise as much as an eyebrow

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♪ ♪ 27 past the hour. time to take a look at the morning papers. the dallas morning news. the president and first lady travel to west texas to honor the lives lost in last week's fertilizer plant explosion that killed 14 people and injured 200. looking over flag-draped caskets carrying the bodies of 12 firefighters, the president said, know words can describe the courage displayed on that deadly night. met with the families of first responders following the service.

"the new york times." teams of rescuers still on the scene of a building collapse in bangladesh. the death toll has risen to 275 people killed. it's a number that could climb in the future. police ordered the building evacuated earlier in the week after cracks were discovered in the walls but factory officials reportedly ignored that warning keeping thousands of workers on the job. "usa today." the house of representatives is expected to take up a proposal today to end the air traffic controller furloughs blamed for causing long delays for travelers. the senate unanimously passed the legislation late last night. the faa said 863 flights have been delayed on wednesday due to staffing reductions from the sequester. "the new york times" coned top executives getting more than $600,000 from the utility's

board of directors. the company struggled with a month-long union lockout and prolonged outages from hurricane sandy. new york governor andrew cuomo appointed a commission to investigate coned's failure to utility performance and threatened to revoke their franchises. >> samsung had an increase in profit from the previous year driven in part of sales from its galaxy smartphone that increased from 69.4 million units and almost the double number of i phones sold by apple. the s4 goes on sale this weekend. >> people like that phone. >> i might try it. >> check it out. let's go to politico and with us there is mr. mike allen with a look at the playbook. mike, good morning. >> good morning, happy friday!

and happy white house correspondents associates dinner weekend. >> you take a look at hillary clinton venture into the paid speaking circuit and what it tells us about her future possibly. first of all, where is she headed and what is she making and what does it mean? >> we are hearing getting a real window here into how senator clinton, secretary clinton will approach the run up to 2016. she is getting about 200,000 a speech. she has been in florida, texas. and maggie haberman points out in this story she has essentially become a passive front-runner. we expected she would take about six months off to rest up after being secretary of state. but, instead, she is bounded right out on an intensive schedule and this sends a few messages. one of them is to her rival. she is not going to let a vacuum

forum and she is out there visible showing she has the stamina to keep up intense schedule. so there's not another obvious rival out there. we have vice president biden. you're going to new jersey monday, corey booker, the mayor out there. but she is not letting anyone get a chance to get a leg up while she's resting. >> mike, this is meacham. what is the timetable here in the sense of can she wait 12 months? what is sort of the professional take on when she has to make these decisions? >> as people have sat around that table including mark halpern, she has longer than anybody, but her fund-raisers and advisers and staff will get restless because nobody can staff up until she makes her contentions plain. somebody there may disagree. i think starting with the video, adjusting her opinion on ga

marriage and this very visible continuation of a public profile. all signs are she plans to go ahead. she is starting to build a staff. she has this small transition staff. so i think we are going to keep seeing signs quickly and the only urgency for her is just that her allies in politics, her fund-raising allies are going to say you have to tell us what to do because, otherwise, we are going elsewhere. >> maggie makes a good and important point when she says when hillary clinton decides, if she decides to get in, it immediately becomes her future and not about president obama and his second term. mike allen, thanks so much. >> have a great weekend. >> coming up big surprises on the nfl trast. t draft. the names that got passed over. if you like offensive linemen, last night was your night. >> who doesn't? >> you like a big left tackle.

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with the first pick in the 2013 nfl draft, the kansas city chiefs select eric fisher,

tackle, central michigan. >> eric fisher the gigantic 7'6" left tackle from central michigan expect a big payday and went number one with the kansas city chiefs in the nfl draft in the first round yesterday. joining us with pro football talk.com, mike florio of nbc sports. >> great to be back. >> a draft like i can't remember. no running back taken since 1963 in the first round and only one quarterback taken. offensive and defensive lineman heavy first round. >> no star power like last year with andrew luck and robert griffin iii. teams trying to take care of their quarterback and finding guys who can get to the quarterback. if you don't have great quarterbacks and great skill position players, load up on the linemen and what they did last night. >> geno smith a lot had graded.

he saturday there and saturd th. why didn't he go in the first round? >> the perception he would go from the top five to not in the first round at all. there are concerns about his consistency. at times he looks great and at times, he doesn't. concerns about the level of competition he played against, the defenses were not that great. he had great receivers like tavon austin and stedman bailey. a knock on him to handle adversity. he says he is not going back tonight and not handling adversity very well and giving life to the concerns about him. if you have multiple choices about quarterback maybe you're not going geno smith. >> he is not going back tonight. >> he is not. he is done. >> i can't say that radio city to be drafted in the second round of the nfl draft? >> he was humiliated last night. he doesn't want to be humiliated again. >> who was humiliated. ryan nassib.

his former college coach who is coach of the bills traded down and took a different quarterback so it can get worse for geno smith. >> the running back thing, eddie lacy we were talking about the kid from alabama is a great back. are you surprised no running backs went? >> no. in recent years we have seen a shift away from the big-time running backs teams like to have two and three running backs so you get them later and you can find guys around four or five or six undrafted. arian foster completely undrafted several years ago and more and more patching. the game is swinging toward the passing and so you don't need to spend that first round pick on a running back. >> harold, you'll be happy. 12 s.e.c. players chosen in the first round. >> wow. out of 32. >> unbelievable. >> the transition will be easier, though, because they are already getting paid. i got to say that. >> i got to get you going. >> manti te'o, a lot of people thought maybe the giants take him in the middle of the round. at least the ravens might take

him some people said. not picked in the first round. >> mike mayock who knows more about the draft than anyone said sever months ago if manti te'o on the board at number 32 the ravens would run to the podium and apparently tripped and fell on the way because they took somebody else. vikings have recent notre dame players. they lost notre dame players and ended up with three picks fountain first rouin the first round and didn't take manti te'o. i don't know how the slide continues. he was viewed as a surefire first rounder. >> something going on beneath the surface in front offices we don't know in the press when they talk about manti te'o? because most people who watch these things from the outside thought he was a first round pick. >> i think the whole fake dead girlfriend thing, it just creates a distraction and teams don't like distractions. >> slightly. >> they just don't like it. whatever the subject is. >> i'm sorry, i'm sorry. if the guy ran a 4.5, if the guy owned alabama, the guy would have been one of the first five

picks. so is that the game? i saw him on the field. you know a lot of these coaches were at the game. i mean, it's one thing to see him get run over on tv. looked like a high school linebacker. he was mauled by alabama. coach gruden yesterday said not everybody doesn't get mauled by alabama. i've seen some guys hold their own in the middle. he looked like what he was. an overhyped linebacker who just happened to play at the right school to be overhyped. they had an extraordinary weak schedule last year, notre dame. they played one really good team. and he got run over. >> corey chavous is one of the best draft experts out there. he told me the long layoff, what was it? 78 days? he was visibly heavier and you can't pull that off at that position. if you can't move you'll get knocked around and that is what happened. >> i was just going to say.

what do you guys think? if he had run a 4.5 at the combine instead of like a 6.8? >> it all comes together. >> it's a numbers game. he ran a 4.5 ian thought he would be dominant in the nfl, he would have been long gone. >> you throw everything on top of it and then that last little twist and you create, welcome the distraction and everything else, we are going to wait. >> what team filled the best void last night? >> the san francisco 49ers had one weakness as of last night. safety. they lost dashon goldson to safety to tampa bay and they vaulted from number 31 and got eric reed and now they don't have any weaknesses any more. >> the new york jets had two picks in the first round and did not take a quarterback but now because only one was taken, there are still a bunch of quarterbacks. do they pick somebody in the second round to backup sanchez? >> i think you have to be careful using a high pick on quarterback when you're not sure your coach is there next year.

you get a new coach what does he want? he wants his own quarterback. when they took demilliner at cornerback. how do you do that i feel bad for him. he will never escape the darrelle revis cornerback image. >> if you can survive nick saban in august, you're good. he'll be good. >> we will see what they do today. mike florio, always appreciate it. >> we don't appreciate the s.e.c. joke. it was horrible. >> donnie deutsche is in the building! >> oh, my god. where has he been? tailored to an extreme.

