yet to be deemed safe without using a filter. >>that's going to do it for us on this tuesday. i'm betty nguyen alongside ali velshi and louis burgdorf. >> he has won. he is going to be the next president. and regardless of what experience or assumptions he brought to the office, this office has a way of waking you up, and those -- those aspects of -- his positions or predispositions that don't match up with reality, he will find shaken up pretty quick because

reality has a way of asserting itself. >> good morning. it's tuesday, november 15th. welcome to "morning joe." we have veteran columnist and msnbc contributor, mike barnicle, and political analyst, elyse jordan, and in washington, former chairman of the national republican committee, michael steele. >> i thought it was extraordinary, and the president going out and being really gracious. he said he made promises that would run up against reality and realized he could not get it done, and it was ironic and he was asked about closing down gitmo, and they were saying, no, you are not, it's never going to happen, but he made that promise, barack obama, and it got all the cheers and there are so many things that get cheers

in the middle of campaigns, and political reality, as the president said, it just sort of hit you. but it was extraordinarily gracious. >> not only gracious, he is the phoeg most reassuring aspect in the administration, and pump the brakes, lower the flame, and the other important aspect is when he referred to the president-elect as of much more pragmatic than a lot of people think will occur. >> in greece, the final trip before he leaves. he asked for americans to unite and give him time and space to form a new government. >> the people have spoken. donald trump will be the next

president. the 45th president of the united states. and it will be up to him to set up a team that he thinks will serve him well and reflect his policies. those who did not vote for him have to recognize that's how democracy works. i think whenever you have have an incoming president from the other side, particularly in a situation like this, it takes a while for people to reconcile themselves with that new reality, and hopefully it's a reminder that elections matter and voting counts. i did say to him, as i have said publicly, that because of the nature of the campaigns and the

bitterness and voracity of the campaigns that it's really important to try and send some signals of unity and try to reach out to minority groups or women or others that were concerned about the tenure of the campaign. what i also discussed was the fact that i had been encouraged by his statements on election night, about the need for unity and his interest in being the president for all people, and that how he staffs, the first steps he takes and the first impressions he makes and the reset that can happen after an election, all those things are important and should be thought about. i also think that he is coming

to this office with fewer set hard and fast policy prescriptions than a lot of other presidents might be arriving with. i don't think he is ideological. i think ultimately he is pragmatic in that way, and that can serve him well as long as he's got good people around him and he's got a good clear of direction. >> good people. >> and it's like the loop in "doctor strange." i thought it was one of the best eva avan jury movies. >> you will like what is coming. >> i think that was great, willie. and this president gets it, i think, better than anybody. he said during the campaign

don't boo, vote. now he's saying, guess what, don't riot, don't whine, stop whining. as barack obama knew before the election was over, the vote totals were down across the board for her, and that's why she lost. >> his coalition didn't show up, and he tried to get tm out. i think what he dead yesterday combined with donald trump are two of the most important things we have seen in the country in the last several months. there's a feeling among democrats and hillary supporters that donald trump is not a legitimate president, and what that is based on i don't know, he was dually elected by the electoral college, and what he's

saying about donald trump, and he says he comes in with not a lot of policy prescriptions and maybe we can work with him to get him to the right place, and he's a pragmatic, and maybe the things that allowed him to pull off this upset will allow him to do a good job. >> and really make this his exit and the relationship with trump, oddly enough, enough of his overall legacy, and this president struck a good tone and that has to translate to the streets. the reality still remains, this group that was out there supporting the democratic candidate, that was not meant for hillary clinton, that was

not obama's coalition, it did not form around her because it is his, and then i think that's something that will be very interesting to watch, and national democratic politics as obama moves off the stage, what happens to that coalition, how does it reform as the democrats look to reshape their future. and then the president touched on something i think will be important for donald trump, and it really speaks to what he can do ahead. he will govern as a pragmatic populis populists. he will recognize that he is be holden to republicans. >> he's not pwae holdened to anybody, mika. and rudy guiliani running around saying i did not want -- he

didn't endorse him and rudy waited until he won in new york to endorse him. >> yeah. >> there was an endorsement where he named all the people that would be qualified to be president, jeb, marco, and kasich and all these people and did not name donald trump and now he's running around because he shows up after trump's already won it in the new york primary when it's already over, and now he is running around saying i will not be attorney general, which he said to him, i will not be attorney general but i will be secretary of state, and he's not qualified to be that based on any experience or training. donald trump as michael said, owes nobody nothing. he owes the democratic party nothing. he owes donors nothing. he owes nobody nothing.

>> absolutely. >> when rudy guiliani and others say you must accept me -- no, he owes nobody nothing. >> i felt like the john bolton speculation is donor driven and it's because john bolton is big with the donor crowd, and that's somebody that i feel made edge ways by saying trump is not that bad and could be tolerable and now is trying to go in for the big win. >> we are talking with john bolton, and there's another great example, and he's a bigger neocon than dick cheney, but the donor class is pushing bolton on the trump team and he just doesn't need him. could you explain what a wreck, elyse, as somebody that knows, that for foreign policy what a massive neocon on steroids john

bolton is? >> he's an incredible hawk. you can go back and look at his past statements, and iran is going to have a bomb in a couple months and wanted a preemptive strike. he is saying he wanted a more measured foreign policy outlook with the exception with his language on torture and bombing families of terrorists. >> also, here you have the president of the united states talking about -- i think about as graciously about anybody talk about an incoming president of the united states, and at the same time john bolton's name is being floated who called barack obama the first post american president. it doesn't work. just like you said, it's donor-driven. he doesn't need the donors.

and the guiliani thing is guiliani driven. actually, there's one person -- one person in washington that actually can go to him and say, i was with you from the beginning and never waived. jeff sessions. it's a line of one. jeff sessions was there. >> it just can't be about who was with him and who was not, and it has to be about what is going to make this country move in the right direction globally and domestically. >> and who fits him temperamentally. let's go through this. >> rudy guiliani and bolton for second of state, and bolton and guiliani put forth their visions for the trump policy, and bolton writing over the weekend about the five gravest challenges facing trump's administration, and bolton is a former u.s.

ambassador to the u.n., and he called for the bombing of iran, to keep the nation from developing nuclear weapons and slammed president obama for his willingness to engage in limited cooperation with russia, syria and iran, and bolton's position on russia would be seemingly add odds with trump who in a call with putin said he was in favor of working with them, and -- >> john bolton still, elyse, supports the invasion of iraq. >> and donald trump campaigned -- >> today he still supports the invasion of iraq. >> that was a huge sticking point between hillary clinton and donald trump, and hillary was an iraq war supporter.

>> and if that's not enough, there's the bolton's forward to pam geller's 2010 book, "the post american presidency," and she has another book called "stop of islamization of america." and bolton wrote this, barack obama is the first post-american statement, as his statements and actions since inauguration have proven beyond dispute, stphol to his world view is rejecting americanism. he said he sounds just like a european, and indeed, he does. >> what about rudy guiliani -- >> i want to show this. >> -- was talking about some of the rumors at a event hosted by

"the wall street journal." sit back and enjoy. >> there's a big merger that has been announced, and it could be attorney general and it could come up on the antitrust department, and are these big mergers -- >> first of all, i won't be attorney general. if i can escape that. >> i should ask jeff sessions, shouldn't i? >> wouldn't be a bad idea that i won't be attorney general. >> the choice for second of state in a trump administration is down to rudy guiliani and john bolton, and i am going to ask you some questions about -- >> john would be a very good choice. >> is there anybody better? >> maybe me. i don't know. >> somebody is going rogue. >> it's just incredibly

disappointing that one of the things i think trump can do effectively is curve corruption and the pay to play in washington, and guiliani profit aerd -- >> you know, it's pretty extraordinary, mike barnicle, he has told donald trump and everybody else, i will not be attorney general. you have to name me secretary of state. he's just not qualified. again, it's the last thing donald trump needs, especially somebody that profited over his positions in the past, just like hillary clinton has done, and now you have got him going around and saying i am going to be secretary of state, and telling trump -- telling the president-elect what he's not going to do. >> and then telling the world

that he told the president-elect that. >> actually, he's calling, isn't he, mike, going around and calling democrats? >> i have heard from two democrats that claimed to have received calls from rudy guiliani asking the following question, if you were offard the attorney general's position would you do it? >> he thinks he is too good to be attorney general, and he's drunk with his own power, and this is all about trump. trump won this on his own. he didn't need rudy guiliani, and -- >> didn't need lady gaga. >> he didn't need rudy guiliani, and he didn't need anybody and he didn't need these contributors that are telling

him he needs bolton. >> bombs away bolton is his nickname. >> everything trump campaigns against, bolton is for, for the invasion of iraq, and he wants to invade iraq now and he wanted to go harder into syria. >> we didn't go hard enough into libya. >> not that we didn't go in, we didn't go hard enough. >> and we should have invaded harder, and longer, and more. and these guys like rudy guiliani worked to defeat trump now saying you have to take our guy. >> the people screaming off the newspapers, they want you to think they are the top choices for the job, and strategically, if rudy guiliani wants to go and publicly lobbying, knowing

donald trump, that's not the way to do it. where is bob corker. >> can i ask the two in the mix here that have been on a ballot, and it's going to sound odd when i frame it this way, but in a certain sense the country does not know donald trump right now, and they know who he was and who they voted for but don't know who he is from president-elect and we have not heard from him since the election, and do you think it's approaching the time when president-elect of the united states has to speak to the nation about his intent as president? >> no, not at all. why should he? he won. he's talked more than anybody. donald was going out six times, seven times a day telling people what he was going to do, and they won and people are in the streets rioting, and they should have organized and voted more.

and michael steele, i have to say also, the best way trump can reassure people is by not having these yokels going out there that are -- you know, going out bush league leaking their names saying what they are going to take and not going to take, and get people around him like bob corker and jeff sessions, and donald trump, when i got elected, i surrounded myself with no men and no women, people that told me no, and i needed people to tell me no, and people that balanced me, and donald trump doesn't need guiliani, and guiliani is already embarrassing everybody, no, i am not going to be donald trump's attorney general.

