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tv   Morning Joe  MSNBC  December 1, 2016 3:00am-6:01am PST

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jobs. and ceremonies will begin in hawaii today to mark the 75th anniversary of the attack on pearl harbor. the commemoration concludes next wednesday, december 7th, the day of the attack. wednesday, december 7th. >> that's a wrap for us on this thursday. "morning joe" starts right now. ♪ >> this photo was everywhere today. trump and mitt romney were spotted having dinner here in new york last night. everyone is talking about romney's expression. take a look at this photo. got even worse when the spaghetti came and trump said ever seen "lady and the tramp"? let's just try it. >> trump and romney last night were dining at a four-star
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french restaurant. mitt romney at dinner with trump. no. i know mitt is up for secretary of state. i also know what mitt said during the campaign. >> donald trump is a phony. a fraud. his promises are as worthless as a degree from trump university. he's playing the members of the american public for suckers. he gets a free ride to the white house and all we get is a hat. >> i don't know. let's check out the photo of trump at dinner. i think he did. >> good morning. it's thursday, december 1st. mika has the morning off. we have former democratic congressman harold ford jr.,
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washington anchor for bbc world news america, katty kay and we have mark halperin as well. let's start with the news though with katty kay. what are you looking at this morning? >> let's start, joe, with reaction to donald trump's two nominations to lead his economic team. former goldman sachs leader mnuchin and wilbur ross for commerce. mnuchin promised tax cuts for the middle class and slashing the top business rate of 35%. >> any reductions we have in upper income tax wills be offset by less deductions so there will be no tax, absolute tax cut for the upper class. there will be a big tax cut for the middle class but any tax cuts we have for upper class will be offset by less deductions that pay for it. we're going to cut corporate
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taxes, which will bring huge amounts of jobs back to the united states. we'll get to 15% on that, and we'll bring a lot of cash back into the u.s. >> senators elizabeth warren and bernie sanders put out a rare joint statement reacting to the choice of steve mnuchin for treasury secretary calling him a wall street insider. they said during the campaign donald trump told the american people that he was going to change washington by taking on wall street. that is not the type of change that donald trump promised to bring to washington. that is hypocrisy at its worst. in a separate statement warren described mnuchin as an evil forest gump. so quite a lot of reaction to those economic picks. >> no doubt about it. mark halperin, what's the impact on capitol hill of his background and what's the reaction so far? >> well, i mean, the wall street
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general editorial board doesn't like the picks much more than elizabeth warren does. people are looking at their bios and noticing things on trade and mortgages that are questionable. they'll have to answer those in the hearing. i don't expect either of them will have nominations stopped if they answer tough questions from at least one party. in the end as we've said so many times, this is about donald trump and what kind of economic policy he wants. assumption is we would see corporate tax reform and not individual. sounds like they'll try to do both and that happens once in a generation. it will be an early test. if he can somehow quickly in the first six months of the year pass individual and corporate tax reform, that would be a big accomplishment. >> you know, steve rattner, he's pounded for being a washington insider. it seems the- being a wall street insider. the attack from wall street is that he doesn't play the game on a high enough level. >> that's certainly one of the
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issues. that's certainly one of the issues. neither of these guys has really played the wall street game necessary at the highest level. look, i think equally importantly neither of these guys has ever spent more than three hours or whatever in washington. neither of them have any government experience or any public sector experience, and i think the record of people coming from the business sector to washington without having done some of that is pretty mediocre. i agree with mark that i think they will get confirmed, and i think on the tax plan there's a couple of important points. first of all, under the senate rules you only need 51 votes to do tax reform so democrats don't have that filibuster opportunity. this is how the bush tax cuts were passed early in his administration. i think you would have to bet they'll get some kind of a massive tax plan through. i would just observe that the treasury secretary nominee does not appear to understand the president-elect's own tax plan because he said rich people
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would lose deductions equal to what they got. that's simply not what's in the plan. the plan basically provides that 50% literally of the tax benefits from that plan go to the top 1% and 80% go to the top 20%. this is totally a tax cut for the rich and to portray it as anything else is contradicting the president-elect. >> steve, it wouldn't take much to tweak the plan and maybe even get some democratic support including in the senate where you have a lot of red state democratic senators if they do offset the top rate cut with limits on deductions, that could be a much more populist plan and more skewed against the wealthiest than trump proposed in the campaign. >> sure. but yet mnuchin said they weren't going to eliminate the deduction for wealthy people and limit on mortgage deductions but there already is but limiting deductions is politically controversial.
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you have to eliminate a lot to offset a tax cut of this size. >> anyone that's been around washington long enough and seen what has happened in the past knows what's going to happen here. they're going to pass the tax cuts. there aren't going to be corresponding spending cuts. people will engage in fuzzy math that has made deficits explode, and the republicans are going to pass a massive tax cut, and they're not going to pay for it, and we're going to go deeper and deeper in debt. i pay about 55% of my salary straight to the government on several levels. at the same time, if you're going to cut taxes, you need to have corresponding spending cuts at least to some degree. that's just not going to happen here. everybody can say it is. it's not going to happen. and that's one of the things that is so discouraging about this. show us the significant spending cuts that offset the loss of revenue to the federal government and then maybe i'll
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take you a little more seriously. i don't think that's going to happen. harold, i want to go back to this treasury pick. it seems from the left steve mnuchin is getting pounded because he's a wall street insider from the right and from wall street he's pounded for being insufficiently light when it comes to intellectual heft you need to run the treasury department and to be able to pick up the phone and call lloyd bla blankfine and jamie dimon when the market is down and say calm down, we got this under control. >> we'll get an opportunity to see this as he goes through the confirmation hearing. based on quotes we put up from senator sanders and warren, we'll have some tough questions i would imagine over the last week as they contemplated this appointment those questions were envisioned and i got to think
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he'll be prepared for them as he goes forward. i do think, joe, the most important point this morning is the one you just raised. in my lifetime, i don't recall a presidential race where the conversation around debt and deficits frankly was completely absent. in fact -- >> nobody cares. they don't care despite the fact we're coming up on $20 trillion in debt. >> we'll find ourselves having this conversation when the debt selling debate arises and curious to see republicans who raise concern about the debt ceiling when president obama was in office and even some democrats who raised it will raise it with the same kind of aggressiveness. the majority of americans have made clear this is not the issue that's foremost on their minds. deaf -- deficits and debt. i think what we're hearing about carrier is a positive thing. he has a lot more to do to
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create jobs, but i think he should be given credit on that from the standpoint that a lot of americans are hoping and wishing that government would provide some incentives and if indeed the numbers are correct, that carrier was looking to save 65 million a year and government will provide $1 million a year to keep jobs in indiana, i think that's a positive thing. he'll have a lot more to do. this is just one step, but he should be applauded for that. >> right. it's highly symbolic. don't expect many in the press or certainly nobody in the left to say anything positive about it. it is highly symbolic. just imagine -- >> especially if you have one of those jobs. >> manage the political earthquake if carrier announced yesterday they were actually moving to mexico. it would have been all over the front pages of every newspaper. let's talk about some of the other picks causing some concerns about how inside washington donald trump may be going with this election for his
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cabinet. >> just quickly one other thing on that deficit. one of the reasons harold is right people aren't interested in the deficit at the moment because interest rates are so low but mr. mnuchin said we'll have to get ready for higher interest rates. you may get more attention on that subject, too, if that's coming our way. >> it melts down very quickly. we're carrying $19 trillion in debt right now with historically low interest rates. if they go up to 3%, 4%, 5%, 6%, it's devastating for the united states treasury. >> most say his plan adds 4 trillion to that and higher interest rates and you have a problem people will talk about. let's talk about the early clash between the rhetoric that he employed on the campaign trail after promising to drain the swamp, three of his top appointments will be coming
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directly from congress while another is married to the senate majority leader and his other choices come from ranks of ultrawealthy such as wilbur ross. trump is also reportedly considering goldman sachs president for a top job and he's being hide for office of director of management budget and steve mnuchin spent 14 years at goldman sachs. shares of the investment banking giant soared 4% in trading yesterday closing at levels the stock hasn't seen since december of 2007. trump has been highly critical of goldman sachs as recently as three weeks ago when he featured footage of the ceo in his closing argument ad invoking the global power structure that robbed our working class and trump bashed his opponent's ties to the company that supporters
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used it in their attack. >> okay. so you like rich people who buy politicians? >> where your goldman sachs jacket at? we know your wife works there. >> okay. that was one of the most remarkable moments of the campaign. i don't know if he figured out those guys were paid by trump's people and were operatives are not. remarkable moment on the campaign. donny, here's the rub, okay. you run as an outside. you want to change washington. but you and i both know we're grown-ups and everyone around the table knows we're grown-ups and you're not going to change washington unless you hire people who know washington. that actually are insiders. actually have run something b and so the question is, how do you thread that needle if you're going to be a disruptor, it seems you need establishment
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people around you to disrupt. if you do that, you seem to be going to answer the campaign promise. >> nobody during the campaign no one has more anti-donald than me. i'm excited about what he's doing. let's separate what it takes to win an election and what it takes to run a country. he hired some billionaires to run treasury and commerce, you hire smart people. you hire people who understand the business. if i was going to reform the hedge fund business, i wouldn't hire an activist. that's just smart. that's a businessman's approach. >> by the way, cohen is a guy that's run into problems with the law. run into problems with regulation but you're right. you go to somebody that understands the system, that understands the weaknesses of the system, understands how to exploit the system, and then you say go fix it and don't let anybody else do that. >> by the way, his economic
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picks are outsiders. they are business people. and i think the thing that i continue to be hopeful about with the exception of the deficit because it's going to play back into that, trump wants to win. he wants to go down in history as a great leader. the good news is he's not going to be beholding to what he ran on b what will work over four years. bad news for the deficit is he won't be concerned with 20 years down the road and concerned with his legacy and the least responsive to deficit issue to your point before but other than frankly flynn and we've talked about bannon, i have no issues. his picks seem very smart, considerate and intelligent. >> devos is an establishment pick. pompeo, a guy getting praise from almost all corners. we had hayden on yesterday critical of donald trump during the campaign, but he looked at
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pompeo and general mattis and mitt romney and says this guy is putting competent people around him. insiders, maybe so, but they can run washington. >> democrats first line in dnc statement on steven mnuchin was so much for draining the swamp. brown came out and said we're stocking it with alligators instead, that donald trump is. here's the thing i'm more curious about. the transition team and folks close to the president-elect would make the point that you just did which is why not put these people who have private sector experience in to help the american worker and try to do tax reform and push these things forward because they have connections in that world and they're able to push through change. you obviously have criticism on the other side. what i want to know is in three minutes i am leaving to go to the airport for the victory tour. >> it will say hallie jackson on
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it. go ahead. >> not halle berry. a little known fact. >> thank you, joe. really. so in cincinnati the thing i'm going to look for is we saw these supporters, this is our first opportunity to get back out for this rally like what we saw for 18 months during donald trump's campaign. what do they think? my sense is that the people who backed him are going to support him regardless of the fact that he is frankly stocking his administration as you put it with insidery people and ties with washington and wall street. the people that put him into office put him into office because they believe we heard it again and again. he'll surround himself with people that know how to get things done. the other part of that is the president-elect is now the president for all americans and not just the ones that put him into office. being able to calm some nerves of folks inside d.c. and inside the establishment could go a long way, and i think that's sort of the eye on the ball that he has. >> hallie jackson, thank you so