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there was a time in my life when i wasn't likely to be founded a library, much less found one. franklin roosevelt one described a library as an act of faith. i dedicate this library with unshakeable faith in the future of our country. honor of a life typically to lead a country as brave and as noble as the united states. whatever challenges come before us, i will always believe our nation's best days lie ahead. god bless. >> we have more on the bush legacy with charles crowhammer coming up in this block. here with us is donny deutsche. >> good to be back. i was on the a spring concert

tour. >> we thought you were delaware beach side with pat buchanan. we couldn't get you or pat on the phone. >> thank you for coming back. >> it feels good to be back. >> i will call pat. >> tell him to get off the beach. >> or any other cast-aways. >> anybody else? >> i think area rin would coeri >> we should do a reunion like from the 2007 "morning joe." we had people on the phone and nobody would come in. >> nobody would come in. >> remember secaucus? >> who is your first guest? >> i would go, hey, pat, can you stick around? and we talked to him another 18 minutes on the phone. >> most embarrassing guest of all time, i can't believe i'm actually doing this. >> my dad. >> other than you. >> other than me. i'm not a guest. i'm more of a fodder, if you will, i guess you'd call it.

>> you're a fixture. >> when you sat here and you go, wow, we are doing something wrong here. i'm actually sitting here. >> dr. brzezinski. >> for mika, that was a bad day. >> that was a bad day. that would be a bad day. that didn't lead to some nice weeks ahead. >> late tv! >> while we are on the subject of great tv -- >> can i just say, though, willie, the strangest, the strangest segment, can we say? because we love them both. >> oh, yeah. >> the strangest segment. we love them both. >> i know where you're going. were they sitting in these two chairs? >> they were right there and we couldn't do it. >> we love them both. and one of them by themselves awesome. >> brilliant. >> both of them. >> it was bad. >> so brilliant. this is really to be blamed on alex and the booker. >> who? who? who? >> lyle lovett sitting there and our favorite musician.

>> lyle is amazing. we love him and he comes on and he was a great guest. >> you had the brilliant fred armson. >> we love fred! that is as good as it gets. >> neither of them knew where why they were on with the other one. we sort of had them sit there and thought it would be an interesting mix. >> lyle said, i like the show. fred was like, i like it too. >> that's right. that's right. that's what it was like. >> lyle would go, thank you for having me on the show. i like the show. and then fred said -- >> me too. >> all right. >> i'm glad i'm here too. thank you. it went on for about 12 minutes. >> you're great on "snl" and you have a good album. a hard thing to manage and didn't know why they were on there together. >> it was the only time in the 18 years here of a three-hour show there was no question. i asked him about chemical weapons in iraq and after that, there was nowhere to go. >> alex is taking the blame. >> it was all alex's fault.

>> it was presequester. >> it's all my fault at this point. >> you blame the dead guy. we have been talking about the no votes on the background check legislation a lot here on the show. >> i love you guys will not let it go. >> right. it's kind of making a lot of waves on blogs and little sites. >>ly me ask donny about this. what do you think? >> you could. i just want to say that for the record, we did make a request to have heidi heitkamp and kelly ayotte focusing their criticism on because of their no votes because we wanted to have them on because we wanted them to explain their vote. maybe we weren't being fair. what did she say? >> kelly just passed on information to us so we have some of it. heidi people said they would not consider our request for some time now. >> here is the good news of what happened. >> wait a minute. they won't be on for some time?

>> yeah. >> we get off the show and all we are doing is talking about 90% and 84% and heidi's case, 94% of the people in north dakota, you know, for background checks? and she got a couple of calls. >> 4-1. >> that upset her. i get off the air and somebody calls me. the nra has leaked your 1994 questionnaire. the nra went back 20 years to find my questionnaire and very consistent what i believe in today. i believe in second amendment rights and no compromise on second amendment rights. scalia confirmed in 2008 that my view on the second amendment was right all along. and so the nra, though, is just going crazy and they are leaking things to web sites for me taking the same position wayne lapierre had in 199 and bush had in 2000 and 2004. then last night on fox, they had this entire segment that was

just pushed by the nra about how i'm a big liberal for taking wayne lapierre stance in 1999. they are nervous. >> they should be and you keep repeating one thing, that is 90%, that the will of the country was not answered here. i would love around this table right now, none of you have been in the business of marketing and advertising. if i said to you you get to run the campaign of the next folks that are running against these people who voted against it, you would do the most compelling powerful advertising. >> oh, my gosh. >> they are going to pay the price. they will pay the ultimate price. the only silver lining in is this is what you've said which is an stinth element of their reporting will change the next election cycle will happen. this is just the will of the people will take over. my advice to this show, not that this show needs -- the last thing it needs is my advice. >> what is your advice? >> is this is so important that you should just never let it go. never.

because it's that simple. this is the world of people. >> by the way, we're right. we're taking theitost republicans took in '99 and take the position wayne lapierre took in '99 after columbine. columbine changed his view. i think the system is broke and we need to fix it. we need criminal background checks. >> alex said heidi heitkamp's office said in a warning way she is not going to be on quite some time, if ever. >> the ratings. tough call. >> i will say they are 4% of the people in her own state that will support her position. 94%, harold. >> you need to keep showing that senator heitkamp is entitled to her own opinion and i know you respect that as well. >> i don't think she has one. >> she does. >> with all due respect she is a sitting united states senator and has to live with the decision she has made. the powerful ad of that terrorist on tv saying how easy it is to acquire weapons in the united states, that to me, if i

would have vote for universal background checks and i was concerned about how i might befriend my district or state that is the ad i would run over and over again saying i had to do this. >> that's coming. >> newtown is coming. aurora is coming. i'm telling you, i say this is a guy who i know how the story ends. >> donny, will you stay with us? we are tight for -- >> no background checks on terrorists, on criminals. it's going to pass. >> former state department adviser takes the obama administration to task over afghanistan. also nbc's david gregory has a preview of "meet the press" when "morning joe" comes right back. ♪ [ agent smith ] i've found software that intrigues me. it appears it's an agent of good. ge has wired their medical hardware

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your mother showed me some of your landscapes and animal paintings, and i thought they were great. really great. i seriously considered calling you and asking you to do a portrait of me, until i saw the results of your sister's hacked e-mails. those bathroom catchers are wonderful but i think you ought to keep my suit. starting my work with president george h.w. bush on the tsunami and aftermath of katrina, people thought i was becoming so close to the bush family that i was becoming the black sheep son. my mother told me not to talk too long today. and, barbara, i will not let you down!

>> welcome back to "morning joe." >> i bet she did! >> that is cute. >> i bet she did. >> wow. >> she is great. you can relate to her, can't you? >> yes. >> your mom? >> she doesn't hold back on what her opinion is about whether or not her other son should run for president. >> speaking of w, by the way, do you know when he left office he had a 33% approval rating and his approval rate is 47%, higher than obama's. all you need for a president is time away from office and other than jimmy carter in our lifetime, they get elevated over time. >> excuse me. germa jimmy carter as an ex-president is highly regarded and i think what you're saying is after you leave office, there comes a reservoir of affection for an ex-president. >> yes. >> but i haven't seen that for carter though. >> the other thing we have seen in that video is these are the only people that know how that job is and how they relate to

each other and there is a common bond, no matter what the history of the country has been through. >> mika, we need to introduce everybody around the table very quickly. t also the events of the past several years have shown that things weren't quite as easy for george w. bush. >> absolutely not. >> as his political enemies thought they were and a lot of people who are now coming to the raef realization that he and dick cheney made a lot of difficult decisions but when overtime i think it's had an impact on his own standing. >> yeah. i think the debate shifts a little bit. donny deutsche is still bus and joining on the set is carl bernstein and the president of the council on foreign relations, richard haass. his new book "foreign policy begins at home." it comes out next week. >> a great book. the only problem it comes out