you know this guy is going to go off on his own. he needs somebody tempramentally balanced with him. >> part of the rudy guiliani attack about the position is over the weekend there was a growing concern among civil rights and other organizations out there about the prospects of guiliani becoming attorney general, and sending signals into the transition team this would be a problem, and getting rudy guiliani out there in front quiets the noise, and particularly the new york area about the prospect. and the second thing, you are seeing what is going to be an ongoing struggle inside the administration. donald trump is trying to balance two very powerful interests. you have the establishment wing represented by the chief of staff, and reince priebus, and

what their agenda is. and they are saying we came to washington to clear the swamp and the idea that we are going to pour swamp water into the mix here is the problem. >> john bolton is the neocon establishment. >> that's what i am talking about. that's the battle. you have the folks that want a john bolton versus those that don't and they may look at a corker or somebody else and that's an ongoing battle. >> and you have rudy guiliani, and he's gotten rich off of national security. >> i this qatar is a big client, and he's had some pretty shady ties with a lot of the regimes that were involved in 9/11. still ahead on "morning joe," governor scott walker that clashed with president-elect trump during the primaries, but whose home state of wisconsin

went for trump in the general. plus, senator tom cotton that sits on intelligence committees on capitol hill, and bob corker of tennessee joins us. >> a guy that has not been out promoting himself, which is the temperament you would want as your secretary of state. >> that's a no-brainer. >> that's a no-brainer. >> plus, remembering gwen ifill. eiffel. the mountains in north carolina and tennessee and north georgia with numerous fires burning, and some were set by arsonist and are continuing to spread, and then soggy in new york city and the rain will continue to move northward. this afternoon heavy rain arrives around boston, and let's

time it out. this is at 8:00 a.m., and shows the rain over southern new england and over rhode island. it's going to arrive in boston for the lunch hour. by the time we get to the evening commute and ride home, the heavier rain is from albany and on i-95, and new york city clears out, and still windy, so we may have airport delays with that. by tomorrow, all of this is gone and we should be watching clear skies just about everywhere. the worst of it in new england, and the rest of the country, very warm and continuing with 70s and 80s across all of the southern half of the country. but new york city, some of the worst weather in the country right now over the top of you, windy conditions and rain if the big apple. you are watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. proud of you, son. ge! a manufacturer. well that's why i dug this out for you. it's your grandpappy's hammer and he would have wanted you to have it.

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you got millions of people living in anxiety, and meanwhile the richest people and large corporations are doing well, and people saying all over the country, black, white, latino, what about me? who is going to stand up for me? in my view, the democratic party has not been as strong as it should be in saying we will stand with the working people. i would knock my brains out to get her elected but the working class of the country did not

believe she was prepared to stand up and fight for them. >> yep. >> check, please. >> can i ask? >> no, joe, you can't. no, let me help you. let me save you from yourself. >> i am going to ask. >> no, you may not. don't do it. >> why didn't the democrats elect bernie sanders? >> because he rigg-- they riggee cy system. >> it would have been a real fight. i don't know if he would have beat trump, but it would have been a real fight. >> michael, in states like wisconsin, michigan, those would have been real battle grounds. >> yeah, that's where bernie sanders as the nominee would have really made a difference for the democrats, because he would have pulled that working class vote, that blue collar

vote towards the democrats because he would have made the case he just did, but as for the rest of the country, i don't know if they would have been electing a socialist to the white house. >> i talk to a lot of democrats and most are upset and are still getting through this, and i talked to a few, who if you listen carefully to the president, there's a tinge of this as well, where the clutch of the clintons is off of them. >> yeah. >> okay? that's all i am going to say. >> i am hearing, i hate that trump won, but we don't have to start planning chelsea's presidential run now. we are freed of the clintons. we are hearing that from a lot of democratic leaders in washington. >> not what we should focus on. >> it's quite thick out there in the water, and it's a growing,

and it has been since the election, resentment of both clintons for -- not necessarily the former president because he sort of had a handle on what they were not doing, but a growing resentment of the opportunities and the chances they had that they did not take advantage of, and you hear repeatedly from democrats, important democrats that you cannot run for president of the united states basically on a platform of it's my turn. >> right. >> which is what they think -- >> yeah, they had a plan with obama. >> and a total miscalculation with the nation where they don't want to core nate somebody, and use the celebrities so out of touch. >> using the bigger picture of talking about what doesn't matter, and then bullying, and

there are three things that are seriously hurting it, and anytime anybody on their team said something, they were kye barbed. it happened to me, myself. >> not knocking them, and if i ran for anything i would love them, but there was a real cultural disconnect. if you look at the people, and i go back to elizabeth warrens, nasty women, nasty feet, nasty toes, nasty space in between the toez and everything -- >> what? no, she did not say that. what are you talking about? >> what i am saying, there are so many things that the press said, oh, my god, that was the greatest speech i ever -- people in middle america were going, what?

>> it was not helpful. >> joe and mike, stop. >> it was a national disconnect, and the things the press praised the most were the things that you set there and go, it's probably not helping them in pennsylvania, and probably not helping them in iowa, and that's probably not -- they ran such -- you know what? brooklyn was the perfect choice for a campaign, because like in 1988, ducacus ran a campaign and he was so isolated, and you could see it. in '88, they had no clue what james carville -- not james carville -- james baker, andly at water were doing to them. the same thing happened this year with brooklyn. they had no clue. they were in a culture cocoon.

>> even the president echos this a little bit saying the party needs to get back to work. >> one of the issues that the democrats have to be clear on is that given population distribution across the country, we have to compete everywhere and show up everywhere. i won iowa, not because the demographics dictated i would win iowa, but because i spent 87 days going to every small town, fair, fish fry, and dfw hall, and there were some counties where i might have lost, but maybe i lost by 20 points instead of 50 points. there are some counties maybe i won that people did not expect because people had a chance to see and listen to you, and get a sense of who you stood for and who you were fighting for. >> that was a brutal assessment

of what he did right, and what hillary clinton did not do. >> this is what i mean about the clutch being gone. >> every time they would go to iowa, they would have a john deer tractor lit up and hey and pumpkins strategically placed. it was the most calculated campaign anybody has seen. >> and an isolated campaign, too, in retrospect. easy to look at it in the rear view mirror and it was a well-run campaign, and there's real anger about inequity, and class was the issue and income was the issue. >> we will see what the democratic party learns from this, and the point you made about culture it looks in the short run, actually, they are going further left. >> bernie sanders would have won this election. and elizabeth warren should be

out front, and they just hired lena dunham to do something else. i wonder if they learned what happened last tuesday night? >> guys, i think you are missing a little boat here. a couple things to keep in mind. >> that's why it's called "morning joe." it's what we do. what is that in the distance? it was a boat that came by here the last ten minutes ago, why didn't you get on it? what did we miss? >> a couple things, number one -- the community organizer did not organize the dnc. barack obama, yeah, he won iowa with obama for america, not the dnc. when he came in, clinton people were inside the dnc and still are. so you are talking about clinton as if she has gone away and the clintons are auoff the map, no,

they still control and run the dnc and that's going to be a might between the progressives and the establishment group that still represents inside the party. barack obama abandoned the dnc, and he did not organize it to build the party structure out, and he used obama for america, and that was his political organization, which is, again, why it did not translate at the ballot box because obama was not on the ballot, it was not about him. that's it. >> now we know. >> now we are on the boat. >> you are still on the boat, just one foot off. >> thanks for bringing us back, michael. >> and we are joining april ryan, the author of the upcoming book "at mama's knee." good morning, and good to see you. you were at the obama press conference yesterday and what was your takeaway? >> it was frank and honest and

one of the most real conversations he's had. he even went into the fact telling some of his negatives as president, and talking about the fact that he, you know, when he walked into the white house, he understood that he was not an organized person, and even dealing with paper so he had to bring people in. we got a lot of news nuggets out of the press conference yesterday and his conversations with donald trump and talking about how donald trump will have to start building his staff, and the inner workings of the white house, and just talking about the conversations, and again, going back to the issue about the paper. he also talked historically about how social media played into the dynamics of issues that he wants to see continue in the next administration. >> you know, april, that's such a critical point you made, and it sounds small but it's not. when you are staffing up, if you are not organized or good with paper, you know what you do? you get somebody organized.

if you are donald trump and you are temperamentally hot, you need people around you who are the opposite and you can playoff of, and not a john bolton or rudy guiliani, and it's the most critical thing in making these choices to balance yourself. >> yes, and you are absolutely right earlier. it's almost like the emperor with the new clothes to a certain extent. i am thinking back and i know the republican party was not that fond of george w. bush when he left office, and there was a naysayer, colin powell, and he needs more of people from washington who know washington, not just that little inside crew. he needs people who will be the naysayers, as you say. >> and before you leave us, we

have to talk about gwen ifill. i was so prized when the news broke yesterday. >> what do you say? for those of us who knew gwen in washington, we knew she had been going through some things and she was very private, and we just sent prayers, and that's one thing she said, prayers, just keep praying, and she never got into what it was but we knew we needed to pray, and a couple weeks ago it was blaring that something was going on because an event that she normally does, the history makers for pbs, she was not able to do and jonathan kaye part was the host and he did a good job with eric holder, and people said just pray, and yesterday i was getting calls, and i was like, oh, my gosh, and it started coming out that she

transitioned, and all i can say, is my god, my god, and i put that on twitter and left it alone, and an hour later the "washington post" broke it. gwen was an amazing person. she was a trail blazer. i started out in baltimore and she was here in this building doing a show for public television here in the baltimore area, and to come into washington to see this trail blazer and to watch her and then become her friend, and she was somebody who was strong in what she did in the news business, and she could also go to a stevie wonder picture, and see you tweeting and she would say, where are you? just the humility of gwen, and she would be in the rafters, and not on the floor, and we would try to find each other. she was a lifetime member of the national association of black

journalists. she was loved in washington, and still loved in washington. she's a trailblazer. she was one of the few african-americans that conducted one of the vice presidential debates, and she's sorely missed. >> thank you for that. we'll be right back. ♪ my hero zero. ♪ such a funny little hero ♪ ♪ but till you came alo♪g ♪ we counted on our fingers and toes ♪ ♪ now you're here to st♪y ♪ and nobody really knows..♪ zero really can be a hero. get zero down, zero deposit, zero due at signing, and zero first month's payment... ...on select volkswagen models. right now at the volkswagen sign then drive event.