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much. mark halperin, is that your last name? halperin? i didn't confuse your last name? okay. good. so, mark, i want to pick up on what hallie said. his people are going to stay with him no matter what. we found that. by the way, these arguments that people are going to leave him if he picks mitt romney should we list the things that donald trump did over the course of a year and a half campaign and his people stayed with him. they're going to leave him? they're not. they're going to stick with him. it seems to me the problem is on the other side where he's going to be able to give the democrats great 30-second ads showing an anti-goldman sachs clip and then showing a goldman sachs employee and his administration. he's wide open for that line of attack. at this point, does that matter
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politically? >> in the short-term, no. his poll numbers are a little bit better and any incoming president wants a honeymoon period with leverage from the country. the most important thing that happened yesterday that's not gotten much attention is mike pence meeting with paul ryan and mitch mcconnell. mike pence is trying to cue up a fast legislative agenda particularly on a down payment on infrastructure and if those things happen and higher growth rates, the deficit won't be that bad. democrats will be able to run negative ads in two years but that's the key. can they pass some things early on that actually help the real lives of real people. that's what trump supporters are counting on. they want border security and national security but more than anything else -- that's why carrier thing is so important. they want to see voting for
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risky change is going to produce results that manifest if their lives particularly on economics. >> at the end of the day, it's jobs, jobs, jobs and that's where this carrier deal, left can sneer at it, reporters can sneer at it, it's highly symbolic. trump talked about it the entire campaign. he said i'm going to save carrier. the headline today is he saved carrier. it's not going to mexico. big symbolic move. >> as far as politics of him bringing in insiders, all that matters two years from now is what's happening in the country. we sit around the table and pick things apart. there's a reality of what happens in 24 months. to your last point, first of all, number one, no matter how you slice it, he saved 1,000 jobs. that's nothing but good news. it is symbolic. the one thing that we do have to kind of at least be cognizant of is this is a guy who is very much about optics. if he can rinse and repeat and find another company with $6.9
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billion of defense contracts and another company about to leave and do this three times a day for the next 24 months, great. it's great move. it's great symbolic move. that's both a problem and the success of it. i won't sneer at that. in reality, i also do not want a false head move that this is the solution. this one particular way of doing things. >> no. there's no doubt this is a one off. we'll talk to steve rattner next block about it. you would have to do this 800 times just to save the number of jobs that were saved in the auto bailout back in 2009-2010. again, we're talking mainly about symbolism. we've got to get to some other news. real quickly, i want to talk to you about it looks like breaking news overnight the colombian congress has agreed to a peace deal with the rebels despite the fact voters turned it down and it looks like this may be the
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last hurdle to actually having the government implement that peace deal. >> a world of so much bad news, this is some good news. latin america's longest running war. hundreds of thousands of people have lost their lives during the course of it. it looks like we got it. they tried to take it to the people a couple months ago for a referendum. people turned it down said it wasn't tough enough on rebels. they we draredrafted the deal ak it to congress. referendums are tough and they got it through congress and there's now peace in colombia which is an extraordinary move and good news. >> that is extraordinary. >> let's take a look now at some other news which is the trail of devastation in the wake of more than 30 tornadoes that touched down in parts of the south over the past two days. as of right now, there are at least five people confirmed dead and dozens of people have been injured across tennessee and alabama. this video is from polk county in tennessee where officials say a husband and wife were killed
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in their mobile home. the tornado ripped through that area damaging 50 homes, a firestation and a post office. alabama's governor issued a state of emergency. three people killed there when tornadoes tore through the middle part of the state. the storms took out one of the area's own shopping centers, a church and a day care center. that's just extraordinary pictures. meanwhile, in the wake of fast moving wildfires in eastern tennessee, seven people are now confirmed dead with many more injured. more are still missing. there is an eerie quiet in the smoky mountains with some 700 homes and businesses destroyed and 17,000 acres are charred. for all of this, let's bring in nbc meteorologist bill karins. any relief down in the south from this? >> for the fires they did get it yesterday. some areas received 2 to 4 inches of rain. too late for everyone with destruction but we didn't want fires to keep going. we had 11 tornadoes reported
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yesterday. scary scenes in atlanta and in charlotte and the really devastating storms were the ones that we had from last night, the night before last night and those were ones that were in jackson county area of alabama and those are the ones that were strongest that did the most damage. here's just more of the pictures there. you can go on google maps and look at this small town. there's not much left unharmed. baptist church was completely destroyed. the firestation was destroyed. the only elementary school has significant damage. you wonder how they'll clean up and rebuild. this morning, a quiet weather pattern. rain is exiting left here. maine is a mess with rain in southern maine. northern maine is getting snow. this is snowmobile country and ski country. only other issues is strong winds developing in southern california. santa ana winds. a quiet weather pattern today and tomorrow looks like we'll
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see some rain in texas. no more severe weather on the way. looks like the fire weather will be improving with cool temperatures out there. additional rainfall beginning of next week. what a tough time. tennessee and alabama. the fires and then the tornadoes right on top of it back to back. >> really tough. thank you so much. we'll keep you will of them in our thoughts and prayers. still ahead on "morning joe" this morning from the house republican leadership, we've got congressman tom cole and we'll ask him about the washington insiders that donald trump is going to bring to the white house. plus the great doris kearns good wy goodwin will join the conversation. >> i want to jump in. i know it's thursday and for the kids to like the rock 'n' roll, there's something going on with prohibition tonight? isn't there some handsome -- there it is. i've been there.
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i have to say for kids and grown-ups alike, surprisingly good this mr. scarborough. he's actually really good. >> i don't know that kids consider you and girlfriends that you bring and with emphasis on girl. it's kind of -- are you going to be there tonight, donny? >> yes. everyone will be proof for age so it's all good. >> i was going to say please do that for us. thanks so much. we'll be right back with more "morning joe." ♪
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>> we have a responsibility, and we embrace the opportunity that is presented. we know how to win elections. we've done it in the past. we will do it again. >> who is the future of the democratic party? >> well, i haven't thought about that. >> is it nancy pelosi?
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>> well, you know, yeah. to some extent this is our leader. this is who our caucus chose. and we're going to support them. >> house minority leader nancy pelosi won her eighth term leading the democratic caucus. pelosi easily beat out ohio representative tim ryan, but her 134-63 margin of victory signals discontent with her leadership that nearly a third of the caucus voted against her. with us now in washington, let's bring in senior writer and politico co-author of the playbook, jake sherman. the political headline that i'm reading this morning says democratic leader beats back challenge but the vote reflected significant discontent. it would have been unthinkable two years ago for nancy pelosi to lose a third of her caucus. what's it mean moving forward for her? >> no one thought that tim ryan
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would be the next democratic leader and still 63 people voted for him. it was a protest vote. it shows that democrats really need to wrap their heads around a post-pelosi reality. something they haven't done. they have frozen out an entire generation of leaders. the next leaders of this party are either out of congress, harold ford jr. or in the united states senate. so democrats have not begun to grapple with this. there's really not many people around. they are led by a bunch of 70 year olds and not a good situation for house democrats. >> harold ford when you were there, you had the same leaders running the democratic congress but they were in their 50s. they're in their 70s now. you look at the two leading contenders for the presidency in 2020 if you just sort of talk to people. one would be 78. the other would be 71. the next generation of democrats has been wiped out.
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what does your party do? >> age is not as much of an issue as the fact that there's an agenda. we lost this race. there are some people that say we lost seats in the house and we didn't win senate races and we lost the presidential race because of a tactics game but we didn't get enough people out to vote and we clearly didn't. the core of any get out the vote effort is an inspiring message. an inspiring agenda. we lack that now. i think tim ryan tried to offer that. clearly the caucus decided to stick with ms. pelosi. it's clear it's time for a change and it's clear she's not the future of the party. tim and others in the congress are going to have to not only rally around themselves but rally around a message and an agenda and i hope that democrats understand that we're not going to defeat donald trump or beat back republican proposals by just saying no and by yelling and screaming. if we don't offer substantive, real proposals and answers and counters that speak to the aspirations and dreams of every day hard working middle class americans, which is why this
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carrier deal is symbolic as it is, is important, then we're going to find ourselves in a worst situation. we have the smallest membership of democrats in the house in almost 100 years. my former colleagues in congress and those new to congress, you're going to have to explain that. if we don't pursue a real substantive agenda over the next two years, shame on us as a party because we let down a lot of hard working middle class americans who depend on democrats. >> mark halperin, nancy pelosi was the first woman elected speaker of the house. she ran that house extraordinarily well. tough, efficient. everything that you would want from a strong speaker. and yet i was watching the crown on netflix last night with my daughter where winston churchill was finally forced to step down. he passed it over who destroyed the empire but that's another thing. >> spoiler. >> that is a spoiler.
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>> i haven't got there yet. >> now you have. >> he steps down? >> yeah. he steps down. i'm not going to spoil it for you but something happens in egypt. it doesn't go well. >> she carries on reigning, is that right? >> she does. >> don't mess up "hamilton" for the rest of us either. >> mark halperin, even churchills, even pelosis have to step down at some point. isn't it about time -- could this be her swan song? isn't it about time for her to stepdown? >> i think the democratic brand needs to be infused by ideas, and i have a lot of respect for her as a fund-raiser and strategist, as someone who understands issues and the left of the democratic party, but name an idea, a reform idea prominently associated with
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nancy pelosi at this point or over the last ten years. that's a problem for the whole party now. where is the brand of the democratic party going to be defined? if it's defined by the same leaders of two decades, that's a problem. there are no obvious presidential candidates. clearly elizabeth warren and other senators might define. i'll say last thing there's so much focus on the presidential. you can list 20 reasons why hillary clinton lost from james comey to a failure to schedule her correctly into some of these key states. what democrats aren't addressing going back to what harold said is why do they hold so few seats in the house, in the senate, in the state legislatures. they'll have trouble going up against an administration moving at 150 miles an hour. >> we can talk about comey and hillary clinton having 2.5 million vote majority right now. we can talk about a lot of things. the fact is only 11 democrats hold governorships.
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there are fewer members of democrats in the house of representatives than there have been in almost a century. they have been absolutely battered in the united states senate. they lost over 900 legislative seats over the past six years statewide. this is a party that's been bleeding out at every level other than the top level, the presidency. and they remind me of gm before the crash. you know, when gm needed to be bailed out, you said companies like gm are used to being in first place. are used to being dominant. they don't reform like other companies. that's kind of where -- is the democratic party where gm was in 2008? no new ideas. >> it is about ideas but i'm going to say something that's politically indellicable here. i don't care if it's a movie
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network, at 75 years old when that's the think tank, ideas are not new at 75. there's an issue with the age. i pleased my mother's friends and don't want them yelling at me. >> donny, your passport to boca has been revoked. >> was it an issue or idea or just a person? same thing with ronald reagan. yes. it is about ideas. they need transformative people. personalities. dynamic figures for people to rally around. ironically, same thing with donald trump. it wasn't about his ideas. it was about the power of that person. that's what the democrats need. >> i agree with that actually. first, with respect to nancy pelosi, i think she has done a good job. i'm happy she got reelected. that's not really the issue. the issue is what harold said
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about the need for ideas and policies but really we have some of those. what's really important is we don't have the people at the moment. when i talk to my friends in the democratic party and we're in despair about the election and say who is next and who is out there and who is positioned to be a leered of the democratic party. >> steve rattner. draft harold ford. >> we would love to have harold ford. >> clear this with my wife. >> when you go through the list of people who are in those few governorships that we hold and through the leadership of the senate and through the younger members of the house, it's very hard to see where the next generation of democrats is coming from. that's what we really have to develop. >> joe, can i ask you a question very quickly? what are you hearing about harold ford jr.'s cabinet position? what's the update on that? >> we don't know. whatever it is, we're all for it. we support it 1,000 percent.