the same day -- comes out and i'm wondering whether amazon will have buy this one and get this one. >> i think you'll be just fine. >> foreign policy begins at home and obsessed! >> that's perfect. >> in washington we are pulitzer prize winning journalist and of the "the washington post," eugene robinson. you wrote an op sed yesterday. mika will read it now. >> i was going to start with charles and hit them against eve other and see how we do here. "like bush, harry truman left office widely scorned largely because of the inconclusive war he left behind. in time, however, korea came to be seen as but one battle in a much larger cold war that truman was instrumental in winning. he established the stulgs institutional and policy flnks that made possible victory

almost half a century later. i suspect that history will similarly see bush as the man who by trial and error but also with principle establish the structure that will take us through another long twilight struggle and enable to us to prevail. >> eugene, you take just a little bit of a different take. >> this is when pulitzer prize winners battle. >> in all debates there is a common bond or a link. i'm sure there is. >> let's see. >> here we go. euge eugene, you write in, part -- are you going to behave? >> yes. >> are you sure? >> let's hear from these guys. >> bush didn't pay for his wars. the bills he racked up for military adventures, precipitation drug benefits and bank bailout and other impulse purchases helped create the

fiscal and financial bequeathed to obama. thanks a lot for that. bush did an enormous amount of good by making it possible for aids sufferers to receive drug therapy. this literally saved millions of lives and should way heavily on one side of the scale when we assess the decider's presidency but the pile on the other side just keeps getting bigger. >> gene, i do want to -- let us find common ground because i agree with charles krauthammer, obviously, more than i agree with you. what you said about his work in africa that is something if you want to look at history on affecting the most lives in a positive way, i always thought it was fascinating. bob geldof, bono and rock stars both look at what he did in

africa and said it was unprecedented. you're right. he saved millions and millions of lives in africa and history should record that. >> yes, history should record that and celebrate that and praise him for that to the heavens. i've done it in columns. i've said, you know, despite everything i've said about george w. bush, this was a really, really good and noble thing that he did that he didn't have to do. there was nothing that compelled him to take the step that really saved millions of peoples lives and has really altered the future of a continent. >> thank you for being here today. >> however, however! however, other things he did, they don't look just as bad as they did when he left office. a number of things that he did look worse. the torture that he ordered and sanctions on your behalf and on

my behalf without asking us looks worse now than it did before and there was just a new report by the constitution project which with a task force like bill sessions and asa hutchinson not blaming liberals who said many instances of tore tune totally counter to our values and so happy that president obama ended that. the war in iraq in retrospect looks worse and worse. it looks like a bigger and bigger strategic error when you take the whole context of it into account. >> a couple of quick things here, gene. i want to stay with you one second and then want richard's input, as well as everybody else's here. the further we get away from march of 2003, the worse it looks. but we have got that luxury in 2013. george w. bush didn't have that luxury a year and a half after 9:00 when a cia director was in his office saying it was a slam

dunk, mr. president. and, you know, you're right. it looks -- and as far as george bush and the bush administration making decisions at the height of the war on terror, the internment of a hundred thousand japanese americans also did violence to our values, the suspension of habeas corpus during the civil war did the same. what woodrow wilson did to german americans did the same. we do make these mistakes and historians somehow sort through it 10, 20 years down the road. will george w. bush not be afforded the same judgment by history? that perhaps at the height of a war, he made some decisions that he wouldn't make in peace time? >> and look. 10, 20, 30 years from now, there will be an actual -- i think more accurate reassessment of the good and the bad of the bush years.

it does take some time to put these things in perspective. i think, for example, you cut lincoln a bit of slack for habeas corpus given a civil war was happening and cut him more slack than perhaps you cut roosevelt or wilson for the japanese -- or what happened to the germans. again, yes, historians will settle on that. on iraq, i think, you know, he had -- he was waging the right war. he was waging the war in afghanistan and by turning to iraq, he not only ignored the afghanistan conflict in a way that let it get worse and let it kind of turn against us in a lot of ways. but he also launched this huge invasion on very, very thin reads of evidence and that is putting it charitably and to put it uncharitably on a pretext and

it didn't look good at the time and it looks awful now. >> richard? >> i worked for him so put that on the table. i think history will judge him to be a consequential president when you look at the 40 odd presidents this country has had. some didn't make that much of a difference and really shaped by its time. history will judge bush who was consequenti consequential. he made decisions anybody else in that same job might not have made and were decisions in the economic realm and foreign policy realm that had real impact and i think is controversial as joe is saying. he made these decisions in a context and people are going to say after 9/11, was he right to have initiated the war? interesting at the library you put the visitor in that space and say here is what we thought the at the time and what would you have done? historians will say he made a big difference and historians will be divided between those saying he never should have

allowed the drug benefit thing to have happened domestically and we should have done more to prevent the financial crisis in 2008. he should or should not have done the iraq war and so forth. that's exactly the debate and where the near term like ability issues are silly but the long-term historical debate hasn't even begun yet and it's going to be 10, 20, 30 years from now. my own view historians are going to be divided for the reasons you suggested. >> let's get to your side of the table, karl. >> it's interesting, karl. a library is a self-suppression how he sees his presidency and it is completely about 9/11 and completely about the war on terror and very little sensibility of karl rove, of dick cheney. you wouldn't feel that going through the library. this is a president who his own legacy wants fairly separated from his inner circle and very associated with a post 9/11, you know, there is the bull horn and

so forth. that is kind of the theme in the library. >> i think in time presidents get-away from their aids and we know about the presidents and know about fdr and his secretary of war and his secretary of commerce, that happens. i kind of disagree respectivelily -- respectfully with dick here. i think on the question of the iraq war which is the fundamental decision this president made, it is one of the disastrous decisions in our history. we went to war in a wrong country. i see you nodding your head. >> i wrote a book on it. >> exactly. >> it is rare a president takes you to war in the wrong country. what we see at the library, of course, the wonderful moment as he tears up also is the compassionate conservatism that he ran on and we see in aides and the sadness of his presidency is that that compassion and conservatism was totally overwhelming by this insane. there is no other way to put it. this was an insane war that

brought us low economically, morally. we went to war against a guy who had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11. it was a total pretext! it's inexplicable and there you go to cheney and bush and you go to the jewish neocons who wanted to remake the world and maybe i can say that because i'm jewish. >> i'm not really certain you can. >> all right. >> i'm not really sure that you can. >> go ahead. >> it would be much worse if a southern baptist said that. but i think actually some would accuse of you bush syndrome there a grand conspiracy of the neocons and you said jewish neocons they went to a state of context for israel. >> no. >> let me state again. when you were the president of the united states, when you were

the commander in chief of the united states and the united states of america has been hit by terror attacks, a year earlier, and the cia director comes into your white house whose job, responsibility is to track intel every single day and says to you, mr. president, it's a slam dunk, saddam hussein has weapons of mass destruction. you can criticize george w. bush for a lot of things. you can criticize him for not talking to colin powell who is the general that ran the war in the same country a decade earlier. you can say that he should have waited longer, that he should have waited and hoped that sanctions would work. but what you cannot say, karl, is that this was an insane decision totally detached from reality because if you're the president of the united states. let's just play this out. if you're the president of the united states and you've got the cia director and just about

every other intel agency on the globe saying saddam hussein has weapons of mass destruction, what is he saying a decade later? >> i believe every presidency has pretty much one -- by the way, we can -- >> donny, hold on a second. then i'll let you talk. file this under the -- as barack obama said yesterday -- you never know what it's like until you sit in that chair. so don't say it's insane. no, cakarl, with all due respec saying the decision was insane and detached from reality is too easy. me saying it was a really difficult decision, that is relate. if you're sitting in that chair -- >> joe, he was wrong. let me just say.

