>> give him a chance. he hasn't even been sworn in yet. it's pretty hard to criticize him or suggest that there should be an investigation by congress when the guy hasn't even been sworn in yet.

>> good morning and welcome to "a.m. joy." the republican chairman of the house oversight committee may be taking a wait-and-see attitude but questions about donald trump's potential conflicts of interest are already coming fast and furious. take his controversial call with taiwan's president, it's a breech of decades of diplomatic protocol and taiwan's media also reported representatives from the trump organization had recently visited taiwan to explore possibly building a hotel there. on saturday the trump organization denied any plans for developments in taiwan, but in a facebook post a woman who says she works for trump hotels talked about her visit to taiwan last month and specifically said she was there for work. trump says that he's going to explain how he's going to separate himself from his business operations in a december 15th news conference, his first since. election, assuming it actually happens. that gives him 11 more days to figure out the details which he's yet to provide. on wednesday trump tweeted that

it's, quote, visually important that he not have any conflicts, like, for instance, his new d.c. hotel where he soon be both landlord and the tenant. trump's company leases the property from the federal government. this week democratic members of the house oversight committee sent a letter to the general services administration. they wrote, quote, mr. trump's lease contains a provision specifically barring any elected official of the government of the united states from deriving any benefit from the agreement even if mr. trump transfers control of the trump international hotel to his children or places it in a trust, he'll still derive a financial benefit thereby violating the terms of the lease. and it's not just his businesses that present conflicts of interest. "the washington post" reports trump owns tens of millions of dollars of stock in companies that could be directly impacted by his policies, including goldman sachs from which he's hiring much of his cabinet. wells fargo, halliburton and exxon mobil and joining me now

is msnbc anchor and correspondent alli develop shy and jennifer rubin and author of "the making of donald trump." david, i'm going to start with you, the list of business ties, foreign countries he has business interests, hotel interests, licensing interests, go all the way from india, indonesia, canada, united arab emirates all the way down to turkey, uruguay, bermuda, argentina. dozens of countries. you can see that map there. is there anything that donald trump could do short of selling off and completely divesting himself of these businesses that would remove those conflicts of interest? >> no. i think the only solution here to make sure that donald trump's conduct does not endanger u.s. national security is complete and total divestiture done through a blind trust by someone not connected to him or his family, a professional, and keep in mind this could turn out to be trump's real achilles' heel

if he sticks to this because at some point if the republicans on capitol hill turn against him or find it convenient because of his conduct to want to replace him with mike pence, the emolement clause of the constitution could be very troubling if he does not totally divest these holdings and do so in an independent manner where he has no influence over the sales. >> ali velshi, couldn't donald trump sell his company to one of his billionaire friends who then could derive all of the benefits out of trump policies and then give him back the company as soon as he leaves office so i don't know that selling it to a friend would cure it? >> so it's important to understand that a trust or selling it to someone. the important word is blind. the idea is you're not snowed to know that anything that you're doing as president of the united states benefits anything that is held by your friends or family or anyone around you. that's why presidents typically do put their stuff into a blind trust, and the holdings in that

blind trust tend to be very broadly held things, like u.s. treasury bonds or fortune 500 stocks where everybody benefits or doesn't benefit in a similar fashion. there's no what i that donald trump won't know that as president he will take some actions that will benefit things. so let's say he knew somehow or guess that had his money were in treasury bonds. he could certainly do things to affect the value of the u.s. dollar which would affect the price of bonds, but generally speaking you're trying to take away any direct interest, and that's why this phone call to taiwan is strange, not just from a foreign policy perspective but because there are rumors that someone went over to taiwan to possibly discuss a trump hotel over there. donald trump seems to be missing, while he knows that the optics are -- he says he knows the optics are important. he seems to be missing that gene or that chip that says someone might think this is problematic so maybe i shouldn't make that phone call or maybe i should get someone from the state department to make that known call which is kind of why the state department exists.

>> and there was one thing for donald trump to do this before the election and continue to explore business opportunities around the world, but after the election, to still be talking to business partners in india, to still have these questions being raised about whether or not the trump organization wants to build hotels in taiwan and taking those known calls, to still be doing this, what does this tell you about donald trump and his, i don't know, his even caring about either the appearance or the actual existence of conflict of interest? >> well, it tells me, joy, if the key word is blind, let's call it for what it is, it's not a blind spot or a blind trust. it's a blind swap that everybody is swimming through. everglades size and they can't see because they don't know. let's talk about not normalizing donald trump. i checked my watch right before i went on air. he still hasn't released his tax returns, has her, and this shows the bad faith of the republican party who wouldn't shut up about legitimate questions about the clinton foundation during the campaign and they have all gone

absolutely silent now in the run-up to december 19th. let's forget deese 15th, donald trump's arbitrary date where he'll supposedly divest himself. december 19th is the date that the electoral college votes and i'm saying right now that if the republican party wants to show good faith they need to demand he release his tax returns right now so that before december 19th a financial colonoscopy can take place because if it's not clear where donald trump's true conflicts are, because we just don't know right now, then i think the electors have a right to not vote for donald trump for president of the united states. >> jennifer, you know, we hear a lot of talk from republicans that people are being alarmist about donald trump because the genius of the american system are the checks and balances, but you have jason chaffetz who was signaling that even before the election they had two years worth of investigations teed up against hillary clinton should she win. he made it very clear that he planned to spend his time investigate and investigating and investigating the white house should she win, and now he's essentially said he has no

plans, no interest in looking at that and that we need to back off these investigations. you've had kevin mccarthy say much the same thing that maybe we've spent too much time on investigations. do you have any faith in the republican party at this point to hold donald trump accountable or to even care about the constitutional conflicts? >> i have zero hope, and this is one of my great complaints about donald trump and about the republicans' conduct throughout the election. it's not only conflict of interests which are serious, which is a constitutional issue. it's just about everything he does. look at what he did with carrier and i know we'll have some conversation later. republicans used to be in favor of free markets and used to be opposed to crony capitalism and now they stand back and cheer when he essentially acts like an extortionist trying to get american businesses to do this or that so i have zero faith in the republicans and i think, unfortunately, for them it's going to take a very public, very unified voice from the democrats to try to shame them

into doing something. they are going to have to at least step up to the plate at some point or come 2018 the democrats will have the issue of drain the swamp. >> and, you know, dave, you've had this idea of not normalizing donald trump, abnormal behavior seems to be sort of flowering now throughout the washington with donald trump on the way there. you had the office of government ethics, which normally is silent, tweeting a tweet storm attempting to encourage i guess or maybe it was snark, no one is really sure what it was about, about him saying he was going to resolve the conflicts of interest to divest even before donald trump said he'd do it. you've had all these different forces trying to encourage or shame or embarrass donald trump into complying with these rules, but, dave, we don't even know to whom donald trump is in debt. we don't know if he's in debt to these foreign countries, foreign banks. american banks wouldn't led them money anymore because he