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jake, let me ask you this. another political story talks about pelosi after winning agrees to leadership structure changes. what concessions does nancy pelosi have to give back to her caucus and where does she and where does the democratic party on capitol hill go from here? >> she's decentralized power which is a mostly symbolic move. it shows that she gets it. i think the most interesting thing that happened in this campaign is nancy pelosi was trying to rib tim ryan saying hillary clinton didn't even win your district. donald trump did. people close to tim ryan were, like, duh, that's the point. we don't need san francisco liberals when harold ford was in the house and when you were in the house, joe, the democratic party had members in the deep south, in texas in big numbers. that's how you get to majority to push positions you are talking about. there are no rural southern democrats. all urban southern democrats and
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if you talk to democrats, you put them on truth serum as we like to say, that's what they say their big problem is. >> they are geographically contained. talk about geographic clusters. the house democrats have that problem. all right. jake, thank you so much for being with us. we love having you here. greatly appreciate it. coming up next, we have must read opinion pages and also we're going to talk to doris kearns goodwin.
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i use what's already inside me to reach my goals. so i liked when my doctor told me that i may reach my blood sugar and a1c goals by activating what's within me with once-weekly trulicity. trulicity is not insulin. it helps activate my body to do what it's supposed to do release its own insulin. trulicity responds when my blood sugar rises. i take it once a week, and it works 24/7. it comes in an easy-to-use pen and i may even lose a little weight. trulicity is a once-weekly injectable prescription medicine to improve blood sugar in adults with type 2 diabetes. it should be used along with diet and exercise. trulicity is not recommended as the first medicine to treat diabetes and should not be used by people with severe stomach or intestinal problems or people with type i diabetes or diabetic ketoacidosis.
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trulicity is not insulin and has not been studied with long-acting insulin. do not take trulicity if you or anyone in your family has had medullary thyroid cancer or multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2 or if you are allergic totruli. stop using trulicity and call your doctor right away if you have symptoms of an allergic reaction, such as itching, rash, or difficulty breathing; if you have signs of pancreatitis such as severe stomach pain that will not go away and may move to your back, with or without vomiting or if you have symptoms of thyroid cancer, which may include a lump or swelling in your neck, hoarseness, trouble swallowing, or shortness of breath. medicines like trulicity may cause stomach problems, which could be severe. tell your doctor about all your medical conditions and any medicines you take. taking trulicity with a sulfonylurea or insulin may increase your risk for low blood sugar. common side effects include nausea, diarrhea, vomiting, decreased appetite, and indigestion. some side effects can lead to dehydration, which may cause kidney failure. with trulicity, i click to activate what's within me. if you want help improving your a1c and blood sugar numbers
3:44 am
with a non-insulin option, click to activate your within. ask your doctor about once-weekly trulicity.
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>> i'm actually looking at the "wall street journal's" editorial about trump's money men. that's what it's called. interesting line here. mr. mnuchin suffers from mitt romney's squeamishness when it comes to individual tax cuts that includes high earners. this sometimes happens to people who drove a porsche in college. how the new administration could handle violence in america and we also have more from our must-read opinion pages coming up next on "morning joe."
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let's bring in reverend al sharpton to talk about a couple cases going on right now. thanks for being with us. >> good to see you. >> let's talk about charlotte. no charges out of charlotte. some protests but peaceful. in charleston, you have the case going to jury there. what are you looking at? >> i think that different cases. when you look at what is going on in charleston, the walter scott case, which i know very well. we were involved in some of the response there. you had the local mayor in north charleston and the police chief there immediately step in, immediately remove the policeman. there's a videotape where clearly the walter scott was running from the police officer. he was shot in the back. and that is going to the jury. in charlotte, you're seeing where a prosecutor decided not to bring this to a jury and has
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said that, in fact, that he claims that the person killed in the case had a gun, something that is disputed by the family and the community. so that is why the protests continue. i think what it really says is that we're going to see as we also begin to watch the trial proceed in the case of the charleston nine, the massacre at the church, that race and criminal justice, because it's not just race. just remember the officer in charlotte was a black officer. so sometime the question of policing is racial. sometimes it's a matter of training. it's a matter of conditioning. i think that this goes into the age of trump and how the new president and the attorney general are going to deal with this. i think that's going to be some concern. >> let's talk about that. you know -- you've known donald
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trump for a very long time. what are your thoughts about what you have seen during the transition and some of the names out there? are there any names that he's put out there that give you any reason for hope? >> well, i mean, i have known him a long time. i've been both an opponent of his and he's come down to the network. he's a tough guy. he's a straight shooter. usually on the straight shooting on things i disagree with. i think that now we'll see him govern and whether he'll sit down and talk to people he d disagrees with and balance to where this country is going at this critical time. when i hear names like harold ford even being entertained and dr. ben carson who i disagree but he talks. it says to me, well maybe
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they're going to govern in a way that many people will be protesting and holding accountable but they're not unreasonable. the hope is that mr. trump will learn from ronald reagan and others that we're certainly on the opposing side of the leadership fight but they learned to talk and we have a conservative view but deal with what is fair and right for the country. on january 14th, many of us are kicking the weekend with a big challenging rally and march in washington to say that. it's not anti-trump. it's about preserving what is right and fair for everyone. the question is how will he respond? will he take the big picture and say i want to be everyone's president as he said he would when he did the show with bishop jackson, wayne jackson, or
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whether he's going to be combative. the campaign is over, mr. trump. let's see if you can govern and talk with everybody even those of us that are adamantly opposed to some of your policies. >> okay. katty kay, let's go to must-read opinions. >> the concern of many liberals and in "the new republic" the liberal response to trump is devolving into outrage porn. when we play the outrage game, we're playing on trump's turf. he has already proven to be master of this game. option to trump should focus if a more on option to his policies, decisions and judgment rather than on calling him out for for his every remark or relying on funny but ineffective memes to make our point. better if we defeat trump on the issues. force him to defend his ideas
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and policies and less attention paid to his twitter feed the better. a lot of us have been wonder about the twitter feed and huow much to respond to it. we said judge him not on what he says but what he does now that he's about to become president. >> people get spun around on things they may see. a couple days ago on his twitter feed he talked about flag burning. there was a part -- it was all unconstitutional but criminalizing flag burning which of course the outrage porn exploded all over twitter feeds and our show and all over everywhere and somebody sent me something that said hillary clinton and barbara boxer were the co-sponsors in 2006 of criminalizing flag burning. again, we just need to provide
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context to these things. there doesn't seem to be any context to it. just a lot of rage. doesn't it seem that new republic piece made a lot of sense because all you're doing is playing into donald trump's hand if you keep calling him a nazi or say he's a fascist or as one renowned journalist said comparing him to putin and claiming that american journalis journalists could be dragged off in handcuffs to jail if they write something. it's insanity. it's hyperbole at this point and all they're doing is helping trump. >> i think that piece is really smart on a lot of points including the notion of you're not going beat trump at the outrage game. it's not going to happen. the moment that's really going to test democrats that want to oppose policies is if he comes forward with policies that are appealing to some democrats
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either on merits or because senators up for reelection from red states. do they oppose trump on policy and adopt policies republicans adopted eight years ago. if trump comes forward with ideas they would like if democratic proposed ideas, they'll vote party line against him. a real moment of truth for defining the party. >> no doubt. reverend al, stay with us, if you can. coming up next, donald trump isn't the only republican leader to fire off heated messages to political opponents. abe lincoln did the same thing but they didn't hit cyberspace for the whole world to read. doris kearns goodwin is our next guest on "morning joe." liberty mutual stood with me when i was too busy with the kids to get a repair estimate. liberty did what? yeah, with liberty mutual all i needed to do to get an estimate was snap a photo of the damage and voila! voila! (sigh) i wish my insurance company had that... wait! hold it... hold it boys...
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it's top of the hour on this thursday, december 1st. happy december. mika has the morning off. we have donny deutch, katty kay, steve rattner, mark halperin and joining the discussion pulitzer prize winning author doris kearns goodwin. so good to have you here. we're going to be talking to you about abraham lincoln and what lincoln fired off letters to critics, which actually just that tease reminded me that we were talking a couple days ago about ronald reagan actually picking up the phone in haste and calling dan rather in '82 in the middle of a broadcast to say
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you got that wrong that reminded me of that famous harry truman story about you saying lincoln fired off letters where harry truman wrote a letter and it shocked everybody around him and it shocked america. a music critic wrote an unflattering review of his daughter, margaret's performance and he said, "ms. truman cannot sing very well" to which harry truman president of the united states writes "some day i hope to meet you. when that happens you'll need a new nose, a lot of beef steak for black eyes and perhaps a supporter below." everything that is new has happened before. so tell us about honest abe and when honest abe got angry. >> he had a great ritual. when he got angry, he wrote what he called a hot letter. all anger would come out in the hot letter and put the letter
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aside and hope he would calm down and never need to send it and it would become a cool letter. he had written a letter saying i'm distressed you didn't do what i asked you to do and this will paralyze the general. puts it aside and never opened until the 20th century when the papers are opened and never sent or signed. when i met with president obama i was telling him about lincoln's hot letters. i said do you think of doing that? what do you mean? i do it all the time. i said what do you mean? he writes letters to people and gets mad and then crumples them up and puts them in the waste basket. maybe we have a model here for mr. trump if he has a fake twitter account and then he can write it all and say it to everybody and read in his own office and crumple it up and throw it away. >> there in lies the problem. our first social media president and that allows you to do it
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instantaneously and that actually does cause a problem. >> without a question. fdr would write in a first draft of his speech. terrible things about a guy. a new speech writer came and said you can't do that. old one said wait until we get to second draft and third draft and by fourth draft it's gone but he felt great because he got it out of his system. there has to be some ritual that works out because it won't be easy to be a governing president and have tweets in the middle of the night. >> joe, can i talk about the tweeting? i was a communications guy. i actually think his tweeting is great. let me tell you why. number one, go back to the flag burning thing. first of all, this is the way the world communicates. when you do an advertising plan, you start with social media so when he tweets something, it certainly gets the traditional media but this is the way the world is. what he does whether he's meaning to do it or not, he starts national discussions. when he threw out that flag
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thing, what was great is for a couple days the entire country -- not just talking about folks on this show but people on the streets were able to talk about that. i think his this is the way i see the world today tweets is actually refreshing and great and gives us a chance as a country to unifily have an intelligent discussion. he's not going change. nor should he. that's the way people communicate today. people have to stop getting crazy that our president does what every young person in the world does to communicate. >> mark halperin, the fact is we live in a different era and in a celebrity culture. it started a long time ago when people like paris hilton made millions and millions of dollars doing absolutely nothing but being a celebrity. so donny is right. this does connect. donald trump sends out these tweets because he knows his
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people love those tweets. the problem comes when you send out a tweet in the morning that may excite the base but has too short provisions in them that are unconstitutional and have been for over half of a century. certainly there needs to be some balance there. >> i agree with donny about the upside but i see three problems. one, you cannot always communicate in a sophisticated and complete way with 140 characters. yesterday when he did four or five tweets about this announcement about how to handle businesses raised more questions than it answered. two, sometimes in tweets he doesn't tell the truth. he tweets things that are factually incorrect. that is just a bad example for children. including children on twitter. and the third thing what donny referenced is when he shows his angry side, when he reacts to the news media or some other critic, i think as president the fewer of those the better. >> mark, i want to react to the first two. yes as far as business thing.