at the end of the day, we can always, with every wrong decision, whether it's a ceo taking a company, you know, in a toilet or president, the bottom line and to your point, they were very rational reasons he did it, but he was stunningly wrong and so he has to be graded that way. >> let me ask you this, donny. what are they going to say in 2023 what barack obama is doing with syria today. what are we going to say in 2023 that we daytona right now? >> hindsight looking back, we would know. >> of course. >> he was wrong, that simple. >> gene? >> joe, the question that you kind of went past is why would he think that saddam hussein was going to use whatever weapons he had against the united states or u.s. interests. he was an enemy, obviously, but not an enemy with who, at that time, number one, he didn't have

anything to do with 9/11. number two, no indications that there was an imminent threat. north korea has welcomapons of destruction and is led by a crazy person. >> richard, who opposed the war internally, but, rifed, answchar that question. >> i was against it and like everybody else involved i thought iraq had weapons of mass destruction and zero appetite to take any risk. two other reasons america went to war in addition to the one we are talking about. one is the desire after 9/11 to send a message to the world to use richard nixon's phrase, the u.s. was not a pitiful helpless giant. the president wanted to send a message we could still be effective. secondly a lot of his advisers made the argument which he agreed with it would be something we could do in iraq and as a result transform the middle east. he saw this as potentially a

transformational moment that democracy in the middle east would stem from this. why agr i didn't agree with that argument. thinking we all thought saddam hussein possessed welcomapons o mass destruction. i was against it. >> that is what makes is so fascinating and i'm glad the bush library set it up that way. >> when you're talking how tough a decision this was, this was an instant where a president wanted to go to war. he had plenty of time to look at the facts and learn more and listen to hans blix. it wassing for for an ideological remaking of the middle east. there was a pretext about this. you went through a very reasoned thing, except it didn't include the fact this president wanted to accomplish all kinds of side things on the idea that maybe

this guy had weapons of mass destruction. we had plenty of time. this was a rush that was disastrous. >> isn't it fascinating looking back also that more democrats, we forget this too. >> terrible. >> more democrats in the senate supported this go for than supported the first one. >> hillary clinton. almost all of the democrats, they were afraid it was a craven decision that the democrats made and they didn't do their homework. they did not go down there and read those papers. >> gene, as we look back, we also of course, have to look at the fact that democrats in the senate and many democrats in the house who had no vote on it supported george w. bush. in fact, more so did than did during the first. as we judge george w. bush for whatever conspiracy neoconconspiracy we are judging him by, we have to judge democrats in the senate by the

same standard. >> absolutely. they were equally wrong. as i said earlier in the conversation in terms of history it comes down to the president. he is the commander in chief. the democrats are equally to blame who supported it but it's going down as a war. >> >> up next, nbc david gregory and kelly o'donnell. you're watching "morning joe," brewed by starbucks. [ female announcer ] are you sensitive to dairy?

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♪ welcome back to "morning joe" at 26 past of the hour. a beautiful shot of the white house. joining us now from washington, the moderator of "meet the press" david gregory and nbc capitol hill correspondent kelly o'donnell. david, start with you with the

latest news about the possible use of chemical weapons in syria. we were talking last block about how historians will look at the u.s. involvement in syria or lack thereof. right now, though, there is this red line that the president referred to in august. has it been crossed? >> well, what is striking about it is that the white house is saying we are not so sure. they want to confirm exactly what is out there and what has been used. the reality is that syria continues to barrel out of control and the administration, the president has certainly put himself now on record as saying this is a step past which, a point past which now the united states has to try to effect the outcome. you know, the president has said the test for him is whether america can make a difference. and now you see a point at which america has to lead to make that difference. if it's just protecting the chemical weapon sites, if it's trying to put their finger on the scale in terms of getting assad out of power, you know, we

will find out. the lessons from iraq do play out here and the lesson from yesterday at that presidential library plays out which these are very hard decisions and now the president may be facing one that is similar to iraq in that respect. >> what are the option that have to be taken in consideration to lead through this? >> you have to make sure they used chemical weapons as opposed to to release of chem walical weapons. if it's an authorized decision we have to act. our credibility is at stake and the united states cannot let the use of a weapons of mass destruction go unreacted to. iran and others will take notes. the range of potential options is considerable. at a minimum, i would say we should start supplying lethal aid to select syrian oppositionis oppositionists. i think we should have done this already and we should give them

weapons and anti-craft. maybe this will give us a way to get the russians on board. thirdly, i would be in favor of cruise missile sites against things associated with chemicals and possibly against the regime. what i want to avoid is anything involving american troops. i don't want to cross that line. i don't think we want to have american aircraft over syria because pilots would potentially get lost. i don't think it warrants that but we do need to react if we are confident it was an authorized decision on -- >> to do that effectively it may not be possible. kelly o'donnell a strong position led by senator john mccain on capitol hill about getting involved in syria. >> he and others have been saying for many months the united states had waited too long while terrible carnage has been happening. tens of thousands of syrians killed. you also have some democrats who have said that the u.s. needed

to do more and i think richard in a good position to talk about the options because when we talk about u.s. involvement, very often people leap to the idea of u.s. war with american personnel on the ground and lawmakers are certainly not talking about a step that far. but all of these other options, i can remember a morning when we were here on "morning joe" and mike rogers was outlining a number of concerns he had really making an appeal to the white house to try to take some action. this is an important point that red line that the president certainly stated is something that many members of congress are pointing to. the big question is that whole sort of anxiety about the level of certainty that the u.s. has about what has actually happened here. this is going to unfold pretty quickly. there will be a lot of political pressures for sure. >> david, i think richard laid out very clearly the options for president obama. you follow the president as close as anybody. if you're a betting man, which

way does he go? >> i think he goes to the u.n. for a start. let's put us in the context of iraq because it's on everybody's mind the last couple of days. the idea is minimize the u.s. role potentially any troop involvement in syria which nobody envisions at this point. one challenge i have for richard it seems to me this idea providing lethal aid to the opposition is not at all an easy proposition. i mean, a question of divisions among the opposition. who is doing what? the prospect of jihadist groups infiltrating the opposition. how do you go about that? i think a real test whether air power is stronger. look. this is what makes it so hard when you are a president who says there will be consequences. and there is a red line past which you must not crosses. you're dealing with actors who then go ahead and cross it. what are you going to do? because it's knots just the end game in syria but it's north korea is watching and iran is watching and watching to see what this president does. >> richard? >> you're exactly right, david. the problem is there is no good

options at this point. acting or not acting and both bad. you don't want to get too far involved' the risks drawn into something that is not worth it. on the other hand, not acting as you say would have repercussions in north korea and iran and giving arms to opposition is risky. bad guys there. on the other hand there are some guys who aren't bad and you you've got to choose your peja stojakovic at this point. no good options but not acting is as much of an option with as many consequences as anything you might actually do. >> i would just say i think whatever you feel about iraq, there is a cost to massive u.s. action, particularly in this part of the world. >> fair enough. >> that is what america will deal with here. the political class will deal with. does anybody really have the stomach for this kind of intervention? the president has got to know the answer is going to be no. it makes that political challenge take much harder if he feels that action as richard says, is necessary in some fashion. >> that's exactly what we were talking about last block. our final moments.

i want to go to kelly because it looks like something actually happened on capitol hill pertaining to the faa and the airports. the senate did something. >> and one quick note on the other point. king abdullah of jordan were on the hill yesterday talking to lawmakers and you snow syria was a part of that conversation. if you are flying, you're going to be relieved to know there has been some action. what happened is democrats and republicans came together late last night and they are giving the secretary of transportation some flexibility that he has not had under the across the board cuts that we have called the sequester. he'll be able to move money around in his budget which means air traffic controllers who have been furloughed will be back on the job. and that means the kind of delays that have really crippled a lot of people's travel. a lot of democrats did want to see a special deal carved out for one group because they were hoping to leverage change to

roll back a lot of the cuts across the board that affect things like head-start and some of these sort of social programs that have been hit hard but this got a lot of attention quickly where you had travelers who were infuriated so they came together last night and expect the house will pass it unanimously and the president will be able to put this into action. >> what is coming up on "meet the press" on sunday? >> senator john mccain is my guest and tony blair with some perspective on home-grown terror and syria as well. >> david, thank you so much. still ahead the new issue of "the atlantic" says we will never run out of oil. why the fossil fuel boom is good for america and bad for global security and dangerous for the environment. rahhhhhh!

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in the obama administration was, in his words, a, quote, deeply disillusioning experience. why former state department official vali -- >> how do you think people at "morning joe" feel? seriously? who you want to be disillusioned? welcome to our hell, my friend!

