2:30 out west, and this is "way too early." ♪ good morning. it's friday december 18th, i'm jonathan capehart. we start with breaking news this morning. pope francis has cleared the way for mother teresa to become a saint. the pontiff marked his 79th birthday yesterday by approving a decree that the nunn who had performed a second miracle which full sainthood requires. no official date has been set yet for the canonization but the italian media speculate the ceremony will occur the first week of next september, to coincide with the anniversary of her death. mother teresa, a nobel peace prize winner, died in 1997, at age 87. the man who purchased the assault rifles later used in the

san bernardino shooting made his first appearance in federal court yesterday. enrique marquez, a former next door neighbor and longtime friend of syed rizwan farook was charged with crimes including conspiring to support terrorism. while officials say there is no evidence marquez collaborated with farook and his wife in the shooting earlier this month that left 14 dead, court papers show marquez almost immediately confessed his connection to the crimes in a distressed 911 call, saying he felt suicidal and saying, quote, my neighbor, he did the san bernardino shooting. and he told the operator that farook had, quote, used my gun in the shooting, and, quote, they can trace all the guns back to me. nbc justice correspondent pete williams has more on the charges. >> reporter: two weeks after the shooting attack that left 14 people dead and injured 22, federal prosecutors filed charges against 24-year-old enrique marquez, a friend and former next door neighbor of one of the attackers, syed farook.

prosecutors say in late 2011 the two men plotted to attack riverside community college where both had been students with pipe bombs and guns. the fbi says they also talked about throwing pipe bombs to stop traffic on a crowded section of a state highway during rush hour, then to shoot at people stuck in their cars. marquez is also charged with violating firearms laws when he bought the two assault rifles in 2011 and 2012 that ended up being used in the san bernardino shooting. under federal law, it's illegal for someone to buy a gun knowing the purchase is being made for someone else. the gun store form even warns you cannot acquire a firearm for another person. the charges filed say marquez and farook continued to plan for terror attacks by going to firing ranges. but that the two stopped plotting together in late 2012, after some unrelated terror arrests in southern california. and there's nothing in charges to indicate that marquez knew about the plans for the shooting in san bernardino earlier this month. he's also charged with defrauding the government with a sham marriage.

officials say farook's brother, also called syed, is married to a ukrainian woman whose sister is married to marquez. fbi agents questioned marquez for at least a week after the shooting. they say he answered questions voluntarily, and did not request a lawyer. president obama was briefed on the national threat picture at the counterterrorism center, and said there are no known threats of attacks. he urged people to get on with the holidays. >> we cannot give in to fear or change how we live our lives. because that's what terrorists want. that's the only leverage that they have. >> reporter: earlier this week, the bodies of syed farook and his wife tashfeen malik, who were killed in a police shoot-out, were buried in the muslim tradition at an undisclosed cemetery miles from san bernardino. >> and federal court documents reveal that marquez admitted on facebook a month before the shootings that he was involved in terrorism and might go to prison. president obama will hold his annual year-end press conference later today before taking off on a two-week family

vacation to his home state of hawaii. on his way he'll stop in san bernardino, california, where he'll meet privately with the families of the december 2nd attack. meanwhile, here's what the president had to say yesterday, after a briefing at the national counterterrorism center. >> most of all, we cannot give in to fear, or change how we live our lives, because that's what terrorists want. that's the only leverage that they have. we have to remind ourselves that when we stray -- stay true to our values, nothing can beat us. so anyone trying to harm americans need to know, they need to know that we're strong and that we're resilient. that we will not be terrorized. we've prevailed over much greater threats than this. we will prevail again. >> secretary of state john kerry is set to chair a u.n. security council meeting today on syria. it comes just days after his acknowledgment that president

bashar al assad can remain in power, at least for now. the comments drew derision from assad who top american officials once said must go. >> secretary kerry, you said, well maybe not immediately, and we're not looking for regime change. even the french are now saying the president may be part of a solution. your luck seems to be changing. >> thank you. packing my luggage to leave. now i can say. they've been saying the same for four years now. >> meanwhile, russian diplomats have said they have no opposition to assad's eventual departure. there will also be talks about a cease-fire in syria as well as places to intensify raids on the islamic state. russian engineers have unsealed the black box of a russian warplane downed in turkey last month. russian television aired footage of the data recorder's opening as experts from great britain, and china, looked on. two russian service members died when turkey shot down the jet, which was on a bombing mission

