that's why a cutting edgeworld. university counts on centurylink to keep their global campus connected. and why a pro football team chose us to deliver fiber-enabled broadband to more than 65,000 fans. and why a leading car brand counts on us to keep their dealer network streamlined and nimble. businesses count on communication, and communication counts on centurylink. [ inaudible ]. good morning, and welcome to "a.m. joy." barely two weeks since donald trump became president the world has erupted in opposition and resistance that shows no signs

of slowing . there's been another round of global protests this weekend, this time in opposition to trump's travel ban targeting seven predominantly muslim countries. here in the u.s., it's sometimes been difficult to tell our allies from our adversaries since nearly all of them have been subjected to the same trump treatment. well, with the exception of russia. a leaked transcript of the call between trump and mexican president enrique pina nieto says trump threatened to send troops to stop bad hombres down there. the trump administration denies any such thing was said. the white house characterized the comments as lighthearted. the official account of a phone call between trump and australian prime minister turnbull painted a harmony. but officials leaked it saying he used it to get crowds.

trump replied, this is the worst deal ever. and eventually ended the call more than half an hour early. it's a sentiment repeated via twitter days earlier. that's how trump treats america's friends. senior fellow and molly o'toole, senior reporter, and msnbc contributor malcolm nance. thanks for being here. so we've had this sort of strange week in trump international diplomacy, max. give him a grade. i mean, it's been weird but what do you make of it? >> well, i would certainly not give him a passing grade for what he's done in the last couple weeks. i mean, he's hald the most disastrous opening since planet i from outer space at movie theaters. it's amazing. everything is upside down in the course of his presidency. i mean, what kind of money would you have put down on the fact that the president of the united states would create a crisis with the prime minister of

australia? >> right. >> pretty long odd. it takes a lot of work for the president to get into a fight with the prime minister of australia but donald trump is willing to do what it takes. it's striking to me the way he has tough word for the prime minister of australia, one of our closest and oldest allies and nothing but nice words, kind words, for vladimir putin, the head of this anti-american dictatorship who routinely kills his adversaries, one of the leading dissidents in russia now on life support because he's been poisoned probably the russian security service, and donald trump is telling bill o'reilly, you don't have to worry about putin killing people. we do the exact same thing. really? do we kill disdents in the united states? this is mind-boggling moral equivalence that would have been instantly contempted at high decibels by republicans if president obama were doing this but because it's trump doing, this he gets a pass. everything is just upside down. >> and to your point, you know, you had republicans, molly, you

know, complain that obama apologized for america and that was their big knock on him and that he didn't tout america's greatness around the world. you now have an american president saying don't criticize putin for killing people, i mean, we kill people. that is an extraordinary thing for an american president to say about his own country. >> absolutely. it puts the republican party in a very difficult position. obviously they've been in tough a position for some time in the campaign, particularly with foreign policy. the republican party asserted itself as the party that's strong on defense and in many ways that came out of a kind of cold war thinking sort of anti-russia thinking of the u.s. power versus the power of russia. so it puts particularly on russia, puts republicans in the hot seat when he continues to be -- now that he is actually in the white house, continues to be very friendly to putin when a lot of republicans -- john mccain, bob corker -- very uncomfortable with this idea. >> let's listen to donald trump talking at the prayer breakfast

of all places on thursday about his phone calls. and then we'll listen to one of his top advisers and the way he's talking about the world. let's listen to donald trump. >> when you hear about the tough phone calls i'm having, don't worry about it. just don't worry about it. they're tough. we have to be tough. it's time we're going to be a little tough, folks. >> so's talking about being tough with our friends, the australians and apparently our friends, mexico, but there's also been additional tough talk this week that i want to go to malcolm on. this is general michael flynn, the national security advisor now, and a member of the national security council, on wednesday, and he's talking about iran. take a listen. >> president trump has severely criticized the various agreements reached between iran and the obama administration as well as the united nations as being weak and ineffective. instead of being thankful to the united states in these agreements, iran is now feeling emboldened. as of today, we are officially putting iran on notice.