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the surviving suspect in the boston marathon bombing is is out of the hospital and in a prison this morning. the u.s. marshall service says 19-year-old dzhokhar tsarnaev moved for a medically facility in massachusetts. chilling details surrounding his alleged plot to attack the heart of new york city after the bombings in boston. according to city officials, the two marathon bombing suspects discussed driving to new york to detonate their remaining explosives in a spontaneous assault on times square. at the time, their arsenal included five pipe bombs and one pressure cooker bomb similar to the ones used in last monday's deadly attack. police say the younger brother had visited times square once last year but their plan fell

apart after realizing the scar they car-jacked last thursday night did not have enough gas in it to get them to manhattan. a senior official described the plan as undeveloped and aspiration at most. federal officials following a premiranda of dzhokhar. it appears the younger brother has stopped answering questions about the bombing since he was read his rights on monday night he was questioned over the course of two days and answering questions mostly in writing due to the severe injury to his neck. we will be following that story. still ahead our conversation with breakout star chadwick bozeman on his role as jackie robinson. up next former state department adviser for afghanistan and pakistan, vali nasr. you're watching "morning joe" brewed by starbucks. ♪

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47 past of the hour. here with is former state department adviser for afghanistan and pakistan and the dean of john hopkins university school of advanced international studies, vali nasr. did i get it right this time, guys some he's out with a new book "the incidenceable nation

the american foreign policy in retreat." good to have you on the show. >> thank you. >> we mentioned earlier your time at the white house has left you a little disillusioned. would you like to explain that? were we correct in that chark characterization? >> you are. i worked on the afghanistan policy. the assumption was after the bush administration time which we were covering that there would be a shift on focusing on engagement and diplomacy. when we were work on the war in afghanistan we found a political solution to the war could not find their voice heard and ultimately the administration initially focused on importing iraq strategy into afghanistan lock stock and barrel shall which is a fully reforced counterinsurgency and that is conflict wall to the policy making and i think left us in a

worse place. >> srichard saying don't put so many troops on the ground. the more you put in the less you will be able to sustain them. don't sprint in afghanistan. afghanistan is a marathon. put fewer troops in and put your shoulder to the diplomacy. take diplomacy seriously. try to find some kind of a political solution that when you leave afghanistan, there is some structure in place. >> what did president obama ignore holbrook's suggestions? >> the way the policy making around the strategic view set up did not allow that option to be even discussed. >> why? why is that? >> i think there was a lot of domestic pressure but i think also it was the opinion of his advisers that -- the way in which they collated information and option he should is not be considering that seriously. >> how did politics play into it? it's so much easier for a republican president to say know

when he decides to say no to the generals than it is a democratic president. we were around this table four years ago saying do not triple the number of troops in afghanistan. when richard holbrooke was here, when he was here, we gave him hell because he came out and when richard holbrooke was here, we gave him hell because he came out and was reading the administration line. do you think a lot of it had to do with the fact that barack obama was seen as a liberal democratic president? couldn't be seen as weak on terror and that's why he had to listen to the generals and triple the number of troops there? >> that's actually right, but the point is that he should have at least put on the options that he was considering on the table. at the same time, i think has he empowered democratic, liberals, diplomats like holbrooke who would have had a much better time dealing with the general than would be the case. so his strategy, strategy of his advisers was to muzzle those democratic statesmen who could

make a case against out of the military and that made him more vulnerable i think and in the end, he clearly didn't like the option of putting troops in afghanistan. he kept going back and asking more questions and as we see the first opportunity he found, he reversed and tried to finish off our infatuation with counter insurgent. we answered the pray with the wrong foot. >> richard haas, boy, the old, old saying that generals are always fighting the last war, never has applied more tightly than the counterterrorism. counter insurgency strategy that was pulled out of western iraq and sent to afghanistan. >> i think history will be pretty critical with the idea of getting ambitious. say richard holbrooke and people

like yourself got their way. why do you think it would have succeeded given karzai after the afghanistan government, the ten nasty of the taliban and the sang ware they were providing against us. >> it would be very difficult. but we didn't, with we weren't even willing to try. so, in the end, we tried the surge. it didn't work. and we're just leaving basically without trying to put together even a minimal political structure in place. and i think we've owed it to ourselves to have considered the diplomatic option seriously. the president should spent time in the national security council debating it. the fact it was not even on the table, you either have it fully resource counterinsurgency option or the other option, life with counterterrorism, in a democratic administration, which was going to reverse the bush u policy, we didn't even consider

this option. >> but even if it were consider having adopted, you're not confident it would have worked. >> a chance to be able to stay in afghanistan longer, which means that we would have put enough forces that would be sustainable. you search too much, you fold faster. because it's so expensive and it raises the political temperature at home. but i think the wrong strategy, driven dmesically. >> a factual point first. did hillary clinton and holbrooke were shut out of policymaking because of the peculiar structure of white house policy, which really a small handful of people, biden, the president, national security adviser, she was not at the table for the conception of foreign policy. but i'm struck by our whole hour here. the last hour, we've had one -- and that really goes back to one

of the great state, one of the great relations. what happens when a great religion is partly hijacked by a huge number of people within that religion who use that religion for idealogical, murderous purposes. every discussion we've had goes back to that. back to the bush library, back to iraq. back to afghanistan. maybe we ought to be looking at why this is so difficult when this is not about a few maniacal adherence. this is about hundreds of thousands or millions of people who have embraced a murderous response to those of us in the west. what do we do? >> let to your first point, i think it was completely out of policymaking, but put in a position to have to fight warfare. we have a structure at the white

house, which is designed to protect the president from certain options. you see that also with syria. also as a problem, it's not a matter of personality. we're going to have problems not only in the middle east, but in asia and other places as well. now, the issue of the problems with islam is very clear. but we cannot wash our hands in the middle east countries and we cannot lead there militarily. it doesn't work. we can't say we're willing to send a trillion dollars promoting democracy in iraq and afghanistan, but when the middle east is going democratic, and they're actually doing it, we don't want to even spend three months worth of the money we spend in afghanistan helping egypt's economy turn around and we're sort of a no show when negotiating with the imf or when syria's falling apart, that we really don't have a dog in this

fight. we don't see syria as important. this is sort of from one extreme almost to another and i think that's doesn't give us really a good handle of even dealing with the problems. but the bottom line is that we cannot walk away from this regime. >> the book is "the dispensable nation." thank you. >> mika has already underlined d all the nice things you said about her father. >> amazing. they all do the same thing. they don't look at the cover. th they go to the back. >> united states, washington and israel. language goes from there. >> mika already went back to all the kind things you said about dr. brzezinski. underlined and circled them. >> my dad --

>> and circled mailer's name in the index and said, caught you, and sure enough, but -- >> thank you very much. thank you so much. >> on monday, great to see you. on monday, way too early and "morning joe" will be marking six months since superstorm sandy devastated the eastern sea board. we'll be live in some of the hardest hit spots. up next, in the wake of the boston bombings, the political debate unfolds on capitol hill over how the government should handle domestic terror cases. "morning joe" will be right pack. ♪ [ sneezes ] [ male announcer ] if you have yet to master the quiet sneeze... [ sneezes ] [ male announcer ] you may be an allergy muddler. try zyrtec®. it gives you powerful allergy relief. and zyrtec® is different than claritin® because zyrtec® starts working at hour 1 on the first day you take it. claritin® doesn't start working until hour 3.