in syria after turkish officials say it violated their air space for 17 seconds. russia denies the violation occurred and president vladimir putin said yesterday it is now, quote, practically impossible to overcome tensions with turkey. defense secretary ashton carter arrived in afghanistan early this morning. the latest leg of his week-long visit to the middle east. he spent the last two days in iraq, and during a top in erbil yesterday, carter called the first commando mission in syria a success. he also discussed the controversy here at home acknowledging he, quote, made a mistake by using his personal iphone for work-related e-mails. >> this is a mistake i made with respect to e-mail. entirely my mistake. entirely on me. particularly someone in my position, and with the sensitivities about this issue, should have known better. and there were plenty of people during the time that you're taking office, and so forth, who

explain to you what the rules are about e-mails. so this is -- it's not like i didn't have the opportunity to understand what the right thing to do is. i didn't do the right thing. this is my entirely on me. >> we're told that carter, who's considered the pentagon's champion on cybersecurity, used his personal e-mail account from the time he started in february, and during the hillary clinton scandal. carter says he never used private e-mail for classified information, and that he stopped the practice, quote, a few months ago. the senate armed services committee now says it will review carter's personal e-mails to ensure no sensitive information was compromised. here's the chairman of the committee, senator john mccain. >> i wonder what planet that ash carter was residing on when this whole thing broke about hillary clinton? wouldn't a normal person say, hey, she's in trouble for doing what i'm doing, and maybe i

ought to stop? >> donald trump has responded to russian president vladimir putin's praise for him. speaking to reporters yesterday, putin said trump, quote, is a very flamboyant man, very talented, no doubt about that. he is an absolute leader of the presidential race as we see it today. and, quote, he says that he wants to move -- wants to move to another closer level of relations, can we really not welcome that? of course we welcome that. trump has repeatedly said he thinks the u.s. would have a better relationship with russia if he became president. >> i think i'd get along very well with vladimir putin. i just think so. people would say, what do you mean? i think i'd get along well with him. as far as syria i like, if putin wants to go in, and i got to know him very well because we were both on "60 minutes," we were stable mates, and we did very well that night. there's one thing with putin he's really hitting them hard. okay? but i said a month ago, two months ago, when it wasn't fashionable, if russia wants to bomb them, let them bomb them.

>> and in a statement yesterday trump welcomed the russian president's comments, quote, it is always a great honor to be so nicely complimented by a man so highly respected within his own country and beyond. the exchange drew reaction from both sides of the aisle, and we'll have more reaction from donald trump himself ahead on "morning joe." in an interview with barbara walters that aired last night donald trump talked about why he would be a more capable president than hillary clinton. >> you have said that hillary clinton does not have enough energy to be president. but you and she are about the same age. >> right. >> so -- >> i have a lot of energy. look, she doesn't have the strength or the stamina. >> her people would argue as secretary of state and even now she travels all over the world, she speaks everywhere. is it because she's a woman? is that what you're saying? >> you'll look at hillary, she'll do an event and she goes back home and she goes to sleep. you don't see her. >> you don't know that.

>> i think so, though. i think so. >> a member of the bernie sanders campaign has been fired after wrongly accessing confidential voter information gathered by hillary clinton's campaign and "the washington post" reports that the dnc has now suspended the sanders' campaign's access to its voter database as a result of the breach, a punishment that could seriously hinder field organizing and campaigning efforts. sanders' campaign manager jeff weaver acknowledged to the post that a low-level staffer had viewed the clinton team's information but blamed the software vendor hired by the dnc for a glitch that made the access possible. that news tainted what was otherwise a big day for senator sanders. first, his campaign announced that it has now collected more than 2 million contributions, noting that they expect to outpace president obama's 2012 re-election effort in that metric by year's end. and sanders picked up his biggest labor endorsement to date, from the 700,000 member communications workers of america. the union's president said his organization decided to back

sanders after its members made their preference overwhelmingly clear in an online poll. >> i think what we are seeing is a lot of grassroots support in union after union throughout this country. but that support has not necessarily trickled up to the leadership. what i would have hopes is that unions who believe in democracy would have done what the cwa is really create a wide open process. maybe we'd win. maybe we wouldn't win. i don't know. but i think we would have won a lot more national union support. >> but perhaps sanders' biggest win of the day came when the multi -- when the million member progressive group democracy for america announced that it, too, was throwing its support behind the democratic challenger. it's the same group that helped lead the charge to draft senator elizabeth warren into the race earlier this year. the sanders endorsement marks the first time in the organization's 11-year history that it had opted to back a

presidential candidate. still ahead on "way too early," the wife of pga champ jason day taken away on a stretcher after a 6'8", 250 pound lebron james went careening out of bounds last night. plus, the drug company ceo vilified for price gouging is now out of jail on bond. but this morning it seems the hits keep on coming. those stories and a check on weather, when "way too early," excuse me, comes right back.