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i think i got my finger on the pulse of what democrats and americans, more importantly, want from their government, which means -- the thing that unites all of us is everybody wants to make a good living. i believe a message of solidarity and economic opportunity and prosperity is going to win out and that's what the democratic party stands for and that's where we are going to have our focus, voter turnout and strengthening the grassroots and making sure that every working man and woman knows the democrats are on their side. >> all right. >> we are going to get to that. >> breaking news here. >> what? we missed you yesterday. we were out number. >> i was out numbered yesterday, and glad you are back. alec baldwin announcing "snl" is

not anti-trump. >> does that mean he will not -- >> no, and it's morally judged. >> we got yelled off the set. nobody agreed. >> do you remember that moment, like after 9/11, when lauren michael asked rudy, and rudy said -- >> rudy said, why ask now? >> and did you not, when you tuned in, did you not think that -- >> i thought a cast member was hit by a truck. >> i am "snl" obsessed. >> i am, too. we are all huge fans. >> the way it ended, it almost

had the post 9/11 feel to it. >> the thing is, the first show after 9/11 was lighter and funnier, and more moving that that. they had a light streaming down from heaven, hallelujah -- and, are you kidding me? are you really kidding me? >> everybody loved it. >> over there, do they not think that people in the central time zone love "saturday night live" too? >> yes. >> do people that run "saturday night live" not realize when you get to jersey and cross the jersey line, if yourive west all of your "saturday night live" viewers live in trump country all the way to oregon, oh, no, all the way to oregon. so you actually did something for little blue dots in

washington, los angeles -- you realize that, right tph? >> no, they did it for america. >> and they did have dave -- >> that was the right tone. >> whenever you take yourself seriously -- >> that was the worst thing that ever happened in america. >> that's what they are saying. it's the worst thing ever, and the two african-americans said, really, this is the worst thing ever. >> that was great. we have to go to break. can we have kasie hunt? on the other side, we will be right back. >> i will be singing when we come back.

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what a great to have him back. >> the congressman has announced his -- that was funny. there are some trying to force a delay, concerned the current choices may not be the right people to bring the democrats back into power. also yesterday, a group of

protesters calling for new leadership staged a sit-in in senator chuck schumer's capitol hill office. 17 protesters were arrested. >> yeah, mike -- >> joe, stop. >> how many of them voted? >> i am just telling you what schmitt told me three minutes after the election was over, and the key party is going to last longer and it's going to hurt the party more. they are going to get all the wrong lessons out of this campaign. >> joining us on capitol hill -- >> at least on the late-night comedy shows. >> kasie hunt joins us. good to see you. >> reporter: you, too. they do have that going for them, joe. it's everything, yes, the democrats are scrambled and the republicans are scrambled, too,

and you would think the republicans are going to control the white house and both houses of congress, and instead everybody feels a little bit confused like they are not sure what kind of world they are walking into. next time, kevin mccarthy, the number two republican was asked about the steve bannon, and he was not the only republican of whom that was the case, and they struggled a little bit and they did not get out and defend him, hanging everything on he can be the lifeline. and reince priebus is really the only person they could be able to call and say i need you to do this for me, and here's why, and feel like they have somebody to go to. i think republicans are nervous

that the trump administration might find some progressive allies here on capitol hill, and democrats are really facing the same sort of civil war that engulfed the republican party over the last few years, and chuck schumer and nancy pelosi, i am not convinced their supporters will buy it. >> you are watching "morning joe" on tuesday, november 15th. president obama is in greece but before he left he held a press conference. >> it was remarkable. >> it was giving room to people to step out of the dark side and the hysterical side and the part where you are at a loss, and perhaps give this next presidency a slight chance to move forward. do you want to see some of it?

>> and they are behaving the way you were telling people to behave if he lost -- no, he didn't. >> here's president obama before his flight to greece. >> look, the people have spoken. donald trump will be the next president. the 45th president of the united states. and it will be up to him to set up a team that he thinks will serve him well, and reflect his policies. those who didn't vote for him have to recognize that that's how democracy works. i think that whenever you have got an incoming president of the other side, particularly in a election like this, it takes a while for people to reconcile themselves with that new reality. hopefully it's a reminder that elections matter, and voting

counts. >> i also think that he is coming to this office with fewer set harden fast policy prescriptions than other presidents might be arriving with. i don't think he is ideological. i think ultimately he's pragmatic in that way and that can serve him well, as long as he's got good people around him and he has a clear sense of direction. >> interesting first read that he's giving from his time with president-elect trump, and i think he is right, he's not ideological and not driven by one side or the other, and he kind of flies by the seat of his pants, but is pragmatic. >> democrats are running around capitol hill trying to figure things out, and it's usually

like our side wins and your side loses, and this is how we arrange our lives over the next two to four years. >> this is different. >> now you have somebody that basically -- >> that was a really good read on him. >> donald trump beat both parties, he beat the democrats and before he did that he had to beat the republican party and establishment and he did that. now if you are on capitol hill, how do you organize around that fact, this guy, basically, the republican party is the party of trump. >> i think we have not talked about this enough, but we are as close as we have been to outside a two-party system, and we have two parties, right of center, the trump party and the republican party, but they are different. >> right. >> it's not the same party. >> so you see all these republican politicians asked awkwardly yesterday about donald

trump saying on 60 minutes, the gay marriage fight is over. donald trump blew the whistle on sunday night on the culture wars. basically said it's over, it's done. if you are a gay american this morning, it's over, you won, you have a republican in the white house and there's no more fighting about this issue. >> but if are a republican and this is a key issue for you and you campaigned on it ten times to keep getting re-elected, and suddenly you look at donald trump and say, he's running my party? >> not any more, from every one of those people from pence on down, their silence, it's over. and i think you are probably going to say you are going to have a very successful first 100 and 150 days, because the two parties coming together believe in basically doing the first three things together. but after that, high potential

for the wheels to come completely off, because the philosophies, the energy of the two parties is very, very different. >> you have four parties. you have the trump party and the paul ryan party, trump republicans, and donald trump republicans, and schumer democrats, and -- >> and also with us, mike barnicle and michael steele and kasie hunt is still with us. >> you have a lot of cross currents we never had before in modern american politics. >> you will continue to have them. steve is right. i agree. you have two or three things they will get done within the first 100 days, but before we get off the topic, what we saw at the top of the hour, barack obama, that is the president of the united states, addressing the country and trying to

address a restless nation that things are going to be okay. >> he has done it once, and he did it the second time to send a message out to protesters, it's okay for you to protest, got a first amendment, but come on, let's stop this -- that was his message, really. >> let's get on with governing. >> if you are a democrat, start working hard like i did. which he made very clear the difference between his campaign and hillary clinton's campaign. he worked a lot harder. >> you can't overstate the importance of what the president has done in the last week, and meeting president-elect trump in the oval office and referring to him again president-elect, and showing the grace and courtesy you would show any president-elect, and then last night pointing out the ways donald trump could succeed and saying to his supporters, let's give this guy a chance, and see if the things that made him a

successful candidate will make him a successful president, and then on the back page, here's what democrats have to do and here's why hillary clinton didn't win. >> the answer to that is not going to be going left, left, left, and appealing to the "snl" cast and appealing to the lena dunham crowd. do we have bernie sanders? bernie sanders talked about the democratic party needing to undergo a fundamental reassessment. take a look. >> you have millions of people living in extraordinary economic anxie anxiety, and meanwhile the richest peoplend largest corporations are doing well, and people saying all over the country, black, white, latino, what about me? who is going to stand up for me? and in my view the democratic party has not been as strong as

it should be and say we are going to stand with the working people. i like hillary clinton and worked my brains out to get her elected but it's fair to say the working class of this country did not believe she was prepared to stand up and fight for them. >> jeremy peters, it's so crazy a week and a half ago everybody was talking about how the republican party will have to reorganize because of the impact of trump was going to be so devastating they were going to lose the senate and seats in the house and they were going to lose the white house. now democrats are looking inward, and it's not a pretty sight. >> when you listen to what bernie sanders is saying, and you listen to what trump said and rudy guiliani is saying, and the underlying theme is the same, the democrats have not paid enough attention to the issues that their constituency cares about. and what was fascinating, the

display of where the trump administration could go in the first 100 days, and he said democrats turned their backs and that allowed trump to get more of the black vote than we thought he could, and they said we think we will get 15% of the black vote, and many people, myself included, thought that was just crazy. >> mika, i remember when trump kept saying, what do you have to lose? you actually said that's going to work. >> thank you. >> i found that could be really offensive, but you were saying, i think that's going to work. >> he had a lot of really kind of gut reactions to things, and how to appeal to people who are really suffering in urban areas, and that was the question, and we were all sitting here on our high horses going, oh, my goodness, how can you say that?

you know what? >> people that had nothing to lose were saying -- >> i am going to vote for you. >> yeah, i have nothing to lose. >> the democrats over a period of 30, 40, 60 years have created basically a client state in cities across this nation, and taking that client state, whites, working class whites and blacks, and taking them for granted. we will just throw another $100 in an appropriation bill. >> steve schmitt, talk about this campaign and what happened the last couple of weeks of it. you said -- we were talking before off the air and you said you saw all of it coming but the last three weeks you didn't. >> i think from my part i suffered from a lack of imagination, and i thought trump would tap on the glass and not breakthrough it in this election

cycle, and that the issues in this country, the fundamental disconnect between people at the top, working class people, and the collapse of trust in every institution except the military, and people who have not had real wage growth, and i just did not think they would breakthrough, and i also bought into the idea that the obama coalition was a structural part of the democratic party, and these were the people that would turn out to vote. >> what about barack obama show us yesterday? he showed us they came out to vote because obama asked them, will you come out and vote? when i was first campaigning i would give my speech and get off and i thought i did a great job, and somebody would say, you didn't ask me to vote for you? what? you have to ask me for your

vote? >> tip o'neal. >> everybody likes to be asked. >> you told me stories about ted kennedy, and he was the safest senator in all of the senator, and you would be driving with neighborhoods, and he would stop and ask if they could put a yard sign in, and he would see one crooked and get out and straighten it out, i need your vote. >> it was iowa -- >> why he won iowa. there's no magic. it's always insulting. the guys that make it look easy and the women that make it look easy actually are the geniuses, because it's actually harder to make it look easy. >> it's like watching tiger woods. >> yeah, looks easy. >> reagan made it look easy. it was not easy. reagan was working on that speech for 40 years, and barack

obama made it look easy, and it was not easy, and barack obama was doing things nobody else could through hard work, and here he is saying the same thing, and you want to know why we won iowa, barack obama says, because we went there. >> one of the issues that the democrats have to be clear on is given population distribution across the country, we have to compete everywhere, and we have to show up everywhere. i won iowa not because the demographics dictated that i would win iowa, but it was because i spent 87 days going to every small town and fair and fish fry and dfw hall, and there were some counties that i might have lost, but maybe i lost by 20 points instead of 50 points. there are some counties that maybe i won that people didn't