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it did raise more questions. that's the value. he brought to the table that maybe for the last two or three days was not a big discussion point which would be conflict of interest so once again he put a light back on that. as far as the -- i think that it's refreshing to have a president, even if you don't like them, sharing his points of view, his thoughts of view on a daily basis. there's more access than we've ever had. >> not when they are factually wrong. >> i'm talking about the mode of communication. >> widespread voter fraud, you shouldn't tweet that. >> let's go through this. all right. doris, how do we sort through this? people are outraged and rightly that what donald trump tweets out in real time sometimes is just false. for instance, the widespread voter fraud. you have him doing something that people think is unique and it's a first time anybody has
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been this brazen. if you go back to 1960, this has happened before. jfk winning by talking about a missile gap created by eisenhower and nixon but never created. it was a lie. they knew it was a lie but it was effective. it was nixon in '72, not '68 but '72 that talked about his secret peace plan with vietnam. of course three or four years later they asked about the secret peace plan and he said there was never a secret peace plan. politicians do lie. perhaps this is more jarring because it happens in real time and happens so quickly. >> i think it's more concerning for us today because it's not just our politicians that are doing it. we're now giving our children and grandchildren the idea that news can be fake. i think that's what you would agree with. because everything has been said now by our leading politicians, younger people are now thinking in the same way. and they think, my god, i can
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make up something and get on the air and talk about it. one thing when you talk about a missile crisis and then you're running for office and then afterwards you say maybe it wasn't as big as we thought it was. when you run for office, you believe what you're saying anyway. lbj believed that his grandson died because he wanted him to. these journalists, sticklers for detail. they would make you remember the wallpaper the time you first made love. there's a difference between real fake love. fake love. he's got me now. fake news. real fake news and what's part of our process. it's what we're doing today. it's happening. >> you bring up a great point though, doris. what if lbj had access to a twitter account? can you imagine the nightmare that people that work for lbj would have to endure? there's that famous picture of john kennedy reaching out in texas and grabbing lbj to pull
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him back to stop yelling at the crowd. i think perhaps it has less to do with the character of the person who is stepping into the white house than it does with the technology that's at the fingertips. if harry truman had twitter, if lbj had twitter or nixon had twitter. >> impulsive presidents could easily have used it. i understand that. i do. i think there are moments, however, like look at the fact that jfk didn't let people know the cuban missile crisis was happening until it was the right time to let them know that. can you imagine that kind of freedom today? to understand you have this huge debate within you and the country doesn't even know it and you keep quiet until you say something. that's almost impossible to imagine today. you needed that time to think that out. that's what i worry about. there are certain decisions that can't be made known immediately. you need time to process them and will that happen today with people going on and impulsively saying whatever they want to at
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all moments? i don't know. >> katty kay, let's talk about the media and the media tweets. and just donald trump's approach to the media. a lot of people, i think, are saying that he's going to be like putin and drag them off to jail. i don't -- that's never going to happen. i do think he is at war with the media on another front. he feels they were wrong about him during the primary. they were. they were wrong about his chances during the general election. they were. and he knows he's got, what, 15, 20, 25 million people. knows he can get a message out and bypass everybody. i do think that, for instance, cnn is his target right now. "morning joe" was his target this past summer. "the new york times" is a target right now. i think he feels the freedom that other people have not felt in the past to go over, around them and to bash them head-on. >> he said he feels the freedom
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to go around them and supporters would probably agree with that strategy because they don't have much respect for the media anyway. it does raise a bigger question, i think, his tweets about the media particularly when he takes on one single reporter or one single news outlet. we had in the episode the question about reverence for the office. is there something in donald trump's tweeting and way he tweets specifically whabout one reporter or other that he's undermining the reverence we hold for the office of the presidency. it's one thing to communicate in an up front way that his supporters like and that seems to have no -- that tells it like it is which is what people like. it's another perhaps to tarnish the reputation of the office. maybe that's being old fashioned of me. i was wondering what doris thought. >> i think it also speaks to something deeper than that.
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a new yorker can understand. donald trump and his father were out of borough guys who felt they were fighting the manhattan elite that controlled real estate and everything else. and even though he and i would debate and fight, we always saw it the same way. out of borough guys that were underestimated. he was a queens guy. he had money but he was a queens guy. he was not accepted at the power spots. he didn't have breakfast at the regency. i think that his taking on a lot of the cnns and "the new york times" was you guys always underestimated us. i also think that there in lies the strategic way to fight him because he wants to show he can be bigger than he's expected to be, and he wants to be great. i think that's why if you combat him, he's going to combat back. if he is being appealed to that he can show that he can be
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everything everyone thought he couldn't be, he might rise to a different occasion which is why i'm going to challenge him in a strategic way because i think that's really at core. he's proving something even where he is now. >> exactly. as i've said from the beginning of this campaign, like ronald reagan, the greatest thing anybody can do for donald trump to help his political career forward is to underestimate him. doris, let's talk about the dignity of the office of the presidency and context has been missing this political season. historical context has been missing. people act as if donald trump wrote an asteroid to earth and jumped off it and was the first person of his kind to ever run for president. i remember my parents grew up poor in rural georgia, but they worshipped fdr and fdr was king
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and despite that they struggled through the great depression, they turned their noses up at harry truman as being unworthy of the office. a country bumpkin my mom said. they would look down at truman and laugh at him from their farm in georgia. he was not dignified enough to be in the office after fdr. that's how the east coast felt about him. lbj, you know better than anybody else, the stinging taunts and the chip on the shoulder he carried about bobby kennedy even jackie kennedy, the entire kennedy clan. they looked down on him as being unworthy of being too crass to hold the same office that jfk held. talk about that. and my god, i brought up richard nixon. this has happened before. >> there's no question.
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it depends on when you're coming into the presidency. i think you're right with truman. the problem was that ever fdr people lived with fdr for 12 years as their president. weren't ready for anyone else to be president and truman says pray for me as if he couldn't do the job. he turned out to be a really good president. at the beginning that transition was hard just as it was for lbj. he didn't have the voice of the new england establishment. he thought they would look down on him because he wasn't. he turned out to do more on civil rights and great society that jfk ever could have done. go back to what we were saying before about the press and the relationship. the best president, the ones i've studied and lived with the most, had a good relationship with the press. they understood they will fight. they understood they'll have to take criticism. if you can deal with the president like teddy roosevelt could, every day when he had the barber's hour, he would have himself shaved in the middle of the day, press could ask questions. odd thing as he would move around in the chair but at the end of the day they could come
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in and ask him questions again. fdr had two press conferences a week. can you imagine that? if you get used to it and you know they can be a pain in the ass and listen to their questions when there was a certain moment when somebody criticized teddy roosevelt for a memoir he wrote and he was involved in the spanish american war that he should have called it alone in cuba. everyone is laughing in the country. i regret to tell you that my friends adore your title. he became friends with the guy you he could still criticize him. that's what you have to learn as a politician. >> steve rattner, that's what bill clinton said. the greatest gift that any governor or president could have is a very short memory. donald trump in his time with "the new york times," it was more of an exception than a rule. that certainly would seem to be a better approach than what he
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did with tv journalists the day before. >> i think donald trump does seem to have that ability at least at times to make up with people because otherwise he wouldn't speak to anybody because he fights with everybody at one point or another. he certainly you look at the mitt romney situation where he's prepared to go past that and even with "the new york times" he reveres "the new york times" in his own way and recognizes that it's going to be very important to his presidency so he went in and handled himself quite well. >> mark halperin, that's one of the interesting things about donald trump. fights a lot of people. all corners of the media world. i can say from personal experience i've written some of the toughest editorials and said more things about him negatively than probably anybody else over the past year than i have in my
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career in tv. and yet he is always looking for a reason to make peace. >> i've studied his relationship with the press and on this issue for a long time. i don't understand it still. i think the way to start is to know that he lives that it's not personal. it's business. he can switch on anybody in a business from positive to negative in the other direction just depending on the circumstances. sometimes it's a great trait. other times it's a scary one. >> joe, i'm in the negative place. i haven't made that swing back on with him yet. >> i'm sure -- look at mitt romney. there's hope for everybody, donny. there's hope for everybody. doris kearns goodwin, thank you so much. we love having you on. we appreciate it. >> glad to be here. >> reverend al, thank you as well. good luck moving forward. we're going to be watching politics nation as we do every sunday morning.
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a great, great show. still ahead, stop me if you heard this one before. the federal government could be facing another shutdown if congress doesn't approve a spending bill by next friday. congressman tom cole straight ahead. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. i use what's already inside me to reach my goals. so i liked when my doctor told me that i may reach my blood sugar and a1c goals
4:21 am
by activating what's within me with once-weekly trulicity. trulicity is not insulin. it helps activate my body to do what it's supposed to do release its own insulin. trulicity responds when my blood sugar rises. i take it once a week, and it works 24/7. it comes in an easy-to-use pen and i may even lose a little weight. trulicity is a once-weekly injectable prescription medicine to improve blood sugar in adults with type 2 diabetes. it should be used along with diet and exercise. trulicity is not recommended as the first medicine to treat diabetes and should not be used by people with severe stomach or intestinal problems or people with type i diabetes or diabetic ketoacidosis. trulicity is not insulin and has not been studied with long-acting insulin. do not take trulicity if you or anyone in your family has had medullary thyroid cancer or multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2 or if you are allergic to trulicity or its ingredients. stop using trulicity and call your doctor right away if you have symptoms of an allergic reaction,
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such as itching, rash, or difficulty breathing; if you have signs of pancreatitis such as severe stomach pain that will not go away and may move to your back, with or without vomiting or if you have symptoms of thyroid cancer, which may include a lump or swelling in your neck, hoarseness, trouble swallowing, or shortness of breath. medicines like trulicity may cause stomach problems, which could be severe. tell your doctor about all your medical conditions and any medicines you take. taking trulicity with a sulfonylurea or insulin may increase your risk for low blood sugar. common side effects include nausea, diarrhea, vomiting, decreased appetite, and indigestion. some side effects can lead to dehydration, which may cause kidney failure. with trulicity, i click to activate what's within me. if you want help improving your a1c and blood sugar numbers with a non-insulin option, click to activate your within. ask your doctor about once-weekly trulicity.
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let's bring in congressman tom cole from oklahoma. tom, how are you doing today? >> doing great, joe. how about you? >> i'm doing very well. i'm just curious, a lot of talk about what republicans have wanted to happen for six years finally happen and that's the a repeal of obamacare. a lot of people understand and donald trump has said it needs to be replaced. what's the republican plan to
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replace obamacare and do you think we might be looking at something where you repeal it but maybe sunset it a couple years down the road to give time for a transition? >> i do think there will be a transition period. we want to act quickly and decisively. for folks that want to see what the basic outline will be, they need to go to betterway.com. it's everything from medical liability insurance reform to associated healthcare plans where small companies combine together into purchasing pools to selling insurance across state lines. it's atty full and robust system. again, i don't think you can immediately pull the rug out from under people and both the president-elect and probably secretary designate have made it clear they want to move but not in ways that are destructive to individuals. >> you seem like -- i sound like chris matthews. you seem like a pro out there. you know what you're doing out
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there. you do. you seem like a pro on capitol hill that understands that if possible work with the other side. find places where democrats and republicans can come together and get bipartisan bills if for no other reason to put together good bills that represent all of america but also send a message to americans that congress can work together. are you feeling any optimism going into this congress that you haven't felt in prior congresses that this could happen? >> i am. every student succeeds replaces leave no child left behind. yesterday on the floor of the house we passed a bill reforming fda and nih and will help americans. a major piece of policy. the energy and commerce is the
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architect. huge bipartisan pport. we'll pass defense authorization bill on a bipartisan basis again probably for the 55th time in a row. there's a little bit of it more here than most people realize. i frankly think that president-elect has put proposals out there like infrastructure and like tax reform where there will be elements that appeal to democrats and will feel comfortable supporting those issues. >> good morning. harold ford. we commented on this show that there's been absence of talk about deficits and debt, that fiscal spending you mentioned infrastructure and some of the tax cuts. do you see that conversation reemerging within your own caucus? your in line to chair the budget committee. will those issues again be prominent ones and if so, how will they play into your thinking around some president-elect's claims? >> i'm going to be happy to be a cardinal. that's what i do on appropriations.