vilified drug company executive martin shkreli pleaded not guilty to securities fraud charges yesterday following an early morning arrest. authorities allege the 32-year-old who came under fire this fall for price gouging a life-saving hiv drug cheated investors out of millions of dollars in a separate pair of companies he ran. nbc's stephanie gosk has all the

incredible details. >> reporter: just before his arrest, 32-year-old martin shkreli broadcast live for three hours on youtube, playing chess, the guitar, and surfing ok cupid. hours later the fbi would be at his door. the pharmaceutical exec dubbed by some the most hated man in america for wildly inflating the price of a life-saving drug, now stands accused of a laundry list of securities fraud charges. >> these charges in this indictment highlight the brazenness and the breadth of shkreli's schemes and the outrageous web of lies and deceit. >> reporter: the charges have nothing to do with shkreli's decision in september to hike the price of daraprim 5,000% from $13.50 a bill to $750. at the time he argued the price increase would fund important research and development. >> doctors and patient groups saying they can't access this drug. are you going to change the price? >> no. >> reporter: later his company

said some hospitals and patients would be eligible for discounts. now shkreli is accused of creating an elaborate ponzi scheme, among other things stealing more than:11 million from his former pharmaceutical company to pay off investors in another one of his businesses, a failed hedge fund. shkreli is already so widely despised he actually united hillary clinton and donald trump in a common cause. >> that guy is nothing. he is zero. he's nothing. and he ought to be ashamed of himself. >> i am announcing a detailed plan to crack down on these abuses. >> reporter: shkreli is the son of eastern european immigrants raised in brooklyn. his parents worked as janitors. >> this is the wu tang album. >> reporter: he recently spent $2 million for the only copy of a hip-hop album and told the magazine i'm the most successful albanian to ever walk the face of his earth. now, he's well on his way to becoming the most infamous, as well. >> now, the fbi later tweeted that it did not seize the only

copy of that wu tang clan album or any of shkreli's assets. yet. let's bring in cnbc's steve sedgwick who joins us live from london now for more and, steve, adding insult to injury, the value of shkreli's shares in a biotech company took a major nosedive. >> yeah, absolutely. there's a lot of problems mounting up for him. one thing i will say, though, and i'm going to give a little bit of balance if i may to this whole story is the man has denied securities fraud charges. now the accusations out there by the fbi, as well, the fcc, has said look, he basically defrauded investors as the package said, taking money from one company and putting it in a separate company, like a ponzi scheme but he has denied this and he has been freed on a $5 million bond, as well. but as you say, assets under a lot of pressure on the back of this story. a lot of other assets under pressure the markets took a bit of a nosedive the day after the federal reserve decision as well. we had three days of rallies where everyone thought okay that's great. the market's taking the decision very well.

there's still a few headwinds including oil and materials stocks which continue to fall. there was very weak performance on the manufacturing data, as well. and the real concern on a whole host of companies from oracle, and of course we've got the first seasonal worry about iphone shipments, as well, and that sent apple shares just a little bit easier as well. the futures as i'm looking at them at the moment slightly easier for the start of trading today which, of course, as you know, jonathan is quadruple witching where you get a whole host of futures and options expiring which could add a little bit more volatility to the market. >> steve sedgwick live from london. thanks very much. now it's time for your favorite part of broadcast, sports. st. louis for thursday night football rams fans fired up for what could be the franchise's final home game in the city. at the team's owner eyes a move to los angeles. the intensity translates to the field for the rams rookie running back todd gurley surpassed 1,000 rushing yards on the season and tavon austin hauled in two touchdown passes leading st. louis to a 31-23