expect because people had a chance to see and listen to you and get a sense of who you stood for and who you were fighting for. >> kasie hunt, you covered the clinton campaign. did you see a lack of what the president was talking about there? >> reporter: yeah, look, one of the things she came under criticism for was she did not work as hard as donald trump was, and he was in the states a lot more than she was in the final days, and clinton acknowledged there was a certain charisma gap between as a politician where she was and where barack obama was, as far as skill and being good at it, and the people that make it look easy doing something extraordinary hard, and what you were saying, mika, on the democratic party and how they want to re-make themselves, and there's the yoga-class

attending, and brooklyn dwelling liberal, and going to the left is not what the party should do. those people supported bernie sanders, but the people that made up the crowds and the people you heard him talking about are people, who, a lot of them voted for donald trump, and it's kind of the -- it's lower case "l" liberal where republicans on the hill are afraid of, and it's not talking about cutting debts and deficits, and they are talking about spending money on infrastructure, republicans. >> nobody's talking about the -- >> it's still up for grabs, i think. and the concern is that the democratic party won't realize that these people are extremely important to them. >> jeremy peters, nobody is talking about the things that motivated me to run for congress, balanced budgets, smaller government. that's just not going to happen for a long time up there. >> one of the first items on

donald trump's 100-day agenda, joe, as you know, is a trillion-dollar infrastructure plan. i think we need to think about that in terms of where congress goes from here, and where the relationship between the white house and the republicans are capitol hill goes, because there are conservative groups led by the very well financed koch brothers that are going to try and blast that infrastructure bill into owe pwhreufen, and then they are going to push immigration reforms -- what they would call immigration reforms by ceiling off the border, and dedicating more forces down there to enforcing it, and also starting to try and get rid of some of the refugees, or at least stopping the flow of refugees from the middle east into the united states. so you have on left and right very intense conflicts coming up, and remember, this is a president coming into office

already with the most historically low approval ratings or trust ratings of anybody in modern history, and this is not going to be easy. >> i don't know. i think having low expectations -- think about how obama came into office. >> yeah, with the high, high expectations. >> you had nowhere to go but down. >> and steve schmitt, after the break we will talk about all the other people swirling around, rudy guiliani's bizarre that are formance yesterday. >> what the heck is going on there? >> saying i refuse to take the ag position. i am going to be secretary of state. and john bolton, who is the most hyped up neocon on crack there has ever been, a guy who wanted to invade iraq in 1998 was glad we invaded iraq in 2003, and still thinks we need to go into iraq today, and still says the

biggest problem with libya is we didn't invade it more, and biweekly calls for the bombing of iran. i know that donors are pushing him hard, as elyse jordan said, they are pushing him hard, but how in the world does a neocon like that, the most extreme version of a neocon like that end up in trump's administration. >> a neocon on crack, and i'm thinking a new hbo series. i think there was a course over the first few days as people were come into acceptance with this, this would be a normal administration, and okay he's elected and the people he would appoint and serve would be the same people in the previous administrations, and it's not going to happen. now, as he gets into the secretary of defense, secretary of state, the cast of characters that are before him, we don't

know what he is going to do entirely yet. it may be somebody who is outside the government who has sterling credentials, or it may be as you just described, but if bolton is the secretary of state nominee, it will cause a global diplomatic meltdown across the world, and it will cause real panic. >> because you have been involved in making top hires and reaching out to people, i have a question. if the president-elect discusses or offers to you attorney general do you turn it down and then run your mouth about it and tell people? >> like rudy guiliani? >> or say what you want publicly to a large audience, or are you private and discreet? >> yeah, that has never been the protocol. you say thank you for the opportunity to serve, mr. president-elect. >> michael steele you agree with that as well, right? >> absolutely. theockeying publicly really

probably is not going -- sitting well with donald trump, because he likes to keep these things a little close to his vest, and people -- i think somebody said earlier if you are out there singing about the job you want or don't want you are probably not on the list for everything. >> i was just checking. kasie hunt, thank you. still ahead on "morning joe," senator scott walker, and tom cotton and senator bob corker of tennessee. you are watching "morning joe." we'll be right back.

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joining us now from the white house, news correspondent hallie jackson. you are looking at some of the backlash as donald trump naming steve bannon as chief strategist in the white house. >> reporter: you saw people lash out against what they believe will be a world view of white nationalism ending up in the west wing, and their argument is he ran breitbart, and you know it's a conservative extremist movement with ties to white nationalism, and there's jewish and other groups, and donald trump talked about his

conversation, and the importance of staffing and having a strong staff around him and that led to a follow-up question about his opinion on the hiring and appointment of steve bannon. president obama kind of dodged. listen. >> i think it's fair to say that it would not be appropriate for me to comment on every appointment the president-elect starts making. if i want to be consistent with the notion that we are going to try and facilitate a smooth transition. i think it's important for us to let him make his decisions, and i think the american people will judge over the course of the next couple of years whether they like what they see. >> reporter: so the president not step into discussion over bannon's hiring, and bannon has been making calls to senior folks on the hill, and i spoke

with one of the members of the freedom caucus, mark meadows of north carolina and he said in private conversations he found steve bannon to be soft-spoken and he believes he will be a good advocate for donald trump and his legislative policies. when pressed on the issue of any concerns over bannon and breitbart, meadows did not seem to have a problem with it. i think you will see an acceptance, especially like folks in the freedom caucus, as donald trump gets ready to push his first 100 days agenda. >> jeremy you got a piece from "the new york times" this morning, tphaop strategist in the white house, and you talked to steve bannon and he responded to what he called theette know nationalist tendencies. >> i think steve rejects absolutely the idea that the country should be sectioned off,

and when you think of white nationalism, you think of people that -- white people that want to form their own country and their own system of government and have their own culture, and that's not what steve believes, and he's more of an economic nationalists, and he believes the american economic has not worked for the basic citizen, and he has a sense the elites turned their backs on the country and looked down their noses at the country, and that's why trump found him so appealing. and he called it the cultural and political elite dismissed donald trump supporters as he would say pitch-fork carrying pezzants.

so they have a real mind melt there, and that more than anything else will be steve bannon's role to be the antiestablishment force within the administration. now, this is not good news, necessarily, for paul ryan. halle was talking earlier about people on capitol hill that know steve and they know steve because he has been one of the major an tag northwest trying to drive him. i would look in the months ahead for tension between ryan and the white house. >> so not a white nationalist but an economic nationalist. >> i think steve doesn't see things -- how he explained them to me when i spoke to him, he doesn't see things in terms of race, but in terms of class and in terms of opportunity, and i believe that if you look at his

record and the "washington post" reported something today so i am not going out on a limb here, and he doesn't talk about race and i don't see anything in his public statements that have come out, and breitbart really published offensive stuff and that's giving people justifiable reason for concern, but as far as what steve believes, you know, i have never really heard him talk about race. >> thank you. >> and yesterday, john said he was friends with breitbart and bannon was friends with breitbart, and he said you can judge him on that personally if you want to judge him personally, he knows breitbart would not have been friends, as a jewish guy would not be friends with a guy who is anti-semitic. >> jeremy, thank you. >> basically it's what you are saying. joining us now from capitol

hill, a member of the armed services committee and the select committee on intelligence, republican senator tom cotton on arkansas. good to have you on the show this morning. >> good morning, mika, and good morning, joe. >> senator, the first 100 days of the republican-dominated hill and republican-dominated washington, d.c. look like? >> a busy agenda. donald trump campaigned on a lot of promises and we have to start delivering on the promises. >> which ones are first? >> first trump will nominate somebody for the supreme court vacancy, and i think we can move promptly on that in january, and then he promised to overturn executive orders from obama and i think we could see that as well, and we need a supplemental spending bill for our military, and donald trump and republicans talked about the campaign and the need to get money back into

the troops overseas or about to go overseas, and i think $26 billion if you look at the administration's own requests would be appropriate before we consider the long-term health of the military. >> it's willie geist, and good to see you this morning. we heard a lot of things from trump over the course of the campaign, and trump is going to be a different kind of president. what does that mean practically? what will he do different in the 100 days than what president obama is doing? >> he said the nuclear deal was one of the worst deals in the history of the u.s. foreign policy, and last week the obama administration admitted that iran was violating the terms of the deal but downplayed those violations and i wouldn't expect the president-elect to have such a down play of the violations, and -- >> what will he do about it, senator? >> he will draw a firmer line.

much of international relations, it's what our adversaries think about the president, and i wouldn't say it's a coincidence on the day reagan took office they released hostages, and i hope with the new president they will understand they will take a tougher line. >> can trump rip up the iran deal? is it that easy? >> of course he can, and not submitting it as a treaty did not give it legal status. the united states, can, and in my opinion, should impose sanctions on iran for violating the terms of the deal, and violating u.n. limits. >> within the last couple of

hours, russia would carry out operations and resumed more bombing attacks within syria, especially in and around aleppo, and the administration is yet to name the -- the incoming administration is yet to name the secretary of state. what direction should the new administration take with regard to russia and syria? >> well, again, this is where a sense of limits and boundaries are important. in my opinion, vladimir putin has not had that sense for many years. going back to the russian reset in 2009, and in particular, when obama refused to enforce his own red line in syria in 2013, and it's like in the 1980s, when reagan came to office he had to impose new limits but it laid the ground work for a better relationship with international agreements with the soviet union and ultimately t lly the fall o

soviet union. >> steve schmitt. >> senator, good morning. can you speak please imagining that the ambassadors to estonia, lithuania, they are all watching the show this morning to the fidelity of our article 5 treaty obligations under the north atlantic treaty organization to the baltic countries and all of our allies which have been requested by candidate trump as we move into this period of president-elect into the new administration, and senator, with a lot of authority on these issues, can you speak to that, how you will react if there is any undermining raw torically? >> it's iron glad. article 5 has only been invoked once in the history of nato and that was to support the united states after the 9/11 attacks,

and i met with a lot of the leaders of those countries, and months ago i met with u.s. troops around the front lines, and this goes back to the point i was making earlier, we need to impose a new sense of limits specifically so countries like russia are not probing on the boundaries of acceptable conduct. russia and any other adversary needs to know the article 5 commitment is ironclad. many of their capabilities have atrophies over the last 25 years, and many of those countries are already spending 2% of their economy on defense or moving quickly towards that hr level, and we need all the allies to build their military back up so we can avoid any kind of conflict to begin with. >> senator tom cotton, thank you. we'll be right back with much

more "morning joe." >> my conversation with the president-elect, he expressed a great interest in maintaining our core strategic relationships, and so one of the messages i will be able to deliver is his commitment to nato and the trance atlantic alliance and that's one of the most important functions i can serve on this trip is to let them know there is no weakening of resolve when it comes to america's commitment to maintaining a strong and robust nato relationship. ♪jake reese, "day to feel alive"♪