wouldn't pay them back. how can we succeed with a presidency if we don't know if the president of the united states is the in debt to foreign banks, are china, i don't even know where to start? >> well, understand that the disclosure rules are just full of loopholes, and that's one of the reasons we don't know and the depth of donald trump's involvement with the russian oligarchs, essentially a networks of world class criminals involved in looting western banks and other activities, we don't know about at all, but we do know that he has had long deep relationships with him. had he been a city councilman or legislator at mar-a-lago it would have been a huge scandal and he probably would have been indicted and what he did with the ethics office is something we need to pay attention to. i show in "the making of donald trump" how throughout his life he's compromised law enforcement and stopped or run out the clock on law enforcement investigations and that's what he did with the office government ethics. he compromised that office, and that is a fundamental tactic of

donald trump that my peers in national news are not catching on to. they need to understand you're not dealing with a politician who has a public policy perspective. you are dealing with a megalomaniac narcissist who believes that we should all bow down as one of his aides said because he's genetically superior to the rest us and the rules don't apply to him, and my fellow journalists don't grasp that, we're going to have real serious problems explaining to the american public what's going to unfold after january 20th. >> and jennifer rubin, he'll then appoint the head of the irs and the appoint the fbi director and the head of the justice department. there is literally no place that the american public will be able to turn for accountability. >> that's exactly right, and that's why the republicans promised during the election that they were going to act as a check on him was ridiculous. it was a lie. listen, they do have in the senate at least the power to confirm or not confirm, but ultimately they have to decide. are they serving the american people or are they just partisan

hacks? right now they are acting like partisan hacks. i would like to think that they would step into their jobs and take it seriously and hold the president accountable. listen, they want to pursue things like tax reform. how are they going to do that when the president is running around making side deals and threatening companies? they have an agenda presumably that they want to get done. if they really want to go after that, they have keep the president as robert said at least within the confines of normal behavior. >> and if you can really give us a taste of things to come. rick scott had something like this problem when he came in as governor of florida and supposedly put his assets in a blind trust. how has that worked out in the. >> again, rick scott the source of the greatest fraud in american history over a company he foresee. we look left and right the conflicts of interest all around the state and look who is minding the store pam bondi who has another conflict of interest with donald trump. if i could close, joy, by saying people watching right now are aghast at this news. donald trump has still not released his tax returns. what can they do?

use your democracy. use the telephone. use your pen and paper and write to your senators and members of congress. if they don't feel public pressure around this, this bad faith we now see by the republican party will continue and donald trump will continue to run roughshod over this american democracy of ours. >> alley develop shy and jennifer rubin will be back. thanks, guys. >> donald trump is still raking in the media praise for what he or rather mike pence did in indiana. next, the real story. stay with us. for lower back pain sufferers, the search for relief often leads here. introducing drug-free aleve direct therapy. a high intensity tens device that uses technology once only in doctors' offices. for deep penetrating relief at the source. new aleve direct therapy.

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. 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. united technologies and carrier stepped it up and now they are keeping -- actually the number is over 1,100 people

which is so great. which is so great, and they are going to spend so much money on renovating this plant, but we're going to have a lot of phone calls made to companies when they say they are thinking about leaving this country because they are not leaving this country. they are not going to leave this country and the workers are going to keep their jobs. >> this week donald trump kicked off his victory tour, something presidents elect normally don't do. this is not normal. kicked that off in indiana claiming he negotiated a deal to keep carrier from moving nearly 1,000 jobs to mexico and representing lots and lots of uncritical glowing headlines in the proses and turns out there's more or rather less to the deal than meets eye. carrier, which makes heating and air conditioning equipment confirmed it's keeping 800 jobs at its indianapolis plant in exchange for $7 million from the taxpayers from indiana, but it turns out 300 of those jobs that trump is counting toward his negotiation which actually was done by indiana governor and vice president-elect mike pence weren't slated to be moved to

mexico in the first place. despite this deal, 600 other jobs will still be outsourced to mexico, along with 700 jobs from a second factory owned by carrier's parent company united technologies which begs the question. how much money will companies be able to demand from the trump administration meaning tax dollars, meaning demand from you, in exchange for keeping jobs at home? the art of the deal indeed. back with me is ali velshi and join me are lisa cook of michigan state university and jared bernstein, also the former chief economist to vice president joe biden. all right. let's look at the tweet storm which, you know, i don't normally like to do because as a matter of course i don't think we should be following donald trump's tweets, but he did respond to i guess the criticism he's hearing about this carrier deal, a tweet storm starting at 6:41 in the morning. the u.s. is going to substantially reduce taxes and regulations on business but any business that leaves our country, fires its employees, builds new factory or plant in

the other country and thinks it will sell its products back to the u.s. without retribution or consequences is wrong. there will be a tax on our soon to be strong boarder of 35% for those companies wanting to sell their products, cars, ac units, et cetera, back across and that will make it financially difficult to move. please be forewarned prior to making any mistake united states open for business. jared, yadda, yadda, yadda. >> as a history in this country i wasn't aware that presidents directly threatened companies and basically telling them how to operate and i didn't think republicans believed in that. >> yeah. >> but isn't this the opposite of what donald trump did? he didn't threaten carrier. he didn't threaten them with a carrier. he gave them money so shouldn't he be actually doing a tweet storm saying if you keep your jobs temporarily in your state we will give you lots and lots of money. >> thank you. we really need to understand the difference between sticks and carrots here. he talked sticks and gives carrots and i've been trying to get through the trump people that threaten i'm going to go to

mexico unless they do something quickly except i'm afraid they may want me to. look, the -- these kinds of deals are not at all uncommon, let's be clear about that, and it's extremely unusual for a president or president-elect to weigh in on them and governors and legislatures and mayors do this sort of thing all the time. now, sometimes it kind of works and a lot of times it's just bribery, and it's not -- my criticism is that this is not a systemic, scaleable, replicable kind of economic policy that will be effective in pushing back on the down sides of globalization, which is actually a very important and warranted policy idea. by the way, neither will 35% tariffs and just to be clear he can't do that by himself. he needs congress on that one. >> you know, lisa, let's talk about this as a matter of what's happening in the big picture because what's costing a lot of american job, and this is going back even before nafta is

automation and a combination of that and these multi-nationals seeking lower income workers, people that they can charge less, going from unionized detroit down to the monlight and magnolia south and moving all the way south and out of the united states. i want to play south, another employee of the same company, huntington, a kay named mike harmon, a carrier employee who is not actually being saved by donald trump and they are about four hours away from the indianapolis plant. take a listen. >> our plant is not going to be saved. it's gloom on our plant so we just -- we're down here to make trump -- we want trump to look at our plant and not forget about us. we feel like we've been forgotten from the very beginning. the campaign. he mentioned indianapolis constantly. never mentioned huntington one time. >> apart from the fact that what trump is claiming he did he didn't do, that is sort of tragic in that it sets up the expectation and all these other workers that donald trump is going to come and save their

job, too. is that a realistic hope that these people are going to have? >> it absolutely is not, and here in michigan i think that every single town, the entire state, would love for donald trump to come and make deals with various companies to keep their jobs here, but the march towards globalization and automation has been happening for the past few decades. that's inevitable, and this is what donald trump should really do, and i agree with jared that some sort of solution would be systemic and not ad hoc hand not won by one and what he's doing effectively is picking winners and losers. we call this industrial policy in economics. what we would like him to do is to really invest in retraining workers. that was part of the nafta agreement. it was funded and then it was