victory. boom. now to the nba and a scary moment at the end of last night's match-up between the thunder and the cavaliers. in cleveland lebron james chasing a loose ball in the fourth quarter goes tumbling out of bounds and plows into a fan in the front row. >> that poor girl. >> okay. who turns out to be the wife of pro golfer jason day. the 6'8", 250 pound player knocks her chair over and lands right on top of her. fortunately she reportedly did not lose consciousness or sustain any major injuries in the collision. but she remained on the ground for several minutes while receiving medical attention before being stretchered away and taken to the hospital for overnight observation. james later tweeted his concern, and apologized for the incident. affectionly signing the message, love l.j. and lebron wasn't the only cavalier to make headlines, shooting guard was cast into the limelight after his fiancee welcomed newborn daughter imann

shumpert jr. his fiancee posted this photo along with a kapgs detailing how he played doctor in drivering his own child before paramedics could arrive. oh, look at the little baby. >> so cute. >> so cute. >> let's get a check on your weather now with wnbc meteorologist raphael miranda. how are you? >> are you red did for the warm weather to come back? >> i, well, yes i am. but you've got to tell me what's happening in north dakota. because i'm going to north dakota on tuesday. >> okay. get ready for some chilly weather on -- north dakota, huh? >> we'll talk about it. >> we'll find out why but you're going to enjoy some chilly weather out there. and then the record warmth returns to the northeast later on next week for christmas week. but right now we've got a major storm that we're tracking across the northwest. expect travel delays again. very heavy rain along the coast, and very heavy mountain snows. it's been the pattern we've been locked in from this el nino and that will be the trend next week, as well. it's going to cool down this weekend in the northeast.

in fact the coldest weather of the season so far. we haven't fallen below 32 degrees in central park. that's going to change. saturday night it's requesting to be quite chilly. but then look what happens next week. the jet stream buckles up again. cooler out west in the dakotas, as well for you, jonathan. record high temperatures as you're heading into your christmas travel time right through christmas eve. we could see temperatures in the 60s in the northeast. not feeling very holiday and obviously that means a white christmas, not going to happen here in the northeast. maybe out west. and especially as you head into the rockies. for the rest of today we're drying out here in new york city. 54 degrees. turning colder, lake-effect snows in the great lakes. our first shot of cold and as we head into the weekend more of the same, chilly across the northeast and more storminess in the northwest. all of you hoping for a white christmas you're going to have to head out to the rockies, out best the dakotas you may have a little snow jonathan but definitely not places like chicago, new york city, record warm temperatures, this el nino just remains in place. >> so raphael i'm going -- see where minneapolis it says 29.

>> yeah. >> that's where you put the sun, that's where -- that's where i'm going. winemere, north dakota. apparently there's already snow on the ground. it might be summer here in new york but i'm going to have a white christmas. >> good i'm kind of jealous. >> all right thank you very much. still ahead the global "star wars" phenomenon has already taken over disney and today a theater near you. "way too early" is back in a moment. opportunity has no slow season. no off-days, or downtime. opportunity is everything you make of it. this winter, take advantage of our season's best offers on the latest generation of cadillacs. the 2016 cadillac ats. get this low-mileage lease from around $269 per month, or purchase with 0% apr financing.

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it appears that disney's new "star wars" film is a force to be reckoned with. before the film's official open online ticket vendor fandango announced that "star wars: the force awakens" had already broken their record for most tickets sold in an entire theatrical run, a feat accomplished in just presales. and galaxies near and far, far away, movie goers around the globe have been lining up in droves to see the film, from paris to bolivia, hollywood to colorado. fans braved rain, cold, and snow, many of whom are in their seats right now, catching the first viewings of the sci-fi phenomenon. official numbers will continue to roll in throughout the weekend. but advance sales are currently estimated at $100 million. industry experts expect the film to surpass last summer's "jurassic world" to become the biggest film debut in history.

now that does it for me and "way too early." coming up on "morning joe," donald trump joins us live. we'll talk to the front-runner after he was lavished praise by vladimir putin. and secretary of the treasury jack lew is here after getting the u.n. to target the islamic state's financing. that and much more coming up next on "morning joe." this holiday, i can count on my going off list.again, and knowing right when my packages arrive.

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if you lose the republican nomination, are you a loser? >> certainly, yeah. hate to say it. if i lost the nomination, yeah, i guess i would call myself a loser. >> good morning. it's friday, december 18th. that's honesty. welcome to morning joe and happy friday, everybody. can you believe it? i can't. with us on set we have the managing editor of bloomberg politics, msnbc political analyst and school of public policy former demeanor cat rancic congre