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still ahead, president obama reflects on not being able to deliver on one of his big campaign promises. "morning joe" is back in a moment. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ i want a hippopotamus for christmas ♪ ♪ only a hippopotamus will do

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there's a big merger that has been announced that may go through, at&t and time warner, and you could be attorney general and it could come up on your ledger, and are these big mergers going to be -- >> first of all, i won't be attorney general. i can escape that one. >> i should ask jeff sessions that question, should i? >> wouldn't be a bad idea, but i don't know who is going to be attorney general. >> the washington report said the choice for secretary of state in a trump administration is down to rudy guiliani and john bolton, and i will ask you

some questions because we don't have john bolton tonight. >> john would be a good choice. >> is there anybody better? >> maybe me. i don't know. >> getting a little carried away with yourself? >> a little over his 6skis. i heard he refused. he was offered the attorney generals job and refused. >> how can he say that publicly? >> especially if you do not support trump until he won. >> does he realize he is not the president-elect, that donald j. trump is? >> it's really crazy. and the secretary of state -- also, he basically announced for

the president-elect who the attorney general might be. >> let's just leave it. >> what's he doing? >> what's he doing? >> if he wants the job of secretary of state, this is not how to prosecute the position. >> you don't want to hire somebody that is going to get ahead of you, and that's been a problem in the past. and that just happened. >> that's what i always said about rudy guiliani, he would be a great -- he would be great at handling homeland security, and it would fit his background, but not secretary of state. this guy can't even go down to a "wall street journal" forum without basically pwhraberring and letting out the inside of what is going on inside the serious deliberations, and he said i refused the attorney

general position and jeff sessions going to get it, that's not a guy you want to go to a mission going to south carolina talking about north carolina or china. you have secretary of states who always get ahead of their president, and you need somebody that actually knows their place, and knows that donald trump is the president, or barack obama is the president. rudy guiliani is proving right here he is way out of control. >> secretary of state, you know, at their highest level of effectiveness, you have james baker with bush 41, and you have secretary of state who the whole world knows who is functioning with the agency of the president that can pick up the phone and not go through the chief of staff, reince priebus, but directly to the president, and those are the most effective secretaries of state. you know, what you just said, for sure, historically that's true, but we probably live in a new era now where being in a public forum and being a little

loose and a little over your skis is not necessarily disqualifying. >> no. >> what i like to say, you have donald trump, he's in the center and the disrupter, okay? you don't need disrupters all around. you have the disrupter of the american political system over the past 50 to 100 years, and you don't need all of these other disrupters, like distracting from that. you need people that temperamentally balance him and can do the job and know what they are doing and not distract from him. you don't need to shaqs in the paint, you need shaq. >> love him or hate him but within three or four days of barack obama's presidency, rahm emanuel was chief of staff, and he had the car keys and anything announced would come through

emanuel and then obama would make the announcement. >> unbelievable. republican governors meeting in orlando today, and the man who will soon be the rga's chairman, the governor, scott walker, joins us next. "morning joe" will be back in a moment.

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and see how affordable renters insurance can be. republican governor scott walker, wisconsin governor, always great to talk to you. when you get out of the race, you were very concerned ability donald trump and said everybody to work together to beat donald trump. that didn't work out. do you think all republicans should start working together to help president trump? >> yeah. yeah, i think right now, it's not so much about the person as it is about the possibility. we have a republican president coming up, a great vice president who was just with us last night, mike pence left early this morning. a house, a senate, and two thirds of america have republican governors. the possibilities in terms of what we can do, not just what they'll do in the first 100 days in washington but long term, what we can do to take power out of washington and send it back to the states and more importantly back to the people, the possibilities are endless.

if we work together, we can get great things done. >> is donald trump a scott walker conservative? >> i mean, to me, again, one of those -- the proof will be in the pudding as to what he does early on. i believe putting people like reince priebus, working with paul ryan, one of the things that will be helpful is the better way plan. i'm fully convinced the house will push tat through. my hope is the senate will. my hope is president trump will embrace that. >> is he conservative? >> to me, it doesn't matter what the title is. what i have shown in wisconsin, it's not what you say you are. it's what you do. actions speak louder than words. it's why we'll have come january, 33, maybe 34 republican governors, because we put actions above words. that's what the next president and vice president have to do, and i believe they will. >> governor, he won wisconsin in a surprise to many democrats. you're the governor of

wisconsin, obviously. what if there's a massive infrastructure program that passes within the first 100 days. what are wisconsin's needs and what cost of the program would offend you in terms of your small "c" conservatism? >> i think we want to make sure that we're fixing, as we have tried to do in wisconsin, fixing and maintaining our existing inf infrastructure, not building grandiose things that go outside of the needs of people in states all across the country. most people say the roads, the bridges, the interstates we need in america need to be fixed and maintained before we start taking on new things. it's why a lot of people outside of the northeast of other areas of highly concentrated traffic said we don't need the giganticerally lines becoming a boondoggle in california. if we're going to work in partnership with states, spend it on existing infrastructure. that's a need in wisconsin and others states as well.

>> the price tag is thrown out at a trillion dollars in a few years. do you find that objectionable? what number do you bolic at? >> we were going to invest in the safety and maintenance of our system without raising the gas tax. we're going to fulfill that commitment. there are some people who wanted massive tax increases, and we think at a time when the economy is recovering but not at the pace we would like, the last thing you want is a massive indrii increase in any tax. that's going to be an issue many of us will talk at the state level. >> michael steele. >> governor walker, you just referenced the number of governors that are going to be running the states beginning in january. how do you see the rga in particular and all of the republican governors working with the new president and his team to sort of leverage opportunities for your states and to the extent that there's concern among a lot of those

populist grassroots activists out there, what do you see as the potential balancing act or problem that you may run into on some of these big ticket items that the president is also proposing? >> well, one of the biggest advantages i think we have, we saw last night. governor and vice president-elect mike pence was with us last night. he loves being a governor. he loved that connection. he met with us personally as well as he met as a group of governors. that is, and met with the larger group we were speaking with last night. mike is going to play a heavy role in terms of being connected to the governors and in turn the states. it's something he passionately believes in. one of the first things i remember mike and i talking about our love for ronald reagan's first inaugural when he reminded us the federal government didn't create the states, the states created the federal government. paul ryan in his budget plan was talking about block granting

medicaid. that's something i believe we could get through. potentially block granting funds in other areas. i would much rather spend my dollars in my kids' coschools a opposed to having washington dictate that to us. that could be transformational and will improve the lives of citizens in our states. >> it's willie geist. good to see you this morning. mieg mentioned just a few minutes ago that a lot of people in the democratic party were surprised by the outcome of the presidential election in your state. can you diagnose what donald trump did right and what hillary clinton may have done wrong and what that means going forward? what was the surprise in your state to outsiders? >> i'll tell you the simple thing. if you talk to voters in my state, they're probably a lot like voters who surprised people in other states as well. they say the rich get taken care of, the poor get taken care of. i'm in the middle, nobody cares about me in washington. finally, they heard a guy say i'm going to take care of you. i think in many ways governors set the stage in the last few years, whether it's in florida,

in ohio or michigan or wisconsin or iowa, other states like that, where we got those same voters. if you look at the map in wisconsin, the same counties that went for donald trump last tuesday went for me not once, not twice, but three times. the same group of people who say we want people to shake things up in washington because we have seen positive things can happen. in our state, we have more people employed than ever before. that's a constant theme in republican-led states across the country. i think the shot is people didn't think that was going to happen because of the way maybe donald trump was portrayed by the media. in the end, the voters felt they weren't being acknowledged. >> governor scott walker, thank you very much. >> thank you, scott. >> and the next hour of "morning joe" starts right now. good morning. it's tuesday, november 15th.

welcome to "morning joe." with us on set, we have veteran columnist and msnbc contributor, mike barnicle. contributor to "time" magazine and msnbc political analyst, elise jordan, and in washington, msnbc political analyst and former chairman of the republican national committee, michael steele. >> you know, first, that was extraordinary. >> really was. >> the president going out, being really gracious. i will say, it was very interesting. he said that he made promises that would run up against reality. it was really ironic that he was also asked about closing down gitmo. and you remember when he kept saying i'm going to close down gitmo. they're saying no, you're not. it's never going to happen. no, you're not. but he made that promise, barack obama. and it got all the cheers. and there's so many things that get cheers in the middle of campaigns that you just can't execute once you get into office. political reality is the president says and knows better than anybody, it's sort of a hit

show. but it was extraordinary. i thought extraordinarily gracious. >> not only gracious. he is the most reassuring aspect early on in president-elect trump's administration. barack obama -- >> that is correct. >> the one out there telling the country, you know, lower the flame. pump the brakes. and the other important aspect of what he said yesterday is when he referred to the president-elect as much more pragmatic, he thinks, will be much more pragmatic than a lot of other people think will occur. >> let's get right to that. the president is in greece this morning. the final foreign trip as commander in chief, but he held that news conference before he left. and he once again called on americans to unite behind the president-elect and give him the time and space to form a new government. >> the people have spoken. donald trump will be the next president. the 45th president of the united states.

and it will be up to him to set up a team that he thinks will serve him well and reflect his policies. and those who didn't vote for him have to recognize that that's how democracy works. i think that whenever you've got an incoming president of the other side, particularly in a bitter election like this, it takes a while for people to reconcile themselves with that new reality. hopefully, it's a reminder that elections matter. and voting counts. i did say to him, as i have said publicly, that because of the nature of the campaigns and the bitterness and vuerosity of the

campaigns that it's really important to try to send some signals of unity and to reach out to minority groups or women or others that were concerned about the tenor of the campaign. i also think that he is coming to this office with fewer set hard and fast policy prescriptions than a lot of other presidents might be arriving with. i don't think he is idealogical. i think ultimately, he's pragmatic in that way. and that can serve him well. as long as he's got good people around him and he has a clear sense of direction. >> you know, i think that was great, willie. i thought -- you know, this president gets it. i think better than anybody.