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good morning. we take a live look at new york city. time to wake up. we have john meacham, harold frd j . >> and it appears the syrian government has used chemical agents against its own citizens. the white house told lawmakers yesterday that u.s. sbel where she knows agencies have determined the quote some degree of varying confidence that the assad regime has employed chemical warfare at least twice in the attempt to tip the civil war in their favor. in august, president obama opened the door to potentially increasing america's involvement in the conflict while speakinging about the so-called

red line of chemical weapons. >> we have been very clear to the assad regime, but also to other players on the ground that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of kchemicl weapons moving around who were being utilizeded. that would change by calculus. we're monitoring that situation very carefully. we will put together a range of contingency plans. we have communicated in no uncertain terms with every player in the region that that's a red line for us and that there would be enormous consequences if we start seeing movement on the chemical weapons front or the use of chemical weapons. >> that was august, yesterday. secretary of defense, chuck hagel, spoke about the findings. >> we need all the facts. we need all the information. as to a red line, my role as secretary of defense is to give

the president options on a policy issue. that's a policy issue. and we'll be prepared to do that. as such time that the president requires options. >> meanwhile, senator john mccain, who has been a leading voice for u.s. military involvement main syria, has expressed disappointment at the obama. >> he slaughtered 80,000 people while we've watched. it's been one of the most shameful challenges in american history. >> you know, mika, the books are going to be written. five years from now, ten years from now. how the united states did nothing while 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80,000 syrians were slaughtered. we know that's going to happen. of course, those books won't

have the feel for the time that we were just coming out of two wars, a decade of war and we were exhausted, but that is the case and i think at this point, this really leaves the president with few options. as far as keeping -- he can't have a hands off approach. >> no, absolutely not. jane harmon, what are some of the stumbling blocks in terms of jumping in full on in this problem? >> first, i saw the iraq wmd intelligence failure up close and personal. i read the intelligence. i talked to analysts. i believe i believed the intelligence. it was wrong. that was a long time ago. we have improved the way we do intelligence and this time, no kidding, while there is a range of certainty across the intelligence community, they all believe this era of chemical

weapons and it's time to roll out the contingency plan. this is what i would do. first, we have to get u.n. inspectors in there. first, syria was going to allow them in, then change d their mid ch they have to come in. in order for them to come in safely, people on the fwround have to protect them. that means that we have to align with the region and others to help arm the people we trust. i know we trust is a kind of funny phrase, but we can select among the groups out there and help them protect the inspectors on the ground and help them and the inspectors secure the chemical weapons. we can't do it by air and i think we are not going to go in on the ground, so we have to enable those on the ground to get the job done. if we do those two things quickly and if we have conversations with the russias, who by now, i would hope would

begin to decide that it's time to change this regime and save another hundred thousand people from getting slaughtered, i think we can get somewhere. >> john meacham, yesterday, a library was dedicated in fact for a president who responded to the challenges of the -- 9/11. and responded in some ways that obviously history is frowned upon. ten years later, you've got barack obama, who has waited much longer to get engaged and syria than a president would in regular times, but he's also framed by ten years of war and war of republic. that said, if chemical weapons have been used and if the red line has been crossed and this is the president who said before, assad must go, the president can't bluff anymore. he said assad must go. then did nothing. he said if there are chemical weapons, we've got to do something. he can't bluff the second or third time. >> there's not a lot of room

once you lay down -- and it seems much clearer. the way in which the president, whoever the p president was frames the conversation is decidedly different and for people who think it might not matter who the president is, here's exhibit a about why it m matters. if a president chooses to make an existential question, lives are at stake and vital security interests of the united states and so, it will depend on what the president does now. >> harold, there is some language in the statement from the white house yesterday that gives everybody a little pause. which is varying degrees of confidence which is can't say for certain what it is or how much of it there is. the next thing you have to look at is taking action. that's a very loaded term. what does that mean exactly? putting boots on the ground?

arm i arming the rebels? air power? strikes from aircraft carriers? first of all, check out the intelligence. if you believe it's a problem and you believe the red line is crossed, then what does the united states do? >> i think congresswoman harmon, her assessment and prescription for action is probably marked outline. i don't believe that the white house is going to sit idly by. i think john's description of what we saw yesterday with president bush, how he made decisions and stood by them and moved forward, this president, whatever you want to say about him, hasn't been as strong, as resolute as any president on national security matters as someone you would call morally dubious. the ball is now in the president's court. they have defined what action, what has to happen for action to take place. now, they have to define what that action will be and i hope

they follow the lines that congresswoman harmon has laid out. >> other headlines this morning, there are chilling details surrounding the tsarnaev brothers' plot to attack the heart of new york city after causing so much damage in boston. according to city officials, marathon bombing suspects discuss eed driving to new yorko detonate their remaining explosives in an assault on times square. at the time, their arsonal including five pipe bombs and one pressure cooker bomb. police say the younger brother had visited times square at least once last year, however, their plan fell apart after realizing the mercedes they carjacked didn't have enough gas to get them to manhattan. a senior official described as undeveloped. federal officials learned about the plan following a pre miranda

rights investigation. it appears the younger brother has stopped answering questions since he was read his rights monday night. that is hard to debate among lawmakers over how the government should handle domestic terror cases. >> we can't have in a case like this, the judiciary deciding because it's on tv and it might look bad for them, to allow the public safety exe deemed legal. it dangerous to the greater community and we've got to get to the bottom of this and fix this right now. >> tsarnaev was reportedly questioned by investigators for up to 16 hours over the course of two days, answering questions mostly in writing due to the severe injury to his neck. >> jane harmon, there would be some people that would look at

the fact that the plot in times square was foiled because they didn't have enough gas in their tank to get down to new york as a sign, as a good sign, that this was happen baked plot. it actually scares me that guys this ill prepared could be running around with bombing. that's the sort of thing you're not going to pick up chatter. you're not going to pick up clues from overseas. this is the sort of random violence that we should really be chilled by, even more so that if they had some contacts overseas. >> i agree. mike hayden said the other day, the former director of the cia, that this is the new normal. in this case, i think we will learn that some mistakes were made. we should have been on these guys earlier than we were, but this type of thing, self-radicalized people, in this

case, maybe this fellow, misha, had a lot to do with radicalizing these kids. but who go on the internet where you can find the recipe for building bombs or small weapons can maybe sometimes get lucky and pull it off in this country. they have to be right once. we have to be right 100% of the time, but on something that mika said just before, joe. she said that mike rogers among others perhaps are complaining that this fellow was mirandized. a liberal named george will had an op-ed in the "washington post" yesterday talking about incarcerating the japanese in world war ii and made the point if we live by our values and follow the rule of law, we do better. when we look back on all of this, the way we handle led the investigation and the prosecution of this fellow, who for sure, i think based on the evidence that we know or who

likely will be convicted, will be a model for the world and it will show people that we follow the rule of law here and that's what we have to do. >> even if congresswoman harmon is talking, we're getting news that dzhokhar tsarnaev has been transported from beth israel hospital to prison. his physical condition apparently has been upgraded to the point where they've taken him out of the hospital. he's been moved to a prison in massachusetts. one of the people we've heard about is this guy who was carjacked last thursday night. a 26-year-old chinese man in this black mercedes suv. he had come to boston to go to grad school and now is working on a start-up. lives in boston. gets carjacked around 11:00 last thursday night and is taken on a 90-minute ride. it was reported 30 minutes. and you have to talk about this guy has a key to these two

brothers being caught because he said finally after this 90 minutes, they realized they don't have enough gas to get to manhattan. they pull up to a gas station. it's cash only, so they have to go in. one of the brothers has to go in to pay. at that point, this guy who calls himself danny makes a decision. even though the other brother is in the backseat with a gun, that he's going to bolt. this is life and death, so he unbuckles his seat belt, he said he ran at an angle that he knew it would be difficult for the brother to shoot him. runs across the street to another gas station, tells that gas station to call 911 and that's the point to which the police know there are two guys in a stolen suv, he left his iphone in the car so it could be traced. it's a remarkable account. if you have a chance to read the boston globe. about a two and a half hour interview. he is critical. >> incredible. >> that's when everything

started unraveling for them and there was the moment where his friend kept calling him up and he said if you speak in mandarin, say a word in mandarin, i'm going to kill you right here. and so then you get to the part where the brother was doing an english mandarin translation to tell him what to text back. and the guy just kept his head and was responsible for these two terrorists being caught. >> and the reason the iphone was left in the car, the two brothers wanted to listen to music, so he plugged in his iphone to the car, so when he left, the phone was not on his body, it was plugged in the car. >> runs across the street. >> it's amazing that two amateurs like this could pull off something as monumental in some ways and i think it speaks to a new normal, which i find and i think i share your