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i'm on the budget committee. happy to be there. i don't have any desire to chair it. in terms of deficit reduction, i think that's absolutely critical. i don't think our caucus has lost our focus on that. and frankly this is one where i'll set myself apart from the incoming administration, you're going to have to get to entitlement reform sooner or later. you can never balance the budget around here. over 60, almost 70% of all federal spending is entitlements. big three social security, medicare, medicaid. if you think you're going to balance the budget without reforming them and making tough decisions, you're kidding yourself. that's going to emerge whether people want it to or not because there's no way to make the numbers add up without getting serious about those programs. >> congressman, the government shutdown is looming. we assume you will find a way around that. the larger question is that since speaker ryan took over,
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there hasn't been quite the level of progress or action on budget matters that a lot of us expected. you passed 1 out of 12 appropriations bills and haven't passed a budget. feels like your caucus before you get to dealing with democrats doesn't have a consensus around whthe fiscal matters. >> our members supported the republican budget reported out of committee but we couldn't get 218. you can't expect democrats to pass a republican budget. that's pretty much our responsibility. on appropriation bills, all 12 reported out of committee. the real problem was that the senate quit picking up bills and bringing them on the floor and that affects what we do over here. you won't send legislation to the floor when it has no chance of moving through the senate whatsoever. members take a lot of tough votes. in my view we could have done and should have done all of the
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spending set through the end of the fiscal year. the decision was made at the leadership level and by the incoming administration not to do that. i got to tell you, that was a mistake. we'll have to write two sets of appropriation bills. we'll get it done. with all of the other things on the table so to speak that mr. trump is proposing, we shouldn't -- this congress shouldn't push off its responsibilities and this administration shouldn't push off its responsibilities on the next administration. it's our job to write the 2017 fiscal spending policem ining p. we're going to pass a continuing resolution probably through the end of april. when we get there if we're not careful, temptation will be let's continue this through the end of the fiscal year. september 30th. that's sloppy appropriating and budgeting. >> you got to face that head-on. you also have to face my next question head-on.
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okhoma or oklahoma state? who is going to win on saturday? >> that's easy for me, man. it's oklahoma. i got a lot of respect for oklahoma state. i'm an ou grad. i'm in the ou district. i'm always with the sooners. >> number 7 against number 11. good luck. good to see you. >> good to see you, joe. >> all right. still ahead, donald trump kicks off his thank you tour today but will first stop in indianapolis to formally announce his plan to save 1,000 jobs at the carrier air conditioning plant. we'll bring in kristen welker live from indianapolis and most importantly, friends, wake up the kids. get them downstairs. it's going to be like santa claus has come early because steve rattner is here and he's got his charts. "morning joe" back in a moment.
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donald trump starts his day in indianapolis celebrating carrier's announcement they'll keep 1,000 jobs in the state of the 2,200 they planned to send to mexico. "fortune" magazine reported citing a source close to the company that trump called the company ceo two weeks ago asking
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him to rethink closing the plant. the ceo explained that the move to mexico would save the company $65 million a year. trump reportedly countered by saying corporate tax rate reductions would outstrip those savings. in a statement yesterday, carrier confirmed the incentives offered by the state were an important consideration. "fortune" reported the company will get $700,000 a year in state tax incentives. the indianapolis star reports "carrier had been planning to shift all of its indianapolis jobs to mexico where workers would earn $3 an hour. highest paid indianapolis employees make $26 an hour and can earn $70,000 a year with overtime." according to "the new york times," the jobs saved represent 2% of all indiana manufacturing jobs shrinking by 147,000 since the year 2000. joining us from indianapolis is nbc news white house correspondent kristen welker covering the presidential
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transition. what are people there saying about the deal? i imagine there's quite a bit of celebration in indianapolis. >> reporter: there is a lot of celebration. no doubt about that. this is fulfillment of a campaign promise as you say. donald trump talked a lot on the trail about keeping american jobs in the united states. that's what this is. he's going to keep more than 1,000 jobs here at carrier ac in indianapolis. workers saying they are relieved. they are thrilled that they're going to be able to keep their jobs. they're going to be able to stay here in the u.s. at the same time, there's a lot of skepticism. what was in this deal? you talk about tax breaks from 700,000 into the millions of dollars. they want to know specifics. they want to know how sweet some are calling a sweetheart deal actually was. so there's really a range of reaction here. there's no doubt this is a win for president-elect donald trump. the current administration asked about this. take a listen to what josh earnest had to say yesterday.
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>> i know that the president-elect has indicated that he deserves credit for that announcement. i guess what i would observe is that if he is successful in doing that 804 more times, then he will meet the record of manufacturing jobs that were created in the united states while president obama was in office. there are 805,000 manufacturing jobs that weren't just protected or saved but actually created while president obama was in office. if we go to protecting jobs, there are more than 1 million jobs in the industrial midwest that were saved when president obama made the doings rescue the american auto industry. >> reporter: so the white house really downplaying the numbers here trying to put it into a broader context. here's where it gets tricky. president-elect trump, vice president-elect pence will meet with other union workers here in indianapolis and one union already saying they're going to
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be pushing them to try to keep their jobs here with their plant threatening to move jobs overseas. the president-elect will cap his day in cincinnati, ohio. a thank you style trip to all of those supporters in that critical swing state. joe? >> all right. thank you so much, kristen. greatly appreciate it. steve rattner, you've been looking at this in a larger context with manufacturing jobs. we've obviously talked about it around the table for five, six, seven, years. many times when manufacturing jobs come back to the united states, they left paying $33 an hour and came back paying $15 or $16 an hour. put this in context for us if you will. >> let me add one thing to what kristen said. carrier corporation is part of united technologies. 10% of united technologies revenues come from defense contracts. there was another point of leverage that doesn't always exist. let me start also with a little quiz. we created in this country 1.8 million jobs so far this year. total jobs.
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who would like to guess how many were in manufacturing? >> i'm going to say 50,000. >> i would say15%. >> negative 62,000. we actually lost 62,000 manufacturing jobs. >> we were both wrong. >> so when josh earnest talks about manufacturing jobs being created, he's technically correct but at a much slower rate than we did before. let's talk about what's going on out there. we've been bleeding manufacturing jobs in the whole country going from 20 million jobs back in 2000 to 12.3 million today. you can see for some of the states we're talking about what the magnitude of the declines have been. ohio, for example, had a million manufacturing jobs back in the day and it's now down to fewer than 700,000. >> so, steve, can we look at those trend lines really quickly. obviously you don't have the -- nobody knows exactly what the answer to this is.
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you look at the precipitous drop from 2000 to 2009, how much of that has to do with globalization increasing at a rapid rate and how much does that have to do with technology? >> that's a great question, joe. the answer is some of both. when you look at what's happened, for example, to manufacturing jobs in mexico, which have gone up very, very substantially over the same period of time, it's hard to believe that automation is all of it. automation was a big part of it in the earlier period when we became more efficient. lately when we become less efficient, automation hasn't played as much of a role. in a state like pennsylvania which was surprising election result to some, the number of manufacturing jobs actually hasn't really gone up at all during this recovery. it's essentially flat lined. let's look at the other piece of the puzzle because you mention wages. it's important to see what's happening to wages in this country. that's something that trump hasn't really talked about or suggested what he would do about it. if you look at michigan, which
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is an auto state and has been particularly hard hit back in the year in 2003, a manufacturing worker in michigan got about $28 an hour. this has dropped. after you adjust for inflation, it has dropped to $20 an hour today. manufacturing worker in michigan went from $28 to $20 after adjusting for inflation. >> almost a 30% drop. >> exactly. there's nothing in the trump plan, nothing really in anybody's plan pretty much for how to resolve this. and then we talked about competition. when you asked about automation versus wages. here's the challenge. and kristen referred to this as well. we pay at the moment about $38 an hour. this includes benefits for people that work in our manufacturing industries. that's pretty consistent with what other developed countries, germany, france, uk and so on pay. but when you get down to mexico and china, you see very different numbers. you see $5.90 in mexico.
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$4.12 in china. when i talk to business executives, manufacturing executives, the fact is that those workers have become very, very productive. and so ford is building a $1.6 billion plant in mexico right now to make small cars because you cannot make small cars in america at our wage rates on a cost effective basis. >> all right. katty kay, this is obviously a challenge also for great britain. how is great britain facing this brave new reality that's really been hampering all of us in the west for the past 15, 16 years? >> i think this is the biggest challenge facing western leaders and no one frankly has come up with any good solutions. what do you do about post-manufacturing job growth? what do you do about wages for people still in manufacturing sector. some people in the private sector are looking at it. some people in think tanks are
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trying to work on it. you don't see policy makers look at it sufficiently. that's precisely why we had brexit in the u.k. in june and why we had donald trump elected this time around. someone hoping someone outside of the system can come up with solutions. those numbers that steve just outlined, they're the problem. nobody really seems to have a solution to them yet. >> joe, your question about technology i wrote an interesting things that years and years from now factories will have two employees. one human and a dog and the dog's job is to make sure the human doesn't touch the equipment. >> are we seeing a glimpse of a new sort of economic fusion happening there?
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>> theresa has been a confusing character since she came into office in july. she seemed less conservative and more social liberal but she's had to bend very far for the re conservative wing of the conservative party because of brexit. what her policies are going to be will be affected by britain's relationship with the european union whether we have access to those free markets or the financial center of europe. none of that is really known yet. we can't really determine what theresa may's policies will be distinct from what happens over the brexit negotiations. >> all right. thank you. coming up next, has goldman sachs found a foothold in the trump administration? we have josh green with us giving us his latest reporting ahead on "morning joe."
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>> he forgets to rate of interest is like rockefeller in his prime would have to pay. he talks about how he's going to get, well, goldman sachs, i know the guys at goldman sachs. they have total, total control over him, just like they have total control over hillary clinton. >> that was donald trump back in february, with us now, the co-founder and former ceo of politico, jim vandehei, and mike allen formally announced their new media venture. we will talk to him about that. and jim serves as ceo, and also with us, washington national correspondent for bloomberg business week josh green. josh, we're going to talk to you about the new economic team. but first, jim vandehei, tell us about your new venture. very exciting news. >> we'll be launching in january. it's called axious and a new
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media company focused on politics, health care, and media trends which we think are the most important topics that cut across the areas anyone who is a serious news consumer cares about. an interesting twist ow how we get the content and how we deliver it, and it's an exciting time to do a new media turn. it's a much more complicated media environment. you have to become a student of the different ecosystems whether it's how person consume information on the right, the media platform. >> and nbc -- >> full disclosure. >> i'm an investor, yeah. >> i didn't know that. you're an investor also. guys, i have to announce, alex told me, nbc also an investor. you have a lot of investors. josh green. >> nobody came to me. >> josh green, are you an investor as well?