he said during the campaign, don't boo, vote. >> right. >> now he's basically saying, hey, guess what. >> don't whine. >> don't riot. don't whine. stop whining. you had a chance. now you have to vote next time. you have to participate. because as barack obama knew before the campaign was over, the democrats lack of participation could cost hillary clinton the election. and it was. the vote totals were down across the board for her. that's why she lost. >> his coalition didn't show up for her. plain and simple. he tried to get them out. what he's done yesterday combined with the meeting he had in the oval office with donald trump are two of the most important things we have seen in the country in the last several months. i mean, there is a feeling among democrats, a feeling among hillary supporters that donald trump is not a legitimate president. what that's based on i don't know. he was elected by the electoral college. but the prednow as the leading

and most respected democrat in america saying the things he said about donald trump, not heaping praise on him, but saying hey, let's look. he comes in with not a lot of policy prescriptions. maybe we can work with him to get him to the roy place. he's a pragmatic guy. maybe the things that allowed him to pull up the upset will make him a great president. let's give him a moment. that comes from president obama and not a republican is huge. >> michael, extraordinarily gracious on all levels. >> i agree. i think the president is trying his best to set the tone and to get over past recriminations with trump that were personal in nature. and really, make this his exit and his relationship with trump oddly enough, a part of his overall legacy. and this president struck a good tone. now, that's got to translate to the streets. the reality still remains, and i think willie hit on it or mike did, that this group that was out there supporting the democratic candidate, the was

not meant for hillary clinton. that was not obama's coalition. it did not form around her because it is his. and i think that's something that's going to be very interesting to watch in national democrat politics as obama moves off the stage. what happens to that coalition? how does it reform as the democrats now look to reshape their future? and one of the points, joe, is important to note, the president touched on something i think is going to be important for donald trump. and it really speaks to what he can do ahead. he will govern as a pragmatic populist. he's going to recognize very quickly that he's not beholden to democrats and he's not beholden to republicans, and that gives him a greater ability -- >> really -- >> to carve out a space for himself. >> not beholden to anybody, mika. i saw, and we're going to show the clips in a little bit. rudy giuliani running around, who has basically said i will not be attorney general. i want to be secretary of state. rudy didn't endorse -- rudy

didn't endorse him at the beginning. rudy didn't endorse him anywhere. rudy waited until trump already won the nomination in new york to endorse him. i remember, there was an interview where he named all of thlican president. jeb, marco, he named kasich, he named all of these people. didn't even name donald trump. now he's running around because he shows up after trump's already won it. in the new york primary, when it was already over, and now he's running around saying i won't be attorney general. i'm not going to be attorney general, which he said to him. i'm not going to be attorney general. but i'll be secretary of state. something that he's temperamentally not qualified to be. and he's not qualified to be it based on any experience or training. or any context. donald trump, as michael said, owes nobody nothing. he owes the republican party nothing, the democratic party nothing, he owes donors nothing.

he owes nobody nothing. >> absolutely. >> so when rudy giuliani and other people say, you must accept me because i -- no. he owes nobody anything. >> i feel like the john bolton speculation is also very donor-driven. >> it is donor driven. >> it's because john bolton is so popular with the aei crowd, with the big crowd, and that's something i feel made edgeways by saying trump's not that bad, and now is trying to go in. >> sheldon adelson. we were talking with john bolton, another great example. john bolton is a bigger neocon than dick cheney. >> right. >> but the donor class is pushing john bolton on this trump campaign, on the trump team, and he just doesn't need him. could you explain what a wreck, elise, as somebody who knows, foreign policy, what a massive

neocon on steroids john bolton is. >> john bolton is an incredible hawk. really, you can go back and look at his past statements. since 2006, iran is about to have the bomb in a couple months and we need to preemptively strike. he's a big proponent of pre-emptive military strikes. that's what donald trump has been against throughout the campaign when he's saying he wanted a more measured foreign policy outlook with the exception of his more incendiary language on torture and bombing families of terrorists. >> also, so here you have the president of the united states talking about, i think, about as greigishly as i have heard someone talk about the incoming president of the united states, at the same exact time, john bolton's name is being floated, who called barack obama the first post-american president. >> yeah. no. >> it doesn't work. and it's just like you said, it's donor driven. he doesn't need those donors.

just like the giuliani thing is giuliani driven. he doesn't need a guy that comes to him -- you know what. actually, there's one person, one person in washington that actually could go to him and say, i was with you from the beginning and i haven't wavered. jeff sessions. it's a line of one. jeff session was there. >> it can't just be about who was with him and who wasn't. it has to be about exactly who is going to make this country move in the right direction globally. and domestically. >> also who fits him temperamentally. let's go through this quickly. >> okay, so rudy giuliani and john bolton are reportedly the favored picked for secretary of state. senator bob corker, former speaker newt gingrich are in the mix. both bolton and giuliani have recently put forth their visions for the trump foreign policy. bolton writing over the weekend about the five gravest challenges facing trump's

administration. bolton is a former u.s. ambassador to the u.n., would be an aggressive selection for trump. he's called for the bombing of iran to keep the nation from developing nuclear weapons and has repeatedly slammed president obama for his willingness to engage in limited cooperation with russia, in syria and iran. bolton's position on russia would seemingly be at odds with president-elect trump's who in a call with vladimir putin on monday said he was committed to working to normalize relations between the two countries. bolton was also in favor of invading iraq as early as 1998 and has maintained that the invasion was a good idea, despite the fact that no weaponoffs mass destruction were found. >> john bolton, still, elise, supports the invasion of iraq. john bolton today. >> and he -- >> he still supports the invasion of iraq. >> that was a huge sticking point between hillary clinton and donald trump, that donald trump claimed he had not supported the iraq war, and hillary was an iraq war

supporter. what would this say if trump in the end goes with one of the original neocons. >> the biggest hawk. >> and if that's not enough, there's the bolton's foreword to pam gellar's 2010 book, the post american presidency. pam gellar is a frequent contributor to world net daily, breitbart, and has another book called "stop the islamization of america." and bolton wrote in part, this. barack obama is the first post-american president, as his statements and actions since his inauguration have proven beyond dispute. central to his world-view is rejecting american exceptionalism. one student interviewed after an obama town hall meeting during his first presidential trip to europe in 2009 said ecstackically, he sounds just like a european. indeed, he does. >> and what about rudy giuliani? last night -- >> i really want to show this. >> he was talking about some of the futures of some of the trump

administration at an event hosted by the "wall street journal." >> there's a big merger that has been announced that may go through, at&t, time warner. it could come up on your ledger. are these big mergers going to be opposed by the trump administration? >> first of all, i won't be attorney general. >> you won't be attorney general? >> no, so good, i won't have to decide that one, thank god. i can escape that one. >> i should ask jeff sessions that question, should i? >> wouldn't be a bad idea, but i don't know who will be attorney general. >> the "wall street journal" reported early this afternoon that the choice for secretary of state in a trump administration is down to rudolph giuliani and john bolton. we don't have john bolton here tonight, so i'm going to ask you some questions about -- >> john would be a very good choice. >> is there anybody better? >> maybe me. i don't know. >> someone's going rogue.

>> it's just incredibly disappointing that one of the things i think trump can do really effectively is curb corruption, curb the pay to play in washington. it's so rampant, and then rudy giuliani, who has benefitted and profiteers so much from the national security state is in line to be the next secretary of state. that's incredibly discerning. >> up next, senator bob corker of tennessee will join us. will he be the next secretary of state? we'll ask him, but first, here's bill karenwise a check on the forecast. >> good morning. one of the big stories out there is the fires in the southeast. birmingham hasn't rained in 57 days. the drought has gotten worse by the week. now that we're in this dry period, the fire weather has gotten extreme. we had unfortunate arsonists at work in numerous states of tennessee, north carolina, and northern jora. there's a lot of smoke and a lot of haze as we have numerous blazes burning. we dotted the map showing you where the wildfires are.

the other travel trouble, airport delays, 15 to 30 minutes at laguardia. heavy rain around new york city. this is going to shift into new england during the day. the other travel trouble stop if you're waking up early in the pacific northwest, glab the umbrella in seattle, and also in northern california, a little rain to deal with, too. overall, the middle of the country is fantastic. it's 70 to 80 degrees pretty much across the country, with great weather. what's going to be interesting in the days ahead, the storm in the northwest is going to move through the rockies over the next two dayinize to the northern plains on friday. we're talking about our first full fledged snow storm. wyoming, you love this for the skiers. how about this for minnesota. they could be dealing with a blizzard on friday with a possibility of a foot-plus of the white stuff. first big snowstorm of the season heading for the northern plains. new york city, as we mentioned, this is obvious travel delay weather at the airports. can't see the top of the empire state building. you're watching "morning joe." i'll be programming at ge. oh i got a job too, at zazzies.