sentiment here. far more alarming than anything else. deval patrick said what he found so interesting was the next day, the young tsarnaev went to school. went to the gym. went and partied with friends. as if nothing had happened. how do you track that? >> law enforcement community going forward, how do you not only track and detect it, but what steps can be taken to prevent this going forward? just an enormous challenge for law enforcement and officials going forward. >> one of the tragedies though is president kennedy saw this. if someone wants to trade their life for mine, there's no way that i can be protected. men with guns change history. whether it's 1914 or dallas in 1963 or memphis in 1968 and almost always, the day before and you broke in and said this guy or these people are going to do this, everybody would go, oh, come on, they could never pull this off. >> still ahead, marking 30 years

since the launch of modern education reform. what's working and what's not? the founding of harlem village academy joins us. and a boom could spell big trouble for saudi arabia. the atlantic senate. >> are we not supposed to say that? >> on how new technology could enflame tensions. >> i want to win. >> there would be trouble. >> nobody wants to see it. but first, here's bill karins with a check on the forecast. >> we've got smiles all around through the midwest today. especially in the northern plains. they're the ones that had all that snow the last three weeks. today is your reward day to get outside. minneapolis, through the dakotas and throughout northern rockies. temperatures right now, about 15 degrees warmer. right now than it was yesterday. minneapolis, 13 for you and all that warm air is heading to the

north. now, as far as the rain goes today, it's mostly focused in missouri from kansas city to st. louis down to northern arkansas. that's all going to slide into areas of kentucky and tennessee as we go throughout the weekend. also, a chance for thunderstorms in oklahoma city to tulsa down to dallas, but look at the warm air. billings at 73. by far, the warmest you've been in a long time. and areas like minneapolis up to 68 beautiful degrees and it gets better in the northern plains. look at this map on saturday. despite the fact we're going to have the rain in the southeast, this is the warmest weather map i've shown since the end of last summer, so very, very nice spring weekend in so many spots that have struggled and sunday, we still hold on to our warmth. no signs of anymore of that cold winter stuff. all retreating back up into canada. you're watching "morning joe." have a great weekend.

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all right, joining us now, editor and chief of the atlantic. what are you talking about? >> you know what? he can say it out loud. >> we were discussing -- >> i'm marshall. >> mr. brian shactman was mentioning that a person there had made a lot of money, but

then i said you have to live there -- >> okay, the editor and chief, james bennett. the story explains why we will never run out of oil. donny deutsch is back with us. >> every time i quote this story -- that protects drunkards and the united states of america. can you believe this? seven years ago, we were told we were going to be out of natural gas within ten years. now, there's an infinate supply. revolutionized america's america. >> even the big oil companies called this one wrong. >> talk about oil and before, let's first of all, just for a minute or two, to wave my usa

flag and to say we're number one and to hell with the middle east and to stick it to opec. let's do that first, then you can tell me why that's short sided. >> we have been listening -- >> we tend to do that here. >> it's been a great conversation. >> when you listen -- >> it's been a great conversation about presidential decision making, iraq, through syria and carl bernstein made the observation that one team has been religion. i think the other theme has been energy and the consequences, big decisions and you go back to 1911, winston churchill with was first lord of the admiral team and made the decision to switch prisen's navy on to oil and it was a really bold decision at the time. very controversial. because great britain had a lot coal. where was it going to get oil? the middle east. it changed britain's foreign

policy. led them to carve iraq out of ottoman empire. led to all the development and sorrow that attended the kind of oil century we've been living in. >> the impact not only we tend to think about the impact. you think about manufacturing the united states, chief energy costs over the next 20, 30, 40 years, but foreign policy is going to be dramatically impacted. we went to iraq, sudan second. there's a reason we keep going back to the middle east. >> there is a reason and the fracking with all the concerns about the chemicals in the ground, fracking has dramatically changed energy. and we're talking about the u.s. being energy independent within 20 years now and possibly being the largest petroleum producer in the world at least briefly. >> nobody would have believed

that five years. >> no. and the larger story is that for decades now, we've been hearing that we're about to hit peak oil, that we're about to run out of these natural resources and we keep finding new ways to squeeze more energy out of the planet. >> so, what's the downside. scare us now. does this make saudi arabia less stable? >> yeah. first, the next energy boom, which is part of the focus of our peace, is also on the horizon by the way, which is there's a global race under way now to exploit a new resource calleded methane hydrate, natural gas that's trapped at the bottom of the ocean. if that turns out, resources going to fundamentally change the entire system. >> why is that? >> because this stuff is all over the place. estimates that there's twice as much of it as all other fossil fuels combined.

it would not only break the strangle hold of the middle east, but empower all sorts of countries around the world to develop their own energy supplies. that sounds like a good thing and it probably is, but again, a theme of this morning is we have to be humble about predicting the future because you don't know the consequences. the fact is a more distributed energy future could be scary. there's a restraining influence that comes with needing to worry about your supply line, needing to have good relationships with other nations to assure you'll be able to get the energy you need. >> but i thought that's what really driven some of our troubles. >> it has. >> we see this with terror. the more technology is available to 8 billion people, the more anarchy and dangerous the world becomes. the world exists with ben ef lens and false power. as problematic that is in oil --

>> benevolent -- >> you seem like an upper east side. >> i'm just saying the world does not exist with some centralized power system, that when you spread too much power across for many, although in theory, that sounds wonderful, whether it's oil or text messagmessag message, you're setting up a more dangerous technology. >> you're worth hundreds of millions of dollars to live on the upper east side. you don't want power to be distributed. >> i want the world to be safe. >> brian shactman, speak for the many. >> there's a business side to it beyond that. you talked about the conversion from cole to oil and you want to say is cole dead, but we still have to convert to natural gas and all that stuff in the bottom of the ocean, we would still need to find a way to utilize it. talk about natural gas and what we've seen the convergence

start, but it's going to be a huge shift to be able to get that fully into our culture. >> yeah, it has started. they've now identified three quarters more natural gas reserves in the last ten years than believed to exist in the u.s. and that's part of what's taken carbon dioxide levels back not seen since the mid '90s. that's all good news and creating this possibility of energy independence for the u.s. the flip side is it's a greenhouse gas. we haven't talked about climate yet. that's the really scary part of this, is that we're going to continue to warm the planet. this is better in many ways. methane burns cleaner. natural gas burns cleaner. part of the argument of the peace is how are we going to treat this moment. are are we going to use this as a bridge fuel that one way or another will eventually help us wean ourselves off carbon or are

we just going to burn this stuff until we run, you know -- >> why do women win elections? >> well, it's, both parties are are now out there. it's really interesting. recruiting women candidates, really putting a heavy emphasis on trying to run women and one of the reasons polling shows is that voters, male and female, automatically regard female candidates as outsiders. at least compared to male candidates. simply by virtue of being women. >> i think -- proved that this week. that you can ignore 94% of your constituents. >> i'm sorry. >> i am a brand first. >> that is fascinating though. it is really tough to run against a woman. i did it in my first campaign.

it's, it is a difficult, difficult thing to do. especially if you're a meat head like me. >> right. okay. >> well, this is fascinating. >> we will never run out of oil. >> thank god. u.s.a.! >> oh, my gosh, james bennett, thank you. >> the next american century. >> still ahead from blockbuster film, chadwick boseman, what he says about portraying jackie robinson and deborah kenny with her report card on american education reform. more "morning joe" in just a moment. >> thank you.