unfunded subsequently by congress. that's where we need more systemic focus. the second thing we can do is he want to yell at someone, he should yell at the ceo. the work is cheaper abroad, so if shareholder value is the only thing they are focussing on then the jobs will continue to go abroad. there has been a massive transfer of wealth to shareholders. as you know, we've talked bin equality a lot previously, joy, so i think that this is something that really needs to be focused on as well. a cultural shift and thinking about profit maximumization and how that might be achieved without sole focus on share herald value. >> and donald trump could set the example by making his own clothing and ties and encourage

his daughter to make her line in the united states rather than china and mexico and ethiopia. >> exactly. >> the other thing, talking about carrots and sticks, he'll appoint head of the pentagon and united technologies which owns carrier, who is their biggest customer, the pentagon. 10% of the company eats revenue comes from the federal government, so we're back to the issue of conflicts of issue. >> yes. so, united technologies brought in about $56 billion last year. 10% came from the u.s. government, the pentagon being the single biggest buyer and, again, it just goes to jared's point. this is not sustainable policy. there are 180,000 jobs on average per month that were created in 2016. 1,000 or a little less than 1,000. this concept of retraining is a really important one. germany does this, by the way, with relative success. they are able to sort of upgrade their manufacturing workers. now. what we've got in the united states is if you take

manufacturing workers which as your guest point out have been declining for 40 years, we're making better stuff with fewer workers, if we train them into jobs that can have success, call them nurses, that's two to four years of training without income and subsidizing that training and getting them into something that's useful. that's good long-term secular policy. this is just optics, and frankly it's not very important optics. the other thing, joy, is a lot of new jobs are creed by small and medium-sized businesses which don't get these kickbacks and carrots and $700 million deals from government. we need to be thinking about how them to get to create the jobs. this is just a bad place to concentrate and ime while i'm really happen enfor those americans who get to keep their job, it is still 1,000 jobs out of 180,000 per month. it's just a bad use of the president's time. >> not even 1,000 because that's 500. >> not even 100. >> 800 jobs and 300 that weren't

going to move so 500 jobs that cost $700 million. >> and wouldn't it be helpful to those small businesses if you still had the affordable care act after next year. >> yes. >> so they can have their employees have health care. >> there's two issues. when you're talking about small and medium-sized businesses, health care is really important, and some ability to get some of the treatment that big businesses get. >> yeah. >> the idea that if you, joy, are ready to start a business we'll help you through it and we'll give you a certain degree of support. we know that that works and that creates jocks. that's where we need to be concentrating. >> yeah. instead, you know, jared, you've had donald trump bring together the unlike things of bernie sanders and sarah palin. this is what bernie sanders had to say in an op-ed in "the washington post" on thursday. he said the united technologies took trump hostage and won. trump has signaled to every corporation in america that they can threaten to offshore jobs in exchange for business-friendly tax benefits and incentives muscling donald trump's

administration, they are the ones who won the art of the deal and fast forward to sarah palin who wrote an op-ed who said republicans opposed this, remember. instead, we support competition on a level playing field, remember? because we know special interest crony capitalism another fail and yet another irony. this is crony capitalism at its worst. >> the deafening silence from republicans on that point is deafening and it's been real something to hear. i tweeted out a quote of mike pence the other day where he said something to the effect of capitalism doesn't always work very well or something like that, which by the way happens to be true, so, look, let me summarize and try to kind of put a corral around what we've all been saying about this, this idea that this is not systemic, this is kind of factor whack a whole a proven with a hit or miss kind of bribe here or there. what we're really trying to say is that american factories need to compete based on productivi y

productivity, not on subs dishes not on these kinds of hit or miss paychecks you're going to write to a favored factory, not on government contracts. they need to compete on productivity. some of that is training and some capital investment and some of that is actually doing sbg our trade deficit which is artificially inflated by other countries manage their currency and we should do something about that, but that's the competitive playing field that we've got to seek. that's systemic and that's structurally doable this. isn't. >> and the government can help because i seem to recall a certain barack obama made a big loan to detroit that got paid back in interest and saved 1.5 million more jobs so the government can help and the republicans didn't like that deal at all. >> thanks very much ali velshi and lisa cook and jared bernstein. while the fbi was make unprecedented statements about hillary clinton days before the election day, were they also quietly investigating donald trump? details of a new report when we come back. ugh. heartburn.

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kellyiane, i just re-tweeted the best tweet. i mean, wow, what a great, sma tweet. >> mr. trump, we're in a security briefing. >> i know, but this could not wait. it was from a young man named seth. he's 16. he's in high school and i really did re-tweet him. seriously. this is real. >> okay. see, this is a reason actually that donald tweets so much. he does it to distract the media from his business conflict and all the scary people in his cabinet. >> oh, that does make sense. >> very clever, sir. >> actually that's not why i do it. i do it because my brain is bad. >> now here's an evergreen sentence. donald trump took the bail. just after midnight he tweeted just tried watching "saturday night live." unwatchable. totally bytesed, not funny and the baldwin impersonation can't

get any worse, sad. alec baldwin shot back this morning because he tweets in the daytime saying he'll stop when trump releases his tax returns. trump sent his tweet after attending a swanky costume party at the home of robert mercy, the new york city hedge fund billionaire and major republican donor, report lit single financial becker of bryant.com and his daughter rebecca ran the super pac and now is on his transition team. kellyanne conway who ron a superpac that supported ted cruz and donald trump went himself. villains and heros. up next, the fbi investigate donald trump, or are they already? stay with us. for lower back pain sufferers,

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how are you? >> you here for meetings? >> that was paul manafort strolling into trump tower over a week ago. if you recall manafort resigned from his leadership after his past lobbying efforts with pro-russian leaders prout unpleasant scrutiny and he's back and man anorth is quietly advising trump on his cabinet selections, but that's not the only kremlin connection reintroduced to trump world and while the fbi directed the nation's attention to what turned out to be inconsequential e-mails on the laptop of hillary clinton's huma abedin esing strankd husband anthony weiner 11 days before the election, an intervention by the nation's chief law enforcement agency that's unprecedented in modern american history, the bureau might have also been quietly investigating a different matter of relevance to voters. according to the report ten days

after the election the fbi responded to a long standing vice news freedom of information act lawsuit revealing the bureau may very well have been investigating trump, too. one suspicious trump comment that might have been investigated. >> russia, if you're listening, i hope you're able to find the 30,000 e-mails that are missing. i think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press. let's see if that happens. that will be next. >> joining me now from los angeles is the investigative reporter who wrote the article jason lee poemptd i want to read a little bit from your report on the fbi's response to the freedom of information request that vice news sent them. the fbi said they cannot confirm or deny the existence of any such records about your subject as the mere acknowledgement of such record's existence or non-existence would terill trigger for seeable harm to agency interests and why does

that response lead you to believe an investigation is actually taking place. >> >> good to be with you, joy. >> it's a very unusual response from the fbi and i'm going to do my best to stay out of the weeds here. the fbi when dealing with freedom of information act requests, when dealing with freedom of information act lawsuits they are usually two responses that one can receive from the fbi. one could be any records that the agency has would be referred to law enforcement records and would -- if they were to release any records it would interfere with law enforcement proceedings. another response that the fbi often gives to "ers is we simply don't have any records. this is what's known as a response, neither confirm or deny and it's highly naushl ll receive such a response from the fbi, and we were trying to