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sdploo if your talk to leaders in the region, joe, what they tell you when they meet with putin is putin says, hey, look, i'm getting no pushback. i have no price to pay for what i'm doing. it's playing really well domestically as we have other issues that this sort of cloud. i think it's going to continue. >> that was senator bob corker on "morning joe" back in february. calling for a tougher u.s. stance against vladimir putin. the russian president spoke

yesterday with president-elect trump about building a, quote, strong and enduring relationship. and the chairman of the foreigns committee, senator bob corker joins us now. mike barnicle, michael steele, and steve schmidt back with us as well. senator, good to have you on the show this morning. >> always great to be with you. thank you. >> so good to be with you. let's start by talking about u.s./russian relations. what do we need to focus on over the next four years? >> certainly aggression in the region has been problematic for us, but look, seriously, we have a lot in common with the people of russia. you've been there. you understand that. and if there are ways that we can build a stronger relationship, i think that be great. they have the same issues relative to terrorism to confront that we do. and i think it's always good when the leader of the united states and the leader of an important country like russia begin on a good foot. so hopefully this will lead to different behavior also on

behalf of russia and putin. >> can i ask you about the iran deal? obviously, it's been an issue at the center of donald trump's campaign, promising to get rid of the iran deal. right now, what deyou consider to be the status of that iran deal? the president said last week that the iranians are adhering to all the terms of the deal. is that true? >> they're not. and the u.n. security council has stated that. they haven't acted against them yet, but there's no question as it relates to ballistic weaponry, as it relates to the testing that's taking place, you know, they have not adhering to it, to the agreement. i think what i heard the president-elect say during the campaign is when he got elected, he would look at it. and decide then what to do. at least that's what i remember him saying. i will say, at least we do have a new day where congress and the white house will be pushing back

against some of the violations that are taking place. that's at a minimum. i think people welcome that. >> you were -- you obviously tried to forge a bipartisan response to what the president was doing on the issue. it got undermined. do you believe that we should overturn the deal? do you think we should reform it, make it better? what do you think we should do with the iran deal? >> i didn't. we gave up, joe, as you know, all of our leverage on the front end when we gave away the moneys that were stashed in various countries around the world. and so now the leverage is with them. i think the beginning point is for us to cause them to strictly adhere. and i think that what we have to remember is, we have to keep the europeans and others with us in this process. and i think demonstrating the violations that are taking place, demonstrating that we're going to push back and hold them accountable, but also, pushing back against the terrorist acts that they're involved in in the region.

pushing back against their aggression in the region. what the agreement explicitly allows is for us to push back against those activities and the white house has been unwilling to do so. i think you're going to see greater endpajment by republicans and democrats. many of the democrats felt like they were hamstrung with the white house that was unwilling to push back in the manner that i just described. i think you're going to see that, and the first thing we have to do is pass the iran sanctions act and extend it for another ten years because it does in fact expire at the end of this year. >> senator, you just referenced it, but there are five other countries in on this deal. some of them doing increasingly, increasing amounts of commerce. >> that's right. >> so what do you do about getting the five other countries to go along, you know, with whatever we want to do in amending this deal? >> yeah, so that makes it difficult. and again, that's why the deal,

to me, was such a bad deal. we gave up all of our leverage. we knew that france and many of the other countries were pursuing this for commercial reasons, which we're seeing at this time. so that's why, again, it's going to take tough diplomatic effort pushing back by us against some of the violations that are taking place, even if we have to do so independently. but doing so in a way that people understand is rational. we do have to conduct ourselves moving ahead, keeping folks together in a rational manner, and that's actually what i heard president-elect trump say during the debates. as a matter of fact, i think he was the only one who said that. >> so going forward, tough diplomatic efforts. that would seem to call for an incoming secretary of state who certainly has to be tough but knows a bit about how to be diplomatic as well. >> i mean, that's what the post

is. i mean, it's hopefully the secretary of state will come in to an environment where they can be productive around the world in advancing our country's national interests. it's a very important role. when we do so effectively, what we really do is we keep the men and women in uniform that we have, that we love and respect, from entering into kinetic activity, being involved in situations where their lives are at stake. so look, it's a very important post. and i know that they're looking at this very closely. >> mr. chairman, it's willie geist. since you didn't pick up on mike's leading question, i'll try again. a lot of people are pointing as they look at the newspaper and see that rudy giuliani's name and john bolton's names are being floated for secretary of state. >> by rudy giuliani. >> they're looking at someone who is there who has a decade of experience now with war in washington and foreign policy. and they see your name right there. is that a job you would be interested in, senator? >> well, look, willie, and i think joe would respond the same

way, as would everybody on your set. if someone felt there was going to be an environment where they could productively advance our nation's interests around the world in so many ways, i think most people would have an interest. at the same time, you know, i realize that there are people who have been central to the campaign, which i was not highly involved. i supported but i wasn't a central person like so many others, and i realize that it's likely that one of those people who have been so centrally involved in this campaign is more likely to be in that position. >> has the trump transition team reached out to you, senator? >> we had some conversations with them. i think you know, there's a funded effort by taxpayers for both republicans and democrats that sort of the professional side, and then you have the political side, which is taking hold right now, and certainly there have been conversations. but look, i'm getting my information from people like you

and some of the reports that i'm reading in publications, and i guess we'll just see what happens when this is all over. it's a very important post and one that really matters greatly to the safety and security of americans and, by the way, the economic interests of americans. and something that i'm glad they're taking their time to look at it and make sure they have exactly the right person in there. >> steve schmidt. >> mr. chairman, good morning. speaking of the safety and security of americans, in this election, by the consensus of the intelligence agencyoffs this country, we had a hostile foreign power, russia, attempting to interfere in the election process with cyb cyber attacks on important institutions. could we expect in the new congress that you will convene hearings to look at this very, very seriously? >> well, i think there will definitely be hearings. just for what it's worth, senator carden and i have a great relationship, who is a

ranking member in our committee. we went down during the period of time people were discussing this and had a class-5 briefing. steve, you're a very sophisticated guy, and you do know that countries, sophisticated countries do do things. and there is espionage. and there are activities that take place between large and sophisticated countries. never was it stated in these that it was russia. my sense is it likely was, but the fact is that i think people will take it seriously, and there will be numbers of hearings to truly understand what has occurred here. i want to say one more time, i mean, in the world of covert activities, countries, large, sophisticated countries do thing s against each other to understand what's happening within those countries. and i think people who have been

around for a while understand that's what happens. >> of course, senator, i agree with that completely. obviously, we were caught, the united states, eavesdropping on the chancellor of germany's phone calls, a nato ally. but maybe you could correct me if i'm wrong on this. i don't think there's ever been an instance where a hostile foreign power has ever tried to overtly interfere in the outcome of the u.s. election by putting their thumb on the scale. do you think that the nature of those attacks in this election was unprecedented or typical? >> i think what was unprecedented, steve, was the fact that they did so so overtly. the fact is that there's nothing that putin would like more than to discredit the electoral process here in our country because, and look, we in some ways helped discredit their process back in 2011. so there's no question.

i mean, what was unprecedented about this was the overtna natu. things constantly are occurring where countries are doing things to in some ways destabilize. i mean, it happens. we know that. >> can i break in? you aren't saying and what you won't say is we do it, russia does it. china does it. israel does it. and we're doing it at each other every day. obviously -- >> the overt nature was unique, unique the way it was done was done in a manner to be visible to the world. that was a new step. i really do think, and i do believe they were involved. i have no proof of that at present. i do believe they were involved. and i do believe that it was purposely done to try to embarrass and to discredit.

what's interesting is the people of russia were watching all of this, and watching what they thought was, quote, a rigged election. again, i'm just repeating. i'm not giving an observation myself, but a rigged election towards a particular candidate, in this case, secretary clinton, and then all of a sudden, someone won who no one thought was going to win, and in many ways, it backfired on putin because now the people of russia understand, hey, there is a real democratic process here in our country. and even though things may look like they're going to -- there was going to be a certain outcome, different things can happen. so look, but we need to pay attention, and steve, i'm not in any way dismissing what you're saying. there will be hearings, and obviously, the integrity of our process is something we hold dearly. >> senator bob corker, thank you. so much for being on this morning. while we're on the topic of secretary of state, the atlantic's jeffrey goldberg

joins us with his new interview with henry kissinger. what kissinger sees as the main challenges for the next president. ♪ ♪ ♪ is it a force of nature? or a sales event? the season of audi sales event is here. audi will cover your first month's lease payment on select models during the season of audi sales event. (bing) parts a and b and want more coverage, guess what? you could apply for a medicare supplement insurance

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35 past the hour. joining us now, the editor in chief of the atlantic magazine, jeffrey goldberg for his piece in the magazine's december issue, the lessons of henry kissinger, he interviews the former secretary of state over the course of several months and he writes in part this, i could sense he took some of obama's observations about the foreign policy decisions of previous presidents as personal criticism. he wasn't wrong about this. at various moments in my interview with the president, i could feel the specter of kissinger hanging over the room. what annoyed kissinger most was the manner in which obama talked about some of the other word leelders. that he could treat leaders with disdain that he did. someone of that statute normally develops a sense of humility. >> it has been and it actually, i know you heard this, starting

back in 2009, i certainly did. there's been such a disconnect, not only between barack obama personally and people on the hill, but world leaders. who actually reported ly rr excited they can call donald trump and he picks up the phone, and he talks to them for an hour. >> right. well, donald trump is excited that world leaders want to talk to him. >> both sides are excited. >> the problem with president obama is i don't think he's impressed by many people. don't know if that's a problem or a good thing in a president but you're right. the personal relationship was always lacking between the president and a lot of world leaders. people he loved, merkel. love is probably too strong. i think they had an understanding. there are people he didn't like, people he thought probably were dumb, probably wasn't wrong to think they were dumb. >> which is everybody else in the world other than merkel. let's face it. >> he's a smart guy. >> not that smart. kissinger makes the point, this

is not how you talk about other world leaders. >> well, kissinger is very smart. he knows that greasing the relationships, you know, does do something. this is one of the fundamental questions and maybe who knows, we don't know how trump is going to conduct these affairs, but maybe his manner will work to the u.s.'s advantage. >> fraught whaom what you have historically and all you have read, can his deficiencies and the knowledge of foreign policy be made up in part by his willingness to sit on the phone with theresa may for an hour and say how can i help you? to sit with hollandend sit there for 30, 45 minutes, and just sit there and listen to them, say what do you need? >> i don't know. you know him better than i do. >> i can tell you that's happening. i'm asking you, though -- >> this is the fundamental question. do countries have interests, fixed interests, and it doesn't

matter if you play golf with the leader or not. this is the key thing. maybe it does work. maybe it works on the margins. maybe it works on something closer to the margins. it's worth trying because sometimes we had presidents, the previous president, probably didn't work enough on that hand holding aspect. remember when george w. bush held hands with the king of saudi arabia. that's what you do. it's part of the job, there you are. >> what about all the horror that we're hearing from abroad about the potential of a trump -- >> there is a lot of horror. first, people don't like instability. world leaders are like the markets. >> nhow are the markets doing? >> the world leaders -- >> markets are doing well. >> i'm just -- i'm asking everybody to ask themselves that question. >> world leaders don't like instability. first of all, they don't know him. they were expecting one thing that they knew really, real wale, and they get this thing that they don't know at all. if you're in europe and you have these populist parties on your

right and they're creeping up on you, you're like, this is it. here we go. >> this is an international phenomenon. >> all eyes turn to france to figure out what's going to happen. >> and then germany. which has a certain historical echo. >> already in austria. >> that many don't appreciate. >> mike. >> jeffrey, you keep hearing from people in seats of power now in washington that they're almost certain that within the first two to three months of the trump presidency that a combination of isis, elnusra, al qaeda, will do something to provoke a reaction from the incoming administration. how concerned would a henry kissinger be about this? >> he's very concerned. he told me, he said, first, i said what are russia and china going to do in the coming months? he said they're going to study. everybody has entered a period of frenzied study, trying to divine what this guy is about. on the terror front, irt rr pretty clear to kissinger, a lot of people, that isis will try