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come on, josh. missing out on the party. >> i got $160 with me? what do you think? >> i should send my next paycheck. >> you probably should. let's talk about the goldman sachs connection with the trump campaign. obviously, not shocking that there is a goldman sachs connection because there was with the clintons. there was with the bushes. there was with the obamas and now again the more things change, the more they stay the same with the trump administration. >> it is pretty shocking because goldman sachs has really been kind of out of power in washington over the last seven or eight years since the financial crisis. they were ceo lloyd blankfein was held before congress and held up as emblematic of the wrong doing in the crisis. they were famously described in rolling stone as being a vampire squid. given the campaign trump ran, very populist, anti-wall street, it's shocking to see the upper
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level of his administration stocked with goldman vets. and now, steve mnuchin is going to be his next treasury secretary. not only a goldman partnerering but his dad was a goldman partner. >> backlash against goldman wiig involved in the administration. where do you think we'll see it first? >> i think the first plus we'll see it is in democrats coming out and seizing on mnuchin as the new target of attack. a couple weeks ago, liberals decided they were going to take down steve bannon. looks like they lost that fight. yesterday, for the first time, a joint statement put out between bernie sanders and elizabeth warren attacking steve mnuchin. so i think he's going to be in for a rough confirmation hearing and democrats are going to see him as someone they can go after and try to take down as a way of wounding donald trump. >> but josh, he's actually, josh, getting hammered from the
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left, obviously. we would expect that. also the "wall street journal" editorial this morning hammering donald trump's economic team, saying mnuchin talks like a guy that drove around a porsche in college. that gives us a mental image. we know who those guys were. then also, though, saying that his choice for commerce secretary was a liberal demoat. >> well, you know, that's a pretty good line in the "wall street journal" editorial, because mnuchin really did drive a porsche at yale. so he's kind of like an '80s movie villain. wrn of the reasons that the journal's edtore page is upset is mnuchin has also come out, a little against character type, and buried deep down on the piece in him, and come out and said high earners are not going to get a high tax cut. we're going to take away some deductions. that is offensive to free market
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purists like the editors at the "wall street journal" op-ed page. i don't think they view mnuchin and certainly not wilbur ross as their kinds of conservatives. we have to wait and see what happens. >> jim, apart from ideology you hear questions about, and particularly from people in the current white house involved in transitioning over to the people, the successors going to replace them, some concerns about competency and how much this transition team exactly knows the scale of the job, understands the job, and is aware of what they need to do. are you hearing any of that? >> there's no doubt that there's a level of improvisation of pulling the cabinet together because they weren't prepared for the moment. but he's not that far behind in terms of filling it, and all of the hankering about whether warren or sanders likes the pick, he's going to have a republican senator, probably not going to have a difficult time
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getting any of these people through, and because he's donald trump, he doesn't care what the "wall street journal" editorial board has to say. he can get picks through that no other republican could. he will have a more eclectic cabinet. what does it actually look like? his first picks were a lot of hard liners. then in some of the less important cabinet posts, he's gone with more diversity. there's nothing i have seen that suggest any of the picks so far are in serious trouble. >> to be criticized by the editorial board of the "wall street journal" and bernie sanders and elizabeth warren, he might be on to something. the better line of attack for democrats might be if indeed the affordable care act is undone, we should offer our counters to that and say what we hope will stay. if president trump will stick to his word, he wants to keep two or three elements. democrats should make the flint water system part of any
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infrastructure program he passes. and we showed the losses and wages. democrats ought to convene 100 ceos large and small and tell us is it lending, regulatory relief that you need to create more jobs here and create better paying jobs. eric sassen had it right. let's stop with the hand wringing and stop attacking the tweets and offer something substantive in response. >> all right. thank you so much, harold. thank you, josh green, and thank you, jim vandehei. greatly appreciate it. we look forward to seeing you and seeing what's ahead with axious, and also, steve rattner, nbc, and we'll see if josh green invests. >> i'll call him. >> give him a call. coming up, minority leader -- he's got $126 in his pocket. that will take him for. >> minority lead er nancy pelos beats a challenge to her
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position, but there are conflicts in the caucus. >> and disasters in tennessee after wildfires and tornado wreak lhavoc across the state, and storm damage in alabama where at least five people have died in that state and also tennessee. we'll cover all those stories and much more when "morning joe" returns. world ugly and messy. they are the natural born enemy of the way things are. yes, ideas are scary, and messy and fragile. but under the proper care, they become something beautiful.
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good morning. it's this, december 1st. with us, former democratic
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congressman harold ford jr., ad man donny deutsch, former treasury official steve rattner. nbc correspondent hallie jackson, washington anchor for bbc world news america, katty kay, and we have mark halperin as well. let's start with the news, though, with katty kay. katty, what are we looking at? >> let's start with reaction to donald trump's two nominations to lead his economic team, former goldman sachs partne steve mnuchin for the secretary of treasury, and wilbur ross for commerce secretary. mnuchin outlined the largest tax change since ronald reagan, promising tax cuts for the middle class and slashing the top business rate of 35%. >> any reductions we have in upper income taxes will be offset by less deductions. so that there will be no tax, absolute tax cut for the upper class. there will be a big tax cut for
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the middle class, but any for the upper class will be offset by less deductions to pay for it. we're going to cut corporate taxes, which will bring huge amounts of jobs back to the united states. >> what do you think you can get to on that? >> 15%, and bring a lot of cash back into the u.s. >> senators elizabeth warren and bernie sanders put out a rare joint statement reacting to the choice of steve mnuchin for treasury secretary calling him a wall street insider. they said during the campaign, donald trump told the american people that he was going to change washington by taking on wall street. that is not the type of change that donald trump promised to bring to washington. that is hypocrisy at its worst. in a separate statement, warren described mnuchin as the forrest gump of the financial crisis for peddling mortgage products that blew up the economy and then running a bank that foreclosed on families. quite a lot of reaction to those economic picks. >> no doubt about it.
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mark halperin, what's the impact on capitol hill of his background and what's the reaction so far? >> well, i mean, the "wall street journal" editorial board doesn't like the picks much more -- excuse me -- than elizabeth warren does. people are looking at their bios and noticing things on trade anderiand mortgages that are questionable. i don't expect either will have their nominations stopped if they answer tough questions from at least one party. in the end, as we said so many times this is about donald trump and what kind of economic policy he wants. the assumption was there was just the corporate tax reform and not individual. it sounds like they're going to try to do both. that happens once in a generation. that's a real early test if he can quickly in the first six months, pass individual and corporate tax reform, that would be a big accomplishment. >> steve rattner, he's pounded for being a washington insider. it seems like the -- being a
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wall street insider. the attacks from wall street is he isn't sufficiently inside enough, he doesn't understand the game enough, doesn't play it on a high enough level. >> yeah, that's certainly one of the issues. that's certainly one of the issues. neither of these guys has really played the wall street game necessarily at the highest level. but look, i think equally important, neither of these guys have spent more than three hours or whatever in washington. neither of them have any government experience or any public sector experience, and i think the record of people coming from the business sector to washington without having done some of that is pretty mediocre. i agree with mark that i think they will get confirmed and i think on the tax plan, there's a couple important points. first of all, under the senate rules, you only need 51 votes to do tax reform. democrats don't have that filibuster opportunity. this is how the bush tax cuts were passed early in his administration. so i think you would have to bet that they're going to get some kind of a massive tax plan
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through. i would just observe that the treasury secretary nominee does not appear to understand the president-elect's own tax plan because he said that the rich people would lose deductions equal to what they got. that's simply not what's in the plan. the plan provides that 50%, literally 50% of the tax benefits from that plan go to the top 1% and 80% go to the top 20%. this is a tax cut for the rich. to portray it as something else is contradicting the president-elect. >> steve, it wouldn't take much to tweak the plan and maybe get some democratic support, including in the senate where you have a lot of red state democratic senators. if they do offset the top rate cut with limits on deductions. that could be a much more populist plan and a much more skewed against the wealthiest than trump proposed in the campaign. >> sure, but yesterday, mnuchin said that they weren't going to eliminate the deduction, a big deduction for wealthy people.
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limits on mortgage deductions, but there are already limits. it's highly controversial. you have to eliminate a lot to offset a deduction of this size. >> the thing is, anybody who has been around washington long enough and seen what has happened in the past knows what's going to happen here. they're going to pass the tax cuts. there aren't going to be corresponding spending cuts. people are going to engage in the sort of fuzzy math that has made deficits explode, and the republicans are going to pass a massive tax cut, and they're not going to pay for it, and we're going to go deeper and deeper in cut. i love tax cuts. i think tax rates should be much lower than they are. i pay about 55% of my salary that goes straight to the government on several levels. but at the same time, if you're going to cut taxes, you need to have corresponding spending cuts, at least to some degree. that's just not going to happen here. everybody can say it is. it's not going to happen. that's one of the things that's so discouraging about this.
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show us the significant spending cuts that offset the loss of revenue to the federal government, and then maybe i'll take you a little more seriously, but i don't think that's going to happen. harold, i want to get back to this treasury pick. it seems from the left, steve mnuchin is getting pounded because he's a wall street insider. from the right, and from wall street, he's getting pounded for being insufficiently light when it comes to the sort of intellectical heft you need to run the treasury department and to be able to pick up the phone and call lloyd blankfein and jamie dimond when the market is down 3,000 poinldz and say, just calm down. we have this under control. >> well, we'll get an opportunity to see that as he goes through this confirmation hearing and based on some of the quotes we put up this morning from both senator sanders and
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warren, he'll have tough questions. i would imagine over the last week as they comp plantemplated question was envisioned. i think the most important point this morning is the one you raised and we touched on. in my adult lifetime, i don't recall a race where the conversation around debt and deficits frankly was completely absent. >> nobody cares. and they don't care despite the fact we're coming up on $20 trillion in debt, harold. >> we will find ourselves probably having this conversation when the debt ceiling debate arises and it will be curious to see if republicans who raised concerns about the debt ceiling when president obama was in office and even some democrats who raised it will raise it with the same kind of aggressiveness. the majority of americans have made clear this is not the issue that's foremost on their minds, deficits and dent. perhaps it will come back. if he is able to create jobs and not take a minority view perhaps around the table, i think what
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he did this morning, what we're hearing about carrier is actually a positive thing. >> i do, too. >> i think he should be given some credit on that from the standpoint that i think a lot of americans are hoping and wishing government would provide incentives. if the numbers are correct that carrier was looking to save $60 million to $65 million a year, and the government is going to provide $70 million to keep jobs in america, that's a positive thing. this is just one step, but he should be applauded for that. >> highly symbolic, but don't expect many in the press or certainly nobody on the left to say anything positive about it. but it is highly symbolic and just -- >> especially if you have one of those jobs. >> especially if you have one of those jobs. and just imagine the political earthquake if carrier had announced yesterday they were actually moving to mexico. it would have been all over the front pages of every newspaper. katty, let's talk about some of
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the other picks causing some concerns about how inside washington donald trump may be going with the selections for his cabinet. >> quickly, one other thing on the deficit, one of the reasons harold is right, people aren't interested, is because the interest rates are low. mr. mnuchin is already saying we have to get used to higher interest rates. you might get more attention on the subject, too, don't you think? >> yeah. i mean, it melts down -- katty, it melts down quickly because we're carrying $19 trillion, $20 trillion in debt right now. if those interest rates going to 3%, 4%, 5%, it's devastating. our annual deficits are going to double, triple, maybe quadruple. >> most independent analysts say his plan added $4 trillion to that. then you have a problem people will talk about. let's talk about the growing clash between the
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president-elect's early cabinet picks and the outsider rhetoric he employed on the campaign trail. after promising to drain the swamp, three of his appointments will be coming from congress, while another, elaine caio, is married to the senate majority leader, and his other picks come from wilbur ross and billionaire betsy devos. he's also considering gary cohen for a top job, and he's being eyed for director of the office of management and budget. treasury nominee steve mnuchin spent 17 years at goldman sachs where his brother and father also worked. shares of the investment giant soared 4% in trading yesterday, closing at levels the stock hasn't seen since december of 20 2007. trump has been critical of goldman sachs as recently as least weeks ago when he featured footage of lloyd goldfine, and
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he bashed the ties to the company so frequently that even his supporters adopted it as a line of attack. >> name one who had a million dollar judgment against him. name one. >> donald trump -- >> self-funded. that's right, not you. >> you like rich people who buy politicians? >> where's your goldman sachs jacket at? we know your wife works there. >> okay, donny. that was one of the most remarkable moments of the campaign, i don't know if he figures out the guys were paid by trump's people and were operatives or not. it was a remarkable moment in the campaign. so donny, here's the rub. okay, you run as an outsider. you want to change washington. but you and i both know, we're grown-ups. everybody around the table knows, you're not going to change washington unless you hire people who know washington. that actually are insiders, or actually have run something big.