obtain this response prior to the election. refiled ryan sharp row, doctoral student at m.i.t. who i filed this freedom of information act lawsuit with, we were trying to obtain a response from the fbi prior to the election. the fact is, joy, the fbi could have said to us that, one, they don't have any records or, two, that if they did it would interfere with law enforcement proceedings. here they are simply not willing to say anything. the good thing about this, however, is that this is in litigation and we will challenge the fbi's response to this. >> jason, let me get you to tell me specifically what you are looking into. >> sure. >> we do know quietly a throwaway line in a couple of reports that came out, maggie haberman reporting in the "new york times," as reported right before his win, manafort was in touch with team trump in the final weeks. he made a point to push for michigan in a memo and a second piece that came out in politico,

also thrown into the report is the manafort was helping behind the scenes in the final days of the trump campaign. that was published on november 15th but they are saying aside from roger stone, bannon, manafort back in the fold, offering the gop nominee strategy on how to handle the e-mail news and make a play for michigan. the fact man apart was back in the campaign when the suspicion was not only paul man anorth and carter paige were the subject of potential fbi investigations, was that the subject that vice news was looking into? >> no. i mean, we actually have a separate lawsuit, so if i can plug that one for a moment, a accept rat lawsuit dealing with that trump foundation and other matters. with this, this particular lawsuit, this is about the two incendiary comments that donald trump made on campaign trashlgs o

that he made in july calling for second amendment people to redress hillary clinton with regard to the appointment of supreme court judges and the other which you made clip there about russia trying to find her deleted e-mails. the secret service had already said, if you recall this tweet sometime back, that they were looking into those comments, the comment about second amendment people. my foia request and lawsuit is directed at those -- at those comments, and it's with the fbi and the secret service. >> yeah. >> i should note that the secret service has yet to respond to us, and we sued them as well. they are obviously in an awkward position because they are now protecting the president-elect, but the other -- the other allegations that you were -- that you were referencing, you know, that was the motivation behind this is that over the summer, you know, journalists were hearing so much.

i was hearing so much about what the fbi was doing with regard to donald trump, that -- that there were some sort of probes taking place. >> yeah. >> the problem, however, joy, is that we simply -- i simply did not have any evidence to back it up. >> yeah. >> and this tool was a -- was i felt, the freedom of information act was a good tool to use to try and pry loose answers. >> yeah. >> from the bureau. >> jason, if you can stick around for us. i want you to hold on. we'll have you come back and we'll have two national security experts talk more about the development and coming up in the next hour congressman elijah cummings will be here to discuss the trump investigations that appear poised never to happen and we'll bring you a live update on the dakota access pipeline site and more protests taking place there. more "a.m. joy" after the break.

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coming up, my guests and i continue the possible investigation into some of donald trump reese most controversial campaign comments. could it have affected the outcome of the election?

more "a.m. joy" in just a moment. picking up for kyle.

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back in august vice news filed a flow do. information act with the fbi demanding any documents related to donald trump's statements suggesting that russia should hack hillary clinton, but the fbi didn't respond until ten days after the election. vice news says that the unusual response would neither confirm or deny that such documents exist suggest that the fbi might have been investigating trump during the final weeks of the campaign. author of that vice news article jason leopold is back and joining me now is malcolm nance, author of "the plot to hack america" and the author of "how to catch a russian spy." thank you all for being here. if the fbi is going to break from long standing precedent it cannot do so for one

presidential candidate and not the other. i believe this approach has done great harm to the public's trust and isn't that part of the point here, that the fbi went out its way to do something very unusual which was 11 days out and then three days out to comment on its investigations regarding hillary clinton but has refused to do so regarding donald trump. >> yeah, the comey letter was an odd twist and clearly i'm not a political analyst but i would say it's safe to say from layman's terms had a pretty dramatic impact on the elections. just the language the fbi has used. look, before i wrote my book i was involved in a counterintelligence operation with the fbi and i would tell people i was involved in a successful counterintelligence operation with a successful outcome which told you nothing and the language itself as jason suggested even though it doesn't tell you something actually does tell you. >> what does it tell you? what does that sort of language means? >> it's an interesting point.

normally they say we can't confirm or deny and that's the standard case. we know, for example, paul manafort, there's a clear connection there whether at a minimum whether he registered as a foreign agent. the fact that they say thing using the glomar term. they had nothing, neither want to say the investigation is open, but it's clearly something where they could say we holding in, and there's nothing here or they could just, if there is nothing, they could release something that said we're into it and here it is, it's over. clearly not the case so it begs the question as to where does this tentacle lead to. >> and while the jason investigation is more about donald trump's comments calling on rusa to find hillary clinton's e-mails, not specif specifically about the manafort pier, do you have a connection between paul manafort, carter page, russia, ukraine, all lumped in together. thereto was the reporting from

the "new york times" that a ledger found in ukraine showed cash payments to manafort from the ukraine president yanukovych's party from mr. yanukovych's political party from 2012. it does seem to be ri fe for investments would it surprise you if the fbi is not investigating these connections between carter page, paul manafort, russian hacking? >> well, certainly on the basis of the analysis i did in writing my boar, you know, the fbi has two sides. there's the regular gum shoe side and then there's count intel tense side. those are the people who would take a statement made by jason leopold calling attention to donald trump's request for russia's intelligence services to dabble in the u.s. elections which would raise a lot of eyebrows in an organization like

that. and if it were connected to paul manafort and of his campaign or by extension donald trump himself in the context with the russian oligarchy, that would bring this foia request to a point where no one would want to touch it. it's radioactive, and i think the statement that they made it to jason which jason calls the glomar explorer, the submarine operation. it's one of the things that you never want to have disclosed until you have absolute evidence that something here is nefarious and there's ties to russian intelligence that may have not gone into presently the white house. we may never hear of the results of this. >> jason, are you concerned about that? i mean, are you about to now have donald trump appoint head of the fbi. these foia requests could get a lot harder i'm assuming in the next several months. >> i'm not so concerned about that. i mean, you know, thankfully congress passed a foia reform

legislation and president obama signed that bill into law, but let me just make a very important point here. that i didn't get to highlight earlier. >> sure. >> this response that the fbi gave us, there is no reason why the fbi could not have issued this response to us prior to the election. this is exactly what we were trying to get prior to the election. the fbi waited until after the election and then issued this. there's nothing in here that -- at least at this point right now that -- that suggests that they could not have given to us prior to the election unless, of course, they felt that this would interfere with the election, that they would get involved in the election, but i also believe, having dealt with the fbi on foia quite a bit, that -- that they knew that, one, i would write a news story and that it would be explosive

at the time. you know, it's my belief that if there is a file or if there was any investigation, particularly on these two comments, for example, you know, it's probably a file maybe with a few pages in it as i noted in my report. still, it's newsworthy, it's important, you know, when -- when james comey sent that letter to congress about hillary clinton's e-mails, at the time he didn't even know whether they were relevant. i mean, it was just something that he was sending out, and this letter that they sent us, i actually think it suggests a lot more as malcolm noted than the letter he sent initially to congress. you know, one thing is -- one thing is clear when it comes to foia that we are aggressively, aggressively going to per sue further documents from the bureau about trump. >> well, we will definitely be

watching vice news and we'll hopefully have you back on, jason, to give us the updates on what you're able to find out. thank you all very much. najib will be back in hour next hour. >> thank you. coming up, donald trump is about to take over a government where there's few checks and balances on his power. more "a.m. joy" after the break.