something soon in order to provoke an overreaction, provoke a reaction that would suit their purposes, which is to highlight the conflict between the west and islam. the conflict that barack obama to his credit has tried to tamp down. they figure that they could exploit the guys glandular impulses to response in a heavy way and that would set off what they're looking for. that's the big short-term fear. >> kissinger seems to take the position that president obama took was this is our president now. let's give him a chance, see what happens. what are his hopes for donald trump? what's the best-case scenario for donald trump as a foreign policy president? >> the bt case scenario is trump learns about america's historic role in the world, the role we have played since the end of world war ii, the role that we're the guarantor of stability and behave in a way that conveys we're a mature and

stable country. the second part is to actually align our foreign policy with the apparent interests of the american people. the american people are not quite so interested anymore in engaging in the world in 10, 20, 30 different ways. >> we need to have you back. jeffrey goldberg. >> you in town tomorrow or back in d.c.? >> i'm out of town tomorrow. >> we need to talk to you more. i want to talk to you about russia. >> and i want to talk to you about russia. >> when are you back? >> i'm going to the middle east actually. maybe five days. >> okay. >> they have a lot of nice cameras over there. a lot of news over there. >> all right. come back. we need to talk about russia and russia alone. >> president obama arrived in greece early this morning, as expected to hold a joint news conference with the greek prime minister, just a short time from now. we're going to carry the news conference live when it happens. we'll be right back. [burke] hot dog. seen it. covered it.

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donald trump promispromised -- it's amazing. >> we're talking about this guy who we talked to saturday night before the election. he runs for the floor for a hedge fund. he just knew. he said i voted for hillary. trump is going to win. no way, he said, he's going to win big. is that crazy? >> promising big spending on infrastructure on the campaign, and some democrats said that could be an yare raw of common ground, but brian sullivan said there are a least two big obstacles standing in the way. brian joins us now.

>> good morning. happy new year, by the way. it feels like a new year. so trump wants to spend a trillion dollars over five or ten years. here the problem. the republicans say no new federal debt. how do you find a trillion dollars without issuing any new debt. >> out of the spectrum. >> what do they say, sell the house, the car, the kids, you ain't never coming home. here's what you do. basically, you're probably looking at no tolls, california, they don't use a lot of tolls. public/private partnerships or fully private money or even getting all these pension funds to invest into a giant fund that would then pay for it. so a trillion sounds good. we have a $300 billion plan now over five years which is insufficient. >> can i tell wru what they're going to do? raise the dent a trillion dollars. they're going to say it's balanced. it's motgoing to be balanced. they're going to borrow another trillion dollars. >> i think you would be right. they have to back it by toll revenues. the gas tax is insufficient. it hassen been raised in like 20

years. >> 1993. >> exactly. >> not going to be raised now. >> a trillion dollars is real money. >> you might recall, we had a monstrously huge stimulus package not so long ago with our current president when he came into office. did that do much for the american economy? >> $300 billion went here, $300 billion went there. in ohio, they built some bus garages. there were certain infrastructure projects that gid go to. a lot of that was fuilling financial holes. not pothole. >> was it good for the economy? >> it didn't hurt it. if we're talking $19 trillion in dent or $18 trillion in debt. you ask somebody, they give you a different number. is the difference that strong, joe? but the republicans are going to hopefully say no new debt, so how do you pay for it? and a lot of people have been out of the work force for a long

time. these work construction, it's engineering, higher tech, a lot of concerns. do you have the jobs in the places you need them? guys have been out of work for a long time. >> brian sullivan, thank you so much. still ahead, "new york times" media columnist jim rutenberg joins us. hel be here with us. and also, we're awaiting president obama's joint news conference with the greek prime minister. msnbc will carry it live when it happens. keep it right here on "morning joe." our mission is to produce programs and online content for african women as they try to build their businesses and careers. my name is yasmin belo-osagie and i'm a co-founder at she leads africa. i definitely could not do my job without technology. this windows 10 device, the touchscreen allows you to kind of pinpoint what you're talking about. which makes communication much easier and faster

than the old mac that i used to use. you can configure it in so many different ways, it just, i don't know, it feels really cool. i feel like i'm in the future. yoyeah, i do.e? you guys are working on some pretty big stuff over there, right? like a new language for crazy-big, world-changing machines. well, not me specifically. i work on the industrial side. so i build the world-changing machines. i get it. you can't talk because it's super high-level. no, i actually do build the machines. blink if what you're doing involves encrypted data transfer. wait, what? wowwww... wow? what wow? there is no wow.

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for one of the largest greeting card companies. businesses count on communication, and communication counts on centurylink. we have to have, i think, in the big urban areas, a determination to be open to other points of view as well. flint, michigan, i think, has galvanized the country in a lot of ways, because what they understand is in the working class communities, they can very quickly become victims of people who are not paying attention. >> that was tom brokaw talking last january about the media and how they were missing the big story in the rise of donald trump in places like michigan. in a recent interview in the "new york times," the executive editor said about the campaign coverage, quote, if i have a mea culpa for journalists, we have a

much better job to do being out in the road, in the country, talking to different kinds of people that we talk to, especially if you happen to be a new york-based organization and we remind ourselves that new york is not the real world. jim rutenberg addressed the need to treat trump as a serious threat, writing, quote, journalism shouldn't measure itself against any one campaign's definition of fairness. it's journalism's job to be true to the readers and viewers and true to the facts in a way that would stand up to history's judgment. to do anything less would be untenable. jim is with us now. your august column, you have a lot of attention. i went on afterwards and incorrectly said you were actually saying that the president's responsibility was actually to work against trump. that is incorrect. the term that was always in the back of my mind that we discussed yesterday was oppositional journalism. and we talked around this table about, first of all, sorry for getting it wrong on the exact language. but we have been talking about

it for some time, about the oppositional journalism where you have "new york times" people that we love and trust and respect and know writing stories all the day, and then tweeting snide tweets 20 times a day throughout the day. it certainly seemed like the scale was tipped. >> i want to say, first of all, that the column talked about oppositional journalism, it would feel like oppositional journalism to go where the story took you. and you're quoted in this piece saying how balanced do you have to be when one side is just irrational. i don't think it was treating mr. trump as a threat at all, president-elect trump. it was about taking him seriously as a candidate, during the reporting you had to do, and that was sometimes going to be -- he was going to take the story to some places we had never been and we had to go there. it was going to feel oppositional sometimes. that said, in 2015, we also had a headline about hillary clinton that said, early in 2016 race,

clinton's toughest vote appears to be the news media. sometimes news coverage is -- >> you hammered hillary. we said it all along. i mean, i always said, don't take it up with the vast right wing conspiracy. take it up with the "new york times," because you led on the e-mail coverage all along. as we got to the end of the campaign, though, it did seem oppositional, and again, i don't want to mention their names, but when you had all of your main beat writers tweeting out every day anti-trump tweets. >> i think, you know, i don't know which tweets you're talking about. i think the tweeting with opinion is something i have -- i don't like in general, why my twitter following is so low. because it's just -- so i can't spook to that. i don't know the examples you're citing. >> everybody that was a beat reporter on the campaign. every single one. so i'm wondering, is there -- the "times" does appear to be taking a fresh look at how they

do this moving forward. >> something happened. >> the times is looking at what my boss spoke to, in terms of the tough-minded, fair-minded but tough-minded journalism that is going to go where it has to go, we have to continue that. everyone has to continue that. i would hope president-elect trump, i think, would expngt no less because he is the leader of the free world. it's interesting that your segment with jeffrey goldberg, he was talking about i hope he learns america's extraordinary place in the world. that's an extraordinary thing to say about a president-elect, but i think the great thing is that the wisdom of the voter is what it is, and it is going to take us where it takes us. >> and our job is, and we're more opinion than certainly you or the front page of the "times" should be, questions wetantly a. if rudy or bolton are selected as the secretary of state, there's going to be a storm cloud over the set for a long time. >> those are all big stories. part of what jim has written

about this is, everyone is familiar with the thinning out of the american newspapers. and even the big newspapers, the most important newspapers, the times, the "washington post," have their own difficulties, but one of the biggest difficulties, and it's because i think because you have to feed the online beast if you're out there as a reporter, feeding it two, three times a day. you end up focusing more on the candidate than the country. >> i agree. i think that -- it used to be when i started out political reporting, you had voice pieces, voters voices, and those still happen, but it's an overwhelming look at where are the polls, what's happening inside the campaign, what does washington establishment think? this was not fought where the washington establishment was fighting. and also, this is not geographical. this is not fly-over country. there are parts of long island, queens, brooklyn. it's a state of mind. >> jim, when dean says, your executive editor, we have to get out of the country.

what does it look like to you as a practic icaical matter? you are one of the few who have the resources to do that. how is it different now going forward? >> thankfully, i'm not a boss. i never want to be one, for the record. >> what should it look like, then? >> i think it's going out and finding the most compelling stories to tell the story of what happened in the election. who are the people who are so mad, and even if they said i saw the okd o"access hollywood" tap offended me, but it's a small deal. telling it in the most compelling way and mixing it up. >> jim, we want to have you back. >> great. >> my apologies for my inexact language the thursday after the election. >> nice. >> jim rutenberg, thank you very much. >> we want to have you back. >> that does it for us this morning. stephanie ruhle picks up the coverage right now. >> thanks so much. good morning. i'm stephanie ruhle. happening now, president obama's last trip abroad. landing just hours ago in europe, set to hold a press

conference any moment from now after weighing in on president-elect donald trump on monday. >> i don't think he is idealogical. i think ultimately, he's pragmatic in that way. >> we'll bring it to you live, moments from now. while there is a clearance uproar stateside. donald trump asked if his kids could get security clearance as democrats lash out at his pick for chief strategist. steve bannon. even glenn beck is angry. >> he's a nightmare. and he's the chief adviser to the president of the united states now. >> state of state. rudy giuliani now a top contender for secretary of state. he was asked who was in contention last night. >> maybe me, i don't know. >> i don't know. i don't know. plus, the protests. students stage a walk-out nationwide, but watch