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and so the question is, how do you thread that needle? if you're going to be a disrupter, it seems to me you need establishment people around you to disrupt, but if you do that, you seem to be going against your campaign promise. how do you thread the needle? >> i think he's doing it well. you know during the campaign, nobody has been more anti-donald than me. i'm excited what he's doing. he's a pragmatist. let's separate what it takes to win an election and run a country. for some of my democratic pants whose underpants may be in a twitter because he hired these people, you hire smart people and people who understand the business. if i was going to reform the hedge fund business, i would hire a guy who knows what goes on. that's a businessman's prch approach. >> a guy who has run into problems with the law, has run into problems with regulation, but you're right. you go to somebody who understands the system, who understands the weaknesses of the system, understands how to
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exploit the system, and then you say go fix it. don't let anybody else do that. >> exactly, and by the way, certainly his economic picks are outsiders. they're business people. and i think the thing that i continue to be hopeful about with the exception of the deficit because it's going to play back into that. trump wants to win. he wants to go down in history as a great leader. so the good news is, he's not going to be beholden to what he ran on. he's going to be beholden to what is going to work. the bad news for the deficit is is he's not concerned with 20 years down the road. he's concerned with his legacy, but probably the least responsive to the deficit issue to your point before. other than frankly flynn and we talked about bannon, i have no issues. his picks seem smart. >> still ahead on "morning joe," opec slashes production for the first time in eight years. we'll be looking at the markets to see about the impact there. plus, elise jordan and mike lupica on the political roundtable. and nancy pelosi's
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re-elected as democratic leader, but is it time for senior leadership in the party to make room for younger members of the democratic caucus? we'll be bringing in politico's jake sherman. first, here's bill karins, as storms and wildfires just leave the south in utter devastation. bill. >> what a 48 hours. we went from the fires which was one of the most historic, worst fires in the southern appalachians. then the tornado outbreak on the heels of it yesterday and the day before. we had some of the pictures ipfrom the jackson county area, this is just a small town in the tornado went right down the main street there. this was the main shopping area, the only gas station in town was destroyed. elementary school, fire station. they're going to need a lot of help to get the town back up and running because so much was destroyed. as far as the deaths, five fatalities from the tornadoes. andthen the fires, seven fatalities. and still people missing. a quieter start to our december.
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the rain is just about over in new england. snow left over in northern maine, but a quiet day. we did pick up with the two storms about 2 to 3 inches of rain in the fire areas of the smoky mountains, tennessee, and north carolina. for the upcoming weekend, a seasonal weather pattern. nothing too dramatic. temperatures will be where they should be. 40s, 50s in dallas. but big changes come next week. sooner or later, we're in december. we have to get one of these cold shots coming down and that's going to happen. it's going to start in the west and move to the inner mountain west. these will be well below average. single digits in some cases. this will be like the first real shot of winter. montana, a high of 12 on tuesday and 11 on wednesday. minneapolis, the cold air gets to you by wednesday and thursday. even oklahoma city will see the winter cold. we got finished with one of the warmest novembers ever and now a big cold shot. we're also going to get more beneficial rain into monday
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through areas of the deep south. that helps with the drought situation from the last couple month. in new york city in times square, new york city even picked up three inches of rain in the last two days. nice dry spell into the weekend. you're watching "morning joe." and you're talking to youro doctor about your medication... this is humira. this is humira helping to relieve my pain and protect my joints from further damage. this is humira helping me go further. humira works for many adults.
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he wears his army hat, he gets awalks aroundliments. with his army shirt looking all nice. and then people just say, "thank you for serving our country" and i'm like, that's my dad. male vo: no one deserves a warmer welcome home.
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that's why we're hiring 10,000 members of the military community by the end of 2017. i'm very proud of him. male vo: comcast. we have a responsibility and we embrace the opportunity that is presented. we know how to win elections. we've done it in the past. we will do it again. >> house minority leader nancy pelosi won her eighth term leading the democrat, caucus. pelosi easily beat out tim ryan, but her 134-63 margin of victory signals some discontent with her leadership, with many democrats stunned that nearly a third of the caucus actually voted against her. with us now, in washington, let's bring in senior writer and politico co-author of "the
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playbook" jake sherman. the politico headline i'm reading this morning says the democratic leader beats back challenge, but the vote reflected significant discontent. it would have been unthank blg two years ago for nancea pelosi to lose a third of her caucus. what does it mean moving forward for her? >> the reality is no one thought that tim ryeb would be the next democratic leader, and still, 63 people voted for him. it was a protest vote, and it shows that the democrats really need to wrap their heads around a post-pelosi reality. something they have not done. as you know, they have frozen out basically an entire generation of leaders. the next leaders of this party are either out of congress, harold ford jr., or in the united states senate. democrats have not begun to grapple with this. there's really not many people around that are led by a bunch of 70-year-olds. not a good situation for house democrats. >> harold ford, i'm glad he brought you up. when you were there, you had the
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same leaders running the democratic congress, but they were in their 50s. they're in their 70s now. you look at the two leading contenders for the presidency in 2020, if you just sort of talk to people, one would be 78, the other would be 71. the next generation of democrats has been wiped out. what does your party do? >> age is not as much of an issue as the fact there seems to be a dirth of an agenda. we lost this race. there are some people who said we lost seats in the house and didn't win senate races and lost the presidential race because of a tactics game that somehow or another, we didn't get enough people out to vote, and we clearly didn't, but the core of any get out the vote message is an inspiring message, an inspiring agenda. i think tim ryan tried to offer that. clearly, the caucus decided to stick with ms. pelosi, but it's clear it's time for a change and it's clear she's not the future of the party. tim and others in the congress are going to not only have to rally around themselves but they
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have to rally around a message and an agenda. i hope democrats understand we're not going to defeat donald trump or not beat back republican proposals by just saying no and by yelling and screaming. if we don't offer substantive, real proposals and answers and counters that speak to the aspirations and dreams of everyday, hard-working middle class americans which is why this carrier deal, as symbolic as it is, is important, we're going to find ourselves in the worst situation. ee have the smallest membership of democrats in the house in almost 40 years. those who are new to the congress, you have to explain that. if we don't pursue a real substantive agenda over the next two years, then shame on us as a party because we will have let down a lot of hard working middle-class americans who depend on democrats. >> nancy pelosi was the first woman to be elected speaker of the house. she's an historic figure. she ran the house extraordinarily well.
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tough, efficient, everything you would want from a strong speaker. yet, i was watching the crown on netflix last night with my daughter, where winston church hill was finally forced to step down. of course, he passed it over to anthony eden, who destroyed the empire, but that's another thing. at some point, even churchill -- >> spoiler. >> that is a spoiler, yes. >> i haven't got there yet. >> well -- >> oh, my -- >> he steps down? >> he steps down. yeah. >> oh. >> see, i'm not going to spoil it for you, but something happens in egypt. it doesn't go well. >> and she carries oneigning? >> don't mess up hamilton for the rest of us, either. >> but mark halperin, even churchill, even pelosis have to step down at some point. isn't it about time? could this be her swan song.
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isn't it about time for her to step down? >> i mean, i think the democratic brand needs to be as harold said, infused by ideas. and look, i have a lot of respect for her as a fund-raiser, as a strategist, as someone who understands issues, but name an idea, a reform idea prominently associated with nancy pelosi at this point, or over the last ten years, that's the problem for the whole party now. where is the brand of the democratic party going to be defined? if it's defined by nancy pelosi and steny hoyer, as you said, the famed leaders for two decades, that's a problem. there are no obvious presidential candidates. clearly elizabeth warren and other senators might define it. i'll say one last thing. there's so much focus on the presidential. you can list 20 reasons why hillary clinton lost, from james comey from a failure to schedule her correctly into some of these key states. but what democrats aren't addressing, why do they hold so
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few seats in the house, in the senate, in the state legislatures. before they define a brand that will win the seats back, they will have trouble. >> it's a great point. yes, we can talk about comey, we can talk about hillary clinton having a 2.5-million vote majority right now. we can talk about a lot of things. the fact is only 11 democrats hold governorships. there are fewer members in democrats and the house of representatives than in a century. they have been battered in the united states senate. they have lost over 900 legislative seats, donny deut h deutsch, over the past six years. state-wide. this is a party that's been bleeding out at every level other than the top level, the presidency. and they remind me of gm before the crash. you know, when gm needed to be bailed out, you said companies like gm, they're used to being in first place. they're used to being dominant.
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they don't reform like other companies. that's kind of where we -- is the democratic party where gm was in 2008? >> yeah. >> no new ideas. >> it is about ideas, but it's also -- i'm going to say something that's a little politically indelicate. when the average age of the leadership is 75, i don't care if it's a television network, an advertising agency, a movie studio, at 75 years old when that's your think tank, the ideas are not new for the most part at 75. there is an issue with age. all my mother's friends, i don't want thel yelling at me. the second thing that is -- >> hey, donny. donny, your passport to boca has just been revoked. but go ahead. >> the other thing beyond issuesfurc we say bill clinton saved the democratic party. was it an issue, idea, or a person? same thing with ronald reagan. yes t is about ideas. but they need transformative people. personalities, dynamic figures for people to rally around.
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ironically, same thing with donald trump. it wasn't about his ideas. it was about the power of that person. >> still ahead on "morning joe" -- >> there's a general as a national security adviser, potentially a general as secretary of defense, and a former general, if petraeus is chosen, as secretary of state. is that too many generals? >> well, i think it would be very difficult to have former generals as both secretary of state and secretary of defense. and the president will obviously have to make his own choices. but i think that is probably too much military influence in the decision making process. >> too many generals in the kitchen? we'll be talking to former secretary-general of nato about what he wants to see from america's national security leadership going forward.
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joe." i'm katty kay. donny deutsch, steve rattner with joe and also. also, columnist for the new york daily news, mike lupica, and
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contributor to "time" magazine and msnbc political analyst elise jordan. we have been talking about the president-elect. let's talk about the president who is still there, rolling stone has done an exit interview with barack obama which revealed the president's mood a day after donald trump's surprise win. in it, the president reacted to while hillary clinton lost the rust belt. quote, the challenge we had is not that we have neglected these communities from a policy perspective. that is, i think, an incorrect interpretation. you start reading folks saying working class families have been neglected or working class white families have not been paid attention to by democrats. actually, they have. what is true, though, is whatever policy prescriptions that we have been proposing don't reach, are not heard by the folks in these communities. what they do hear is obama or hillary are trying to take away their guns or they disrespect you. the president also explains why he said he is not dismayed by mr. trump's victory.
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quote, probably the main recent i don't feel dismayed but disappointed is the incredible young people who worked in my administration, worked on our campaigns. if you look from the data from the election, if it were just young people voting, hillary clinton would have gotten 500 electoral college votes. we have helped shape a generation to think about being inclusive, fair, caring about the environment, and they will have growing influence year by year, which means america over time will continue to keep getting better. it's a really interesting interview. i don't know if you had a chance to read the whole thing. i sat down with it yesterday. he's remarkably not optimistic exactly, but matter of fact about what's happened and it's time to get to work and not wring our hands too much about it. >> i think so. and mike lupica, sources have told me that barack obama two weeks before the election started telling people that trump was going to win. he was concerned that trump was going to win because they weren't getting the message out.