had i been present at the time and found that you did not read the cables from benghazi, i would have relieved you of your post. i think that's inexcusable. >> that is not the fact and the american people could have known that within days and they didn't know that. >> why didn't you just speak plain to the american people? >> would you want to talk to the author of that e-mail if you were investigating bengz? >> e-mails, the classified hillary clinton e-mails, can you provide us those classified e-mails? >> welcome back to "a.m. joy." whoever said nothing gets done

in washington certainly never set foot in a congressional hearing room because republicans kept their hearings fired up in their dogged pursuit to question hillary clinton. jason chaste said it's a target-rich environment even before we get to the day one. we've got two years of material already lined up. she has four years of history at the state department, and it ain't good. well, that was then. one month and one presidential election ago and this is now. >> give him a chance, he hasn't even been sworn in yet. it's pretty hard to criticize him or suggest that there should be an investigation by congress when the guy hasn't even been sworn in yet. >> the possibility of a clinton possibility had chaffetz ready for a roast, the looming donald

trump presidency is apparently a time to turn down the heat and there's little reason to expect an about-face after the gnawing russian because in 2016 republicans swept the board, the white house, majorities in both the house and the senate, 33 governor seats, control of more than two-thirds of state legislative chambers and an opportunity to cement the supreme court in conservative ideology for a generation or more which means there's little stopping them from having full steam -- moving full steam ahead with their agenda or in the case of any possible investigation to trump's financial entanglements deciding instead to slam on brakes. joining me now is maryland democratic congressman and rank member on the committee of oversight and government reform, congressman elijah cummings. thanks so much for being here. we played some sound of your colleague, the chairman of your committee jason chaffetz essentially completely reversing course on his attitude towards presidential investigations. there's been a letter that was sent by democrats demandings that chaffetz open up

investigations into donald trump's finances. americans across the country have flooded our offices with thousand of calls in strong support of this investigation jamming our phone lines with more calls than we've ever received in response to any issue. do you have any expectation, sir, that congressman chaffetz will change his mind and decide that he does in fact have an interest in investigation donald trump's conflicts of interest? >> i don't think he's going to change his mind any time soon and it's amazing that we've had silence. it is interesting, joy, that when it came to hillary clinton there was no allegation too small for him to investigate and now with donald trump there's no allegation too big for him to investigate, he -- he -- he doesn't want to go there, but we need to go there. any time you have somebody like donald trump operating 111 companies in over 18 countries, it's just a minefield of

possible conflicts of interest, and we should be investigating it. >> meanwhile, congressman, on november 9th, the day after the election, chaffetz was indicating he would still like to continue probing hillary clinton's e-mail server saying it would be totally remiss to dismiss the e-mail investigation because she's not going to be president because you have a situation where on your committee jason chaffetz may still hold hearings trying to investigate the former secretary of state but not have any interest whatsoever not just in the overseas conflicts of interest but these questions about ties to russian hacking, these questions about paul manafort, the fbi potential probes into that. this is really rather stunning. is there anything that democrats who are now in the minority can do to force investigations of these matters? well, we're going to continue to pressure chaffetz, and i believe that chaffetz and republicans are going to get a lot of pressure from outside groups to move forward with these investigations and they will get a lot of pressure from the

media. chaffetz's own local paper in utah has agreed with me that we ought to have these investigations of the finances of mr. trump to start immediately. as a matter of fact, "the wall street journal" of all papers also agree, so i think you're going to see that pressure coming. we're also going to be holding our own forums because what the -- what mr. trump has said is that on december the 15th he will be telling us exactly how he's going to address these entanglements, and we don't believe that he is going to do what the experts are saying he needs to do, that is to divest, put his assets in a blind trust with an independent trustee to overlook them, and his children not be involved in this process. that's -- because as long as he's in there, joy, as long has he's gaining financial benefit, there's a major problem but should not even want the appearance of that. >> and congressman, you know, we know in the mast when republicans have taken over the

house, they have done things to prevent democrats from even getting hearing rooms, to try to thwart the ability of the minority to do really any sort of oversight whatsoever to sort of shut it down. do you have concern about that, and is there anything democrats can do to ensure that you have the ability to conduct investigations on your own, to have subpoena power, et cetera, if republicans try to stop you? >> again, it's going to be difficult, but -- but what our constituents can do, and by the way we've gotten -- our phone has been ring off the hook. as a matter of fact, when they call the chaffetz's office trying to get them to do the right thing, that is constituents from all over the country, they then send them to our office. some kind of way the public has to put pressure on their congressmen, and by the way these calls are coming not only from people who supported hillary clinton but also coming from people who supported mr. trump hand these are basically people that want

government to be fair and that's what we're look for. joy, i promise you. we're going to fight this with everything that we have. >> congressman elijah cummings, we'll definitely be following this. let me bring in my panel, adnan and karine jean-pierre and jennifer rubin. looking into the idea of the emollments clause and donald trump's conflicts and senate majority leader smiled and kept walking as he headed off the floor late wednesday night. do you foresee meaningful oversight coming out of the republican house or senate of donald trump? >> no. this has been a year of milktoast courage stick on the

right and other places and large sections of the media and quite a bit of the left. people got very excited on the left about a infrastructure bill after a white nationalist demagogue took over the government of the united states so i think that this is going to be a very important moment to do a few things. one is to read our history books and remember that it is not simple police about investigating little emoluments and things like that and things that have been perfectly constitutional and upheld by our checks and balances, slavery for about 100 years, segregation for about 200 years, internment, gay marriage which is now considered a fundamental constitutional right was not, so the idea that checks and balances will take care of us and the process will work itself out is a phony idea, and so i think we need to be worried about the kind of people you showed as -- as kind of the

watchdogs but for those of us in the media also, i've been thinking about a lot about our media, what we studied in school and the blogs we read with r kind of all designed for normal times, for free times, and i think frankly a lot of us, a lot of our institutions including the media are not up to this time. we need to spend more time reading orwell and less time reading the fix and that's a birks big challenge for all of us. >> karine, that is so smart because what we see happening from donald trump, whether it's intentional or he's sort of stumbling into it, is his ability to unfilter and receive praise from the media and receive the benefit of the doubt before anyone even raises a doubt or even interrogates what he's saying. the carrier deal is a great example of what adnan is talking about. donald trump claims he made a deal. there's no substantiation of any details and the media headlines simply report what he tweets, not even what he says to them but what he tweets as if it's a fact and then days and days and

days later you get the back filling and all of the caveats and, well, it wasn't 1,000, well, it was 800, well, it was 500, well, it was pence, not him and all of this backpedaling is too late and don't we need a paradigm shift in the way we talk about the trump presidency? >> that's exabilitily right. there needs to be a paradigm shift. you cannot cover trump the way you would a normal person because he's not in a normal person. i've been thinking about this, like donald trump and what -- what it is that he's doing. it's almost -- it's almost like the metaphor, almost like a magic trick and in his case it's like damage magic and when you do a magic trick there's three components to it. going to do this, like i'm going to select -- i'm going talk to mitt romney about this secretary of state job, and then there's this weird turn, right, a weird twist, like now we're having a dinner or there -- there are