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zblncht today marks the 30th anniversary of a nation at risk. a landmark on education reform commissioned by president reagan and joining us now with a look at where things stand three decades later, the founder and ceo of harlem village academies, deborah kenny. also the author of the book "born to rise a story of children and teachers reaching their highest potential." >> reagan asked the question of jimmy carter, with are we better

off today than four years ago? are we better off today than when this report came out? >> i think we are now a nation in crisis. >> why? >> wbecause we are now in an economy that is is completely based on education. it's a knowledge economy that the future of the country, national security and the economy, not to mention the moral fiber of the nation, is all based on education. >> so back to my question, are we compared to 30 years ago, when a nation at risk came out, is our education system, k-12, better or worse? >> let's first talk about the progress. the public is is more aware that the education system is failing, right? so, that's a good thing. and people are demanding accountability from educators. so that's a good thing and i think the other good thing is that there's been a whole wave

of entrepreneurship. charter schools are started by people who want to do something different and so, that, all those are progress. >> that's on the positive side. what about how the kids are doing in the classrooms? >> well, that we have a very long way to go and i think that the fact that the common course standards from vaugt the country together, that's a good thing. but i have a concern, actually, about the direction of education reform itself and the feature. >> look at that. american 50-year-old kids versus the world. we're number 14 in reading. number 17 in science. >> that's right. >> number 25 in math. what is holding us back? >> what's going on? >> right now, i think the education reform is based on this paradigm of controlling teachers. we ward and punishment and evaluation. this is what i consider only the first phase of education reform.

that everybody has finally agreed that someone does need to be held accountable. but the way it's being executed is misguided. it's very top down and controlling. you know, you'll get a reward if you do this, a punishment if you do that. and controlling teachers and through policy, i think we need some movement to a new phase. instead of controlling people, what we need to do is create a culture that develops people. this is what every leader of any enterprise understands. we have to create a culture that brings out passion. >> how do you develop great teachers? >> you have to give people much more freedom and autonomy. they have to be accountable for themselves. coming into the room with a checklist, you did good, you did bad, you're going to get $3,000 more if you perform these 17 tasks. you have to think of schools as a team and a cohesive unit. you can't be evaluating every individual person from a government system and think

about it as there's a leader of the team and a complete culture, just like in any organization and give those teachers more respect, more support and far more development. you know, a lot of our states and cities are spending tens of millions of dollars developing circumstance lum. we ha curriculum. we have to develop people. >> the foundation, bill and me lynn da gates spend so much money on class size, doing all these other things and at the end of the day, they found out it starts with the teachers. getting the teacher in the classroom. >> my wife's in education. i started my career as a teacher. these classrooms in public schools, they don't get paid as much money and the kids don't respect them. whether it's competition for better teachers, i feel like the culture is against teachers right now.

it's not attractive. kids are going to throw spit balls at you half the time -- >> you were a big target. actually drinking whisky. do you expect respect for that? >> no. i'm the exceptional case. >> it's like you want people to gravitate toward this career. >> think about it. what attracts talent? the opportunity to make a difference, first of all, and the opportunity to create something. to be creative. to be innovative, to do things your own way. so, for example, you run this show the way you want to run it. they'll be sending directions in your ear and you'll ignore it. i know how it works with you guys. you use your own instincts. you make split second judgments. you know, all the time, about how things are going to go. >> bill griffin empowers us. our leader empowers us to do

what we want to do when we want to do it. >> the teaching profession needs to be elevated and so, you know, the other thing is, the other thing is we need a more powerful vision for what we're looking for in terms of -- what kinds of education are we looking for? and you don't hear a lot of talk about that. >> so, if you think deborah makes sense, then it would make sense to you she's receiving the disruptive innovation award at the tribecca film festival today. >> thank you so much. >> come on, man. >> up next -- thank you. >> you're doing invedable work. >> in the film, actor chadwick bozeman. we'll be right back.

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♪ >> just here to play ball. well, hell, we would have won that son of a gun if the corn stalks would have held out. we just ran out of ammunition. >> we'll win next time. >> ain't going to be a next time, jackie. all we got's right here. >> thank you, jackie. >> what are you thanking me for? >> i got family up there from louisville. i need them to know. i need them to know who i am. >> all right, number 1. >> playing ball.

>> play ball! >> playing ball. maybe tomorrow, we'll all wear 42. that way they won't tell us apart. >> what a great scene. >> a scene from the new movie "42," the life story of jackie robinson. with us now, the man who plays jackie robinson in the film, chadwick boseman and the screen writer. tom brokaw's with us. ken burns. can you believe how well it's doing? >> i know, we can't believe it. i think it's a testament to his legacy. and what he means to so many different people. he wasn't just a baseball player and he touched people in all walks of life and a testament to his wife, rachel, who has continued his legacy, so you know, i give credit where the credit is due. >> you know, brian, i was just talking to ken burns, a guy who

knows something about make iing films. he said he was involved in a project in the early 1990s about jackie robinson and walked away from it. and says he's glad he did because you guys got this story right. >> yeah, we just had to get out of the way of it. not insert ourselves into it. you couldn't invent it and like i said, we just got out of the way and then let him rumble past us. >> tom brokaw talked about the importance of this movie and talked about your memory of jackie robinson. >> well, for me, he was the defining hero of my youth. when he was first signed by the dodgers, my parents and grandparents, who were real working class people and knew that kind of difficulty in life came to me and said we're going to be for the dodgers from now on and as a result, i worshipped jackie robinson. no other word to describe that.

>> what was it about jackie rob robinson that made him the right man to be this hero? to break the color barrier in baseball? what was it about his temperment? >> a combination of things. it's ironic because he had a fierce, competitive temper, yet branch ricky asked him to check that temper. i think it's the ek wii poise that occurred between who he was and who he would have liked to have been. which makes him one of the great figures not just in sports, in american life, but one of the great figures of all times because he turned the other cheek. >> i think this story is important because it lets you really look at the gaps that we've closed. from then to president obama's election to like now where it maybe there's some kids that just happened that way. >> yeah. >> but i think it's important to remember this distance that

we've closed because i think there's some more steps that need to be taken on all sides. >> when we see a hero, where we invest ourselves and we say, i could be this and barack obama would not be here without jackie robinson. >> for me, the other lessons of it. we were all aware of the racial overtones of what was going on within the discrimination that still exists, when he died at 53, i remember doing an on air obituary in which i said in the concluding sentence that when i realized at the age of 10 that i may have been denied all of his extraordinary talents and all that he meant in my life simply because of the color of his skin, it told me all i needed to know about racism and how lucky i was at that age to have been born a white person because you win the lottery in those days.

didn't have to go through all that. and it stayed with me the rest of my days. it was very emotional for me to watch this film. a friend of mine, i think it's the best thing he's ever done. amazinging. >> he channelled branch ricky perfectly. >> thank you, guys. tom, thank you. ken, thank you so much. stick with it. >> go out there and paint the town myself. >> and brian, thank you so much. congratulations. on a great, great movie. a great success. the film is "42." it is playing in theatres nationwide. more "morning joe" when we return.

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on monday, way too early and "morning joe" will be marking six months since superstorm sandy devastated the earn sea board. we're going to be live from some of the hardest hit locations for a look at how the region is still struggling to recover. governor christie will join us along with some of the people who lost so much in that storm. coming up next, what, if anything, did we learn today.

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red or blue? ♪ welcome back to "morning joe." time to talk about what we learned today. we learned so much it's hard to narrow it down. >> you want to disruptive innovation.

you're not getting it. deborah kenny's getting it today. >> maybe we can get it next time. >> maybe. >> a lot of people are very concerned. oh, my lord and now, we find out that kelly ayotte and heidi will be on the show. >> don't lock kelly into the heidi camp. i ignore 94% of my people. kelly hasn't said no yet though after her first appearance here on "morning joe" with you, i don't know why she would ever come back. that was terrible. awful. still -- come on. >> i'm going to change. after accusation that i drink bourbon when i teach -- in the back office of "morning joe." i learned that. >> really. fair amount. >> really? >> there's moon shine there, too. all right. wrap it up. have a good weekend, everybody. >> hope you guys have a great, great weekend. spring at least is coming.

finally up here to us. you have a great, great -- >> three. >> what are you doing? >> counting you down. one. have a wonderful weekend. >> here's chuck todd with "the daily rundown." >> red lined. did syria's leader intentionally use chemical weapons on his own people? we'll have the latest on what the u.s. is prepared to do if he did and what questions remain unanswered as president obama faces a potential tipping point for a military confrontation. back in boston, the surviving bombing suspect gets moved from the hospital to a federal prison as leaders from new york city detail what the two brothers allegedly planned to do if they had made it to manhattan and no more dynasties? the wife of one bush president and mother to another, says the country doesn't need another bush. but is she really only talking about her family? good morning from