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i understand -- but there is one part of this, though, mike, where you have the president in the face of historic democratic losses over eight years saying it's a communication problem. that's always -- that's always the sign of a losing party, a losing movement. it may be a communication problem, but i suspect it had more to do with the obamacare news about obamacare going up 20%, 25%, that gave donald trump his closing argument. >> joe, every time i hear this sort of thinking for the president, i like this president. but this is a breathtaking denial, to my point of view here. every time i hear him blame this on other things, it's like when the television ministers used to get into trouble. it would be like blaming their problems on the motel. he was one of the people who lost the rust belt here. it wasn't just her. >> right. >> and he's still -- and again, i like this guy. he's still spiking the ball
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here. and his -- the last eight years in so many ways got repudiated. >> elise, isn't there another issue here in that hillary clinton ran one way is that you can't elect donald trump he's too scary, but there was no message there. regardless of, and i agree with joe, and it didn't get the proper coverage, that 25% pop in obamacare nine days before the election, that's the average, a guy goes, are you kidding me? but the real issue was there was no message. >> i absolutely agree. it was predicted dire existential apocalypse if he came into office. it was going to be this nuclear bomb drop. so nothing broke through about how, well, we're going to avoid this bomb with donald trump but what are you going to do to make our lives better? that's why hillary clinton lost, not because their messaging was poor. >> i would say two things. first, when the president talked about how his proposals didn't get through to people, proposals
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aren't enough. as we have talked about, the state of the average american in those rust belt places was worst -- are you better off eight years later or not? most of them weren't. hillary running on an obama legacy kind of approach didn't work. secondly, i do think if you look at the substance of the policy, hillary's policies would have helped them. trump's policies wouldn't help them, but she couldn't package them into a sales pitch that they actually accepted. >> steve, it wasn't a compelling enough argument for her at the end, even at the end when she still thought she was going good, to say i'm not him. that's not enough of a message for those people in the states that the president was talking about. >> you know, it's interesting, policy isn't enough. but donny deutsch, also, it's who you target. and joe biden told somebody that
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was close to him in the final stages of the campaign, he showed a campaign ad, hillary clinton's closing campaign ad. and joe biden asked, who's not in that ad? and the person he asked the question to looked perplexed. they said who? he said, guys that look like me. guys that look like me in pennsylvania, guys who look like me in ohio. guys that look like me across the industrial rust belt. they're not messaging us. he said that, i guess, a week before. this is the same warning joe biden had at the democratic national convention on "morning joe" when he said we've lost working-class white guys, and we've got to get them back. >> yeah. >> i think the democrats are going to have to face the fact. you don't have to appeal to racism. you just have to pretend like you care about their vote. >> here's the challenge.
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you can spend time talking about bathrooms for lgbt. the reality is 95% -- i'm just making this number up as i often do. i don't think voted against the bathroom thing. they just voted they want their jobs. and sometimes we in the elite media get a little caught up in these very, very highfalutin social issues, but it just doesn't matter to 99.9% of people. if you're in the business of marketing and you're in the business of target marketing and in the business of winning, that kind of idealogical discussion is interesting, but it does not translate to votes. >> and all these people who are saying it was only 1,000 jobs with carrier. well, if one of those 1,000 jobs was yours, then you're okay with trump spiking the ball. >> well, but look, both carrier and the obamacare thing got attention out of proportion of the reality. it was a couple thousand jobs with carrier but it became a symbol of something. the obamacare increase affected
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3% of people, but it became a symbol of something that hillary couldn't really counter. >> even just, yes, it might have been the increase and only effecting 3% of people, but overall, people were so dissatisfied by the level of care, they feel like they're getting from obamacare, this is something i heard consistently. i did 48 hours of focus groups in seven battleground states in the run-up to the election. obboth side of the aisle, just the dissatisfaction with how it's been implemented and it's much more dooply rooted than even we realized, you know, above the partisan rancor. >> mike lupica, thank you so much for being with us. really quickly, what's the one thing democrats need to do to start winning back the middle of america? >> joe, they didn't do the thing -- with all due respect to nancy pelosi, the thing they should have done is tell her it was time to move aside. because if she continues to be the face of the democratic party or one of them, they're in huge trouble. >> joe, very important.ica told
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turkey bowl. no, no, i love abusing you, and most times, but he actually said you were the star. i was blown away. you were the star of the turkey bowl, playing with all these 20-somethings. >> sucking up. >> i'm not. i don't like joe. i don't think he's particularly bright. but the fact he manned up in the football game, i'm actually impressed. >> lupica, you can vouch for me. it was playing against a bunch of 21-year-olds. >> right. >> and the mvp, flying across the air, rolling on astroturf. and can you tell everybody what i said after i scored the winning touchdown? what i said to your son? >> joe scores the winning touchdown legit on the last play of the game. he turns to my youngest son and said they just got beat by a 53 wreerld man. >> well played, sir. >> that's ugly. all right, thank you, mike, for being with us. still ahead, oil surges on news of an opec deal to cut
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production. and donald trump's win fuels a record november on wall street. we'll go to the new york stock exchange straight ahead and get the news behind those headlines. you totanobody's hurt, new car. but there will still be pain. it comes when your insurance company says they'll only pay three-quarters of what it takes to replace it. what are you supposed to do? drive three-quarters of a car? now if you had liberty mutual new car replacement™, you'd get your whole car back. i guess they don't want you driving around on three wheels. smart. with liberty mutual new car replacement™,
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let's go to sara eisen of the new york stock exchange. sara, it seems that opec oil ministers did something that nobody expected them to do. something they haven't done in a long time. >> that's right. good morning. good to see you. opec ministers agreed to a deal. particularly interesting was that rivals saudi arabia and iran agreed that they came together in vienna yesterday and there was a lot of skepticism as to whether they could reach a deal. one wants to keep pumping after sanctions have worn off, but they did agree to cut by about 1.2 million barrels a day, and that's helped lift the price of oil. it's been surging in the last 24 to 48 hours.
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close to $50 a barrel which is a big change from the $20s or so we were early in the year. for the americans, you can expect higher gas prices. it's also good news for the american home-grown energy companies crushed under the weight of lower oil prices. as for the markets, boy, was november a blockbuster month for stocks. potentially game changing. the best month for the dow since back in march. second best month of the year. traders are excited about the prospect of higher infrastructure spending, rolling back regulations, tax cuts and the republican congress. look at the banks. double-digit gains for november for goldman sachs and jp morgan had their best month in years. will the uncertainties around trade and geopolitics start to weigh on the good mood that remains to be seen, but so far, there's a lot of optimism in the air here on wall street thanks to an election that nobody
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expected. back to you guys. >> all right, thank you, sara. cnbc's sara eisen. greatly appreciated. coming up next, we're going to be talking world affairs and a donald trump with a former secretary-general of nato. stay with us for that. start here. or here. even here. and definitely here. at fidelity, we're available 24/7 to make retirement planning simpler. we let you know where you stand, so when it comes to your retirement plan, you'll always be absolutely...clear. ♪ time to think of your future it's your retirement. know where you stand. ♪ time to think of your future they are the natural borns enemy of the way things are. yes, ideas are scary, and messy
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over the world. >> president-elect donald trump says he has no plans for america to police the world. our next guest is calling on the incoming commander in chief to take exactly the opposite approach. joining us now, form eer secretary-general of nato, anders fogh rasmussen. i know from conversations we have had before that you disagree with what donald trump has said about america's role in nato, but let me ask you this. now that he's been president-elect for a few weeks and the world has had a chance to get used to the idea, you have seen what the incoming team, some of it looks like on the national security front, what do you make of the next president-elect and his foreign policy? >> well, actually, i think as president he will be much more pragmatic than people would have expected. i think it's important to understand that putting america first doesn't mean to put
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friends last to make america great, you need friends and partners to help you. >> and the team he's selected so far, specifically, you're impressed? >> well, i think he has tried to strike the right balance. we have nauot seen his national security team in whole at the moment. but the names that have been floated, i think they are promising. i think they also strike the right balance. >> the humanitarian crisis in syria has reached just catastrophic and epic proportions. what would you advise president trump, how would you advise him to approach syria in his administration? >> first of all, i think it's important to understand that to engage russia constructive you need a firm hand, you need unity across the atlantic.
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you need to negotiate wit the russians from a position of strength. secondly, i also think more military efforts in syria are needed. i think he should do what he can to strengthen the military coalition that is to strengthen and contribute from allies to the air campaign. it means more troops on the ground from the region. and personally, i also think you should consider establishing a no-fly zone to make sure that refugees can stay under secure circumstances in the region. >> i think this question of american leadership goes obviously well beyond nato. you talked about america being more of a global leader again. i think you could make an argument that trump's election and his philosophy is as much a reflection of what the american people as perhaps him. we have been in conflict in one form or another for 15 years now. people are tired of war.
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they certainly have no appetite for sending ground troops which i think you have advocated with respect to isis. i'm not really sure -- it's fine to say we should lead, and some of us might even agree. ial i'm not sure the american people want to see us get more deeply engaged in all these things going on around the world. >> i also agree with people in america requesting more contributions from european allies. i do believe that the europeans could and should pay much more for common defense. if i were mr. trump, i would consider doing at least three things during the first 100 days. first, send vice president pence overseas to reassure allies. secondly, organize a meeting with the ukrainian president poroshenko to demonstrate he is sincere in helping friends. and thirdly, i also think he should organize a nato summit
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very soon to send a very clear message to who it may concern and not least mr. putin, that the american commitment to collective defense and he could request more contributions from european allies. >> mr. secretary-general, give us the nato grade for our outgoing president. >> for the outgoing president? >> yes. as the kind of representative of nato, if you were going to give him a report card going out. >> on a personal -- i mean, personally, i have the very best relationship with mr. obama. he was instrumental in my election as secretary-general of nato. i also think he has taken important decisions, including the killing of osama bin laden, the military surge in afghanistan, participation in the nato operation in libya. in that respect, i would give him high grades. but i think he made a major mistake in syria. defining red lines.
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they were crossed. he didn't act. and when a united states president defined red lines, he or she must act if they are crossed. he didn't, and that undermined the credibility of his words and the credibility of american foreign policy. >> the book is "the will to lead." anders fogh rasmussen. everybody watching this presidency around the world. >> no doubt about it. and katty, obviously, there have been, we have heard not just from our last guest, but also from a lot of other world leaders, a bit more of an optimistic outlook than they may have had during the campaign, when you hear names like mattis and some of the others that are being floated for foreign policy positions and also for the national security team. >> yeah, we'll see whether he enacts those policies he said he
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would during the campaign. that's the big unknown question, right? >> no doubt about it. all right. katty, thank you so much for being with us. steve rattner, thank you as well. donny deutsch, yeah. no, thank you, donny. appreciated as always. and elise jordan, thank you so much for being with us today as well. stick around. the news continues with stephanie ruhle. >> thanks so much, joe. sorry, donny. no love for you today. i'm stephanie ruhle. this morning, we have a lot to cover. a victory lap. donald trump with another unprecedented move. holding a rally as president-elect. and visiting the carrier air conditioner plant he helped keep in the u.s. >> i'm going to bring jobs back. we're bringing jobs back to our country. we're not going to let carrier leave. >> plus, anger in the streets. peaceful protests overnight in charlotte, north carolina, as the police officer who shot and killed keith lamont scott. >> don't shoot him. don't shoot him.