other wild card people in this, in this whole thing and finally you have the prestige, right, you have, hey, this is what -- this is what's going to happen. the suspense has been built up and this is what you're going to get. the thing about that, joy, we know magic tricks are not real and they are a distraction, and i really do believe this is what donald trump is doing, and so -- what is difficult for the media and for all of us it is to figure out like how do you talk about this, how do you cover the donald trump that we have who is going to be our president in six, seven weeks. >> and across europe you've had the right wing ethnonationalist movement take over and they have been dealing with it longer and the united states has been captured and it's not a populist movement. it's oligarchic, you have donald trump surrounding himself with the captains of great wealth and industry and essentially wall street is taking over which was

build as a populist movement and the media is talking about it as if it's populism and ascribing populism to it. number one, how can we undo our language about it and make it more accurate and what possible pressure can the public bring to bear by republicans who are funded by the same oligarchic movements that are behind donald trump? >> well, i think on the first question when you look at the mainstream, if you call them the legacy media, "the washington post," "new york times," they are doing much of what i think needs to be done. when donald trump claimed that there was massive voter fraud, the headline wasn't there's massive voter fraud or donald trump claims there's massive voter fraud, the headline was donald trump misleads or donald trump lies or donald trump makes up a claim, and i think that's how you have to approach it. i think the first obligation of journalism is to tell the truth

and we don't want to give people the presumption of telling the truth. we are skeptics and should address each and everything he says and does with a level of skepticism and we should work our hardest to determine what exactly occurred. with regard to the cabinet, at least the "the washington post," we've been investigating and explaining this billionaire's club he has now as balled and really how at odds it is with his promise to drain the swamp. now, in terms of what the public can do, i completely agree that ultimately this is on the american people. they have to petition. they have to vote. they have to peacefully demonstrate. they have to do whatever they can, and it is their pressure and their insistence that the republicans not essentially promote corruption which is what they are doing right now that will get them off the dime. listen, the republicans are very silly if they think they won't be held responsible when the scandalses begin to hit and

having done nothing in 19 -- in 2018 rather they will be vulnerable when the sludge and the distaste arises because we've had a corruption of the political system. so they would be well advised to get on the right side of this. >> they own it all. adnan, karine and jennifer will all be back later in the show and trump believes being president means there's no such thing as a conflict of interest. laurence tribe joins me next to show us how wrong that is. i have asthma... ...one of many pieces in my life. so when my asthma symptoms kept coming back on my long-term control medicine. i talked to my doctor and found a missing piece in my asthma treatment with breo. once-daily breo prevents asthma symptoms. breo is for adults with asthma not well controlled on a long-term asthma control medicine, like an inhaled corticosteroid. breo won't replace a rescue inhaler for sudden breathing problems. breo opens up airways to help improve breathing for a full 24 hours. breo contains a type of medicine

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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. 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. officials in oakland california are looking at the deadly fire that ripped through a warehouse there friday night. 24 bodies have now been

recovered and officials continue to search. now we turn back to our discussion about politics, concerns that donald trump will use the white house to enrich himself and despite trump's previous claims he can be both president and a businessman. congressional democrats are calling for an investigation into what's a growing web of conflicts of interest spanning the globe. on wednesday trump tweeted he'll be taken completely out of business operations because the presidency is a far more important task and no details were provided beyond that tweet though trump claims he'll reveal plans at a news conference in 11 days and we'll see if that ever happens. joining me now is laurence tribe, prove of law at harvard law school. i had to throw the caveat in if the press conference happens because as we've seen with donald trump that everything he says is not predictive of his behavior so we have a problem

now that the media is down to reading his tweets as some sort of way of predicting what he will do. unpack for us all of the ways in which the conflicts of interest are dangerous for a president to have and do you have any faith that there will be any checks and balances from conflicts of interest? >> the dangers are overwhelming. the federalist papers pointed out it affords an inlet for foreign corruption and they weren't willing to wait until particular conflicts would emerge or until the president or other officers accepted a bribe. they specifically dealt with that product by a preventive mechanism. there's all this-tech talk with that and it's called the emolements clause and it

basically says no officer of the united states can be on the receiving end of any kind of benefit, economic benefit, payment, gift, profit, whatever, from a foreign government or its corporations or agents. they knew that if foreign governments would grease the palm of the king or more often the prince, in this case donald jr. or ivanka or eric, then there would be a close relationship that could never be disentangled by the american public. there's always a danger. for example when trump breaks president and calls the president of taiwan and then we learn he wants some beneficial treatment by the government of taiwan for a hotel chain, we have no way of knowing whether his policies towards taiwan, towards turkey, toward any other country in the world, toward

pakistan are really in the best interests of the u.s. or in the best interests of trump, incorp rated, and the amazing thing is that he's not just a potential source of conflict. he's a constant emolument magnet. he thinks of himself as a babe magnent but he's an emoluments magnet and all around the world everybody wants to go to his hotels and not the competitor and want to give him a variance or a special land use permit and there's simply no way short of absolutely liquidating all of his cash and assets into a blind trust and not handed over to his ghids some way, no way short of that from preventing him of being a walking, talking violation of the constitution from the moment he takes the oath. >> professor tribe, even before you get to the foreign

entanglements and the potential that he's in debt to banks, international banks that we don't know of and what influence those countries could then have on him because some are state-run banks and even before you get overseas go down the street from the white house, sir, and talk to us about the old post office for which donald trump will soon be the landlord and tenant in this hotel there to say nothing of the foreign diplomats that are checking in and swiping their credit cards as a way to pay the trump family. why doesn't the federal government right now before donald trump is president simply sever that agreement today. >> it really ought to. there's no justification for someone to be on both sides of the -- of the bargain. he talks about the idea of the deal and it's very's we you're dealing with yourself and nobody else. he clearly believes and i think it's sincere on his part that's what's good for donald trump and his kids and family business and his family empire around the world and just down the street is good for america.

there used to be a saying by the ceo of jrm what's good for general smoets good for the country. he really believes there's no conflict. when he said at one point that he could be 100% aiming at improving his business and his wealth and at the same time be 100% president, the reason he thought that was partly that he thinks that if he does it it's got to be okay, but partly because he sees no distance between his business empire and the white house which is becoming kind of a profit center for donald trump, and -- and >> go ahead, sorry. >> can you talk a little bit -- his children are involved. ivanka trump sitting in on meetings with foreign leaders, unprecedented in and of itself, one of the recipients of the blind trust is about to move the manufacturing of her clothing line from china to ethiopia so she's now in the position of representing rewards. we don't know what the details

of the contracts are. does the emolements prom extent to his children, as they are in the transition team and the white house and his business? >> absolutely. no question. that both at its origins and throughout history the emoluments clause has been understood not only public official him or herself but to closely held corporations and certainly family members whose benefit really were down to the benefit of -- of daddy donald, and -- and if the frame hers been less practical and been purely legalistic, they might have found some appeal in what trump says he's apparently going to announce and that is that he'll not have his hands on the levers of day-to-day decision make and the business starting

inauguration day but that doesn't matter. what the cause is concerned with is personal and family benefit and wealth, ownership is the issue. follow the money, not necessarily the -- the signature on the particular day-to-day managerial order. >> yeah. >> and i think that the constitution is going to be violated the moment he takes the oath which is why some electors might decide that they have an obligation not to vote for him. it also may be why congress, even though i wouldn't count on it to impeach him, is going to hold a rather dangerous sort of damocles over his head. whenever they decide that their re-elections will be more helped by a pence presidency than by a trump presidency, they can bring out the impeachment weapon. >> yeah. >> i think we're in for a really rough ride. >> i think we're in for a rough ride in the sense there's no political currency in it for

republicans to do oversight until the moment that there is, and then they have all the incentive in the world, as you said, to switch presidents whenever they want. professor laurence tribe, thank you so much. it's really always great to talk to you. >> great to talk to you. >> coming arc dangerous right wing surge is happening all over the world including here in the u.s. the daily beast's chris dickey joins me next to discuss. coaching means making tough choices. jim! you're in! but when you have high blood pressure and need cold medicine that works fast, the choice is simple. coricidin hbp is the only brand

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fingerprints n.italy today a critical referendum is under way on constitutional reforms, a no vote could open up the door to political and financial chaos and embold enpopulists all across europe. there's concern russia may be helping to spread fake news reports to influence that election and others. voters are also casting ballots today in austria's presidential election where one of the leading candidates is a pro-russian anti-immigrant naonalist who is being compared to donald trump. in germany which holds elections early next year alleged russian collaborator julian assange is using wikileaks to target german chancellor angela merkel, one of the few liberal champions of europe or indeed in the west and now that francois hollande has decided not to seek election, it's a center right candidate and far right candidate both urging closer ties to, you guess it had, putin.

joining me from paris is christopher dickey, world news editor for "the daily beast" and as i look at the headlines going across europe, "new york times" headline about the french election hinting a shift towards russia and the russian bear is getting bolder. nato member hungary, russian agents fingered for training with the neo-nazi military and moscow is accused of plotting a violent coup on montenegro and they have been known for meddling in foreign countries since the time of the czars and such bold attempts and chaos in countries linked to nato are unprecedented. is russia literally running roughshod over the west right now? >> well, i think it's not quite like that, but you could say that we're looking at kumbaya with the kremlin here in europe. everybody is getting together, all the white wing parties and center right, gave us a very

good rundown. they are essentially sympathetic to russia for two or three reasons. they see a lot of common economic interests. secondly, they see russia is on the move internationally and one of the biggest problems for europe is the syrian war. they think if anybody is going to resolve the syrian war, even if it's a bloody end to, it will be the russians behind that, and finally what the russians are advocating is not communism, it's not what we were fighting in the cold war. it's a kind of populist oligarchy which is what we're seeing take shape in the united states. a situation where you get the masses out, you get them angry and get them to vote and really often against their own interests and then the really big moneyied interests come in slows h closely tied to the government and they make fortunes off this and find ways to solidify and consolidate their power which is exactly what that good old kgb agent vladimir putin has done in russia over the years. i think the scariest thing is we're seeing a lot of liberal democracies where the people who

are riding this wave of populism essentially see themselves creating governments that can have the kind of longevity and the ruthlessness that vladimir putin has had in russia. >> and do you think that that -- and i think it was a brilliant description of what is even happening here in the united states where you have populism sort of giving rise to this sort of oligarchic form of government who benefit from it are the plutocrats and that's happening all over the country. is there a fear in europe that there's a backlash to that eventually and if people catch on that their populism has been hijacked by the super rich, then what could happen? >> well, then what can happen in the united states. well really don't know. we don't have any idea how this is going to play how the. in russia we see that vladimir putin has been able to hold on to power despite lots of mistakes, despite a very bad economic situation and he's been

version very popular. how has he done it? gone to war with other countries and tried to humiliate other countries and made russians feel that they are victims and as victims they have the right to strike out in all kinds of different directions. that is a very, very, very scary phenomenon. it's exactly what we saw nor -- in europe 80 years ago with the rise of the nazis and the fascists. >> and so just to look at angela merkel as they in leader of the free world, the last defender of western ideals, talking about that side of the atlantic or this side. is she in trouble and do you think she can, in the extent you're able to prognosticate, survive this kind of whatever you want to can a will it oligarchic wave of pro-russian fake populism? >> when those elections come up, which is quite a long time from

now, i think it's next fall or even in 2018, the -- the -- we may see a backlash, the kind of backlash you talk about and things move very quickly. analogies with the 1930s, this is not the 1930s and as we've seen already the political winds can shift very, very quickly. >> indeed. christopher dickey, thank you so much. always great to talk to you. >> and after the break in, less than 24 house, the federal government is threatening to kick thousands of protesters and veterans off of sacred land. we'll go live to north dakota next. ♪ ♪ lend him a helping hand. ♪ put a little love in your heart. ♪ ♪ take a good look around... ♪ ...and if you're lookin' down, ♪ ♪ put a little love in your heart. ♪ ♪put a little love in your heart.♪ ♪ in your heart. (avo) the subaru share the love event is happening now and will have given ninety million dollars to help real people like these.

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pipeline protesters in north dakota face a deadline tomorrow set by the u.s. army corps of engineers to clear out of their camp. the standing rock sioux tribe has stood their ground for month facing dogs and police water cannons. they say the dakota access pipeline disturbs sacred land and it has a boost to the local

economy. it's joined by a couple of alice when 2,000 military veterans converged on standing rock in solidarity with protesters. injoining me now is phyllis young, tulsi gabbard and have you set the stage for us and i'll let you initially talk with your guests? >> thank you so much, joy. the camp is almost bursting at the sales. in addition to the 2,000 who arrived yesterday, thousands of ordinary americans have come here to try to protect here and i know you rise entally arrived and you're a veteran, you've been meeting with veterans here. let us know about your experience >> you know, the first big gathering of veterans i participated in last night. quite an interesting thing to secret advance from all generations converging together, people who are strangers and who are brothers and sisters in arms who have come here and put

service and self and stand in peace and prayer to protect water. they understand that this is not just about the potential water contamination for the people of standing rock, but it's for the millions of people in these surrounding states that would also be impacted and the symbol that this is hand how essential it is to protect water as a matter of life. >> what do you want to see fm the obama administration? >> the best thing that could happen for this movement and this message is to say water is life and is a precious resource that must be protected is if the president would announce that the easement that this pipeline needs to continue would be denied. >> that would stop the construction. phyllis, let me ask you, how do you balance the larger issue. that will so many tribes from around the country that are

fighting for something bigger, fighting for promises that were made in treaties that have since been rolled back. how do you balance the two issues? >> we have over 33 specific treaties with the united states. and we are going to hold them to that. there are over 400 nations who came to us to ask for support. we have an historic relationship with the united states government and we're going to hold them to that and one of the provisions is an 1868 treaty is the water. we hold the title to the missouri river today, to the headwaters in montana to the tails of the missouri when it joins the mississippi. there are 28 indian nations on this river, and we all have an historic relationship and we all have to be consulted and only congress is our member.

we are not subject to any state or county or any local agency. we have a commitment. we have an agreement with the united states congress and we need to get to the table, a round table of congressionals that will hear us and have dialogue with us for the future because we need to go to alternative injuries. that's the way weful so that we can promote and initiation safe clean methods of energy and create new methodologies for indian country and would serve america as well. >> i know you had some questions. >> one for phyllis young. on this question of local law enforcement, you -- you guys have been in a constant sort of back and forth with local law enforcement that seems to be defending the interest of the pipeline over the trust water

protectors and of you guys. give us a status update as of now, the relationship with law enforcement and do you feel you're getting enough protection at the federal level for your safety and for your rights? >> we have never gotten any support from the law enforcement locally. from day one we stood up to them with prayer. i know the power of prayer. i saw what it did to law enforcement locally and regionally and we've never -- and i told the sheriff the day before yesterday you have never protected our people. he insists he was here for both sides, but the sheriff and the law enforcement have all promoted and protected the pipeliner, so we know otherwise. no one has come to our protection and our freedom except the military veterans who have arrived and we're very grateful for that. we're having an international

peace ceremony on monday. there's going to be a white horse exchange that will forever cement the peace between the united states military and ochete. >> we've been talking a lot about accountability on the show today, congresswoman, so what can be demanded from congress. the federal government does have oversight over so much land. they are the people who are supposed to be enforcing the law. where is oversight, congresswoman, and can democrats demand it and do you think you can get it with republicans in control? >> joy, i'll be very blunt with you. there are very few members of congress who are even paying attention to what is happening here in standing rock. they are asking where is the oversight and accountability that. can't happen unless people look and see and hear what is actually happening here and

understands the potential impact damaging and contaminating water resources, not only for the standing rock sioux but for millions of people in the surrounding area. we've got to recognize that without water there is no life. there is no economy. there are no jobs. there's a right way to go about doing things that has not occurred here. there are thousands of people gathered here and are here to say that water is life. that must be respected and protected. >> joy, i would, you know, add on a report are angle here, the thousands of people who have arrived, many of them are prepared for the cold weather that's going to come on tuesday, and the other thing that's happening here is it's difficult to control the message, and i think unless there's an easiment that is denied. >> there needs to be a lot more reporting thon and we really appreciate you being down there.

thank you so much congresswoman gabbard as well as phyllis young. we'll definitely keep up with you guys. an update on the warehouse fire in oakland, california, but first more "a.m. joy" after the break. what if a company that didn't make cars made plastics that make them lighter? the lubricants that improved fuel economy. even technology to make engines more efficient. what company does all this? exxonmobil, that's who. we're working on all these things to make cars better

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to all our view, make sure you join in on the "a.m. joy" buzz where we've trended nationally for the mast 14 weeks in a row. follow us on facebook and twitter @amjoy. [burke] at farmers, we've seen almost everything,

so we know how to cover almost anything. even a rodent ride-along. [dad] alright, buddy, don't forget anything! [kid] i won't, dad... [captain rod] happy tuesday morning! captain rod here. it's pretty hairy out on the interstate.traffic is literally crawling, but there is some movement on the eastside overpass. getting word of another collision. [burke] it happened. december 14th, 2015. and we covered it. talk to farmers. we know a thing or two because we've seen a thing or two. ♪ we are farmers. bum-pa-dum, bum-bum-bum-bum ♪

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let's turn from the week that was to the week ahead. what do you think the big headline will be this coming week? i can't hear her. i don't know if anybody else can hear her. okay. we have you. go ahead. >> okay. >> now we have you. >> censorship has begun.

>> censorship, yeah. he said he would be done with his cabinet picks this week. who knows if that's going to happen. who knows if we sill see the end of the apprentice final episode. it remains to be seen. >> you know, let's play a little of david petraeus. he is somebody who, even though i believe he is on parole over violating national security laws, is being up for secretary of state. this is david petraeus. basically, what he was saying was that he made a mistake in terms of sharing classified information with his girlfriend who was writing a book. the actual thing people accused hillary clinton of doing that he actually did. let's listen to him. >> i made a mistake. i have again acknowledged it. folks will have to factor that in and determine whether that is, indeed, disqualifying or not. >> stunning the idea that he would be considered. let's go to jennifer. what do you think the big headline will be? >> i think the headline will be,

is donald trump if i cfickle? >> he is opening up the bidding for secretary of state. will he find someone who is competent enough to make sense of his foreign policy? >> i get the sense there's a war going on between the pence wing of trump world and the bannon wing over who they want. we are hearing john huntsman also in the hunt potentially for that spot. it's interesting. what do you think the big headline will be? >> i think it's going to be trump is driving to the middle with his cabinet picks. exactly as you said, i believe there's a war between pencan bannon. hunt huntsman and petraeus, these are career professionals, more than eye idealogs. >> three word headline. republic still endangered. one of the challenges is going to be those of us in the

business are looking for what's the new twist, what's the surprise. the danger when the story line of our time is going to bet republic being endangered for four years is for us to not distract ourselves from that story. that is and will continue to be until it is not the story. >> you know, i will go through quickly through everybody. this desire to normalize everything that's happening with donald trump. does it endanger us to overlook the sort of glaring conflicts and problems that are ahead of us? do you think we are capable of meeting that moment? >> i think that's right. just to -- someone had said that is he going to move to the middle? look, i think that's a minute that we need to dispel. right now we have mattis and chow. it's a danger because it does not -- it does not eliminate the extremists that he has chosen,

flynn, sessions, devos and bannon. we have to look at the extreme people that he has all around him. >> you talked about this, because some of the real dangers we haven't gotten into in terms of communities of color, communities that are not christian religion, they are real. >> they are real. i think what's -- people of color and women have real reason to be afraid. but so do the people who voted for him. what's amazing given the populism he played and then who he is now assembling is that this is going to be the come for the white explaining, stay for the rich explaining presidency. >> all throughout europe you had populism. they are installing ole gar keys. they are taking over the governments. we will see what happens when the backlash by those who thought they were getting job saving populism and find out what they got is mru stock kra

sy, including the united states. coming up next, why is newt gingrich comparing mitt romney to a scene from "pretty woman." alex witt has more. stick around. there's more news at the top of the hour. to a few places... ...and those places keep changing every few months. the quicksilver card from capital one doesn't do any of that. with quicksilver you earn unlimited 1.5% cash back on every purchase, everywhere. leave complicated behind. what's in your wallet?

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this is the sound of sonic technology cleaning deep between teeth. hear the difference? get healthier gums in just 2 weeks vs a manual toothbrush and experience an amazing feel of clean. innovation and you. philips sonicare. save now when you buy philips sonicare. good day, everyone. i'm alex witt here in new york at msnbc world headquarters. high noon in the east, 9:00 a.m. in the west. an alarming toll. within this hour, new information from the scene of that deadly warehouse fire. the chilling details ahead. > a new day. a series of new tweets. why are the latest proclamations from president-elect trump drawing criticism from some republicans today? the mysteries of michigan, jill stein says she wants to unravel some ballot questions in that state, why thousands are blank. a new record on why ivanka could influence the incoming administration wn