>> malcolm, your thoughts. >> i think ware in for a very, very difficult time here with regards to the talk on iran. there are many indicators, not just from this speech by michael flynn, that the trump campaign appears that they are moving toward something. tomorrow donald trump is going to u.s. central command to pay a visit, not to the pentagon national command center, not to norad, not to u.s. northern command, not to southern command but to central command, the speared t eed tip of the spear pointing towards iran. they think think they have drawn a red line with regard to these ballistic misl tests that iran has taken and what i suspect is that the trump campaign is now preparing a rollout, a concept of operations where they are going to do something to put iran in its place. that wouldn't be up natural for a president that's in such a horrific situation that he's in,

which is to start operations which might lead up to a low-level or single-strike conflict with iran over the next three to six months, but this could spiral quickly out of control and embroil the united states in an iraq-style ramp-up to a war that no one has ever wanted in the intelligence community. that's for sure. >> let's talk about this. you have this strange sort of thing happening where you have the united states aligning itself with russia, not being very aggressive in terms of criticizing other than nikki haley, who admirably did make strong statements about russia's continued aggression toward ukraine, but being extremely aggressive toward iran. your thoughts. >> here's the thing. so it's not only iran. it's also the south china sea, for example, right? so a tribunal from the hague ruled that china was encroaching on the philippines in territorial waters, but trump -- you know, his bluser is there.

i think what's happening there is he has a very kind of mixed and kind of convoluted way of deciding who is his enemy and who is his friend. talk about putin, can you imagine, it was two years ago the republicans were saying obama is weak against russia, he's not doing anything to fight against russia. but now he can't say anything -- he can't say anything negative about putin. it's been proven that, you know, through the intelligence community that putin oversaw the hacking of the u.s. election. could you imagine if iran or some other nation that was on the seven country ban had the telligence capilities to attack the election, what would he have done? with putin, it just makes you think that there is something going on as far as the business dealings that we're not aware of yet. furthermore, going back with tillerson, he's somebody who he says putin is his friend, right? you mean to tell me you're going to be friends with someone who hacks your election, friend with someone who not only hacked you

but is currently suspected of hacking germany's elections right now. >> right. >> so using his whole intelligence capabilities, putin is using his capabilities to pretty much say i can pretty much do what i want and he's using trump as -- kind of like as a flunky and the republicans aren't saying -- they're saying thing about it but by the fact they're mostly supporting tillerson it reveals their true colors. >> this is the sort of kind of multilayered hell that americans are potentially facing. if we're looking at to malcolm's point increasingly aggressive attitudes tward iran, potentially junking a deal that kept em them from moving forward to building a nuclear weapon and standing down in terms of defending ukraine and nato, max, this does not spell good things i would imagine for the united states. >> i'm in favor of actually getting tougher with iran because i do think they have had free reign in the middle east for too long and they're creating this new empire that

stretches from tehran to beirut so, i do think we need to push back on that. my question and doubt is are they going to push back in a smart way, are they going to set themselves up for failure by putting out these red lines which they won't enforce or conversely talk themselves into action they haven't thought through. one of the things that concerns me right now is here is mike flynn, the nuational security advisor, saying, we're putting iran on notice. nobody know what is that means. people in the military are saying "on notice"? that's not a term we're familiar with. i hope and fray prey that mike flynn and the brain trust of the administration have brought through what this means but i have grave doubts as to whether they have because they don't even have their appointees in place at the departments of state and defense. if you look at the disastrous roll out of the execive immigration order, it doesn't give you a lot of confidence these guys know what they're doing. >> malcolm, i know you don't think they've thought it through. this is sort of the view in europe of who donald trump is. there's not a lot of confidence

among our allies around the world and this is in germany, our ally. not a lot of confidence. this combination of a muslim ban, whatever they want to call it, that ratchets up the tension between us and the muslim world. these threats against iran, cuddling up to russia. you know, malcolm, your thoughts? >> well, first off, i think max is completely wrong. we do not want to get into a fight with iran. there's a pushback on a diplomat front, that's one thing. i have fought or have been under fire by iran three times in my career. beirut in 1983 when they blew up a truck bomb that killed 243 americans, naval battles in 1988, and been attacked by iranian rockets in iraq in the early 2000s. these people have capacity to put up a million insurgents and create terrorism throughout the middle east. there's no smart way to play it. you either go through a diplomat route or you go to war all over and enflame the middle east. perhaps that's their strategy. they want to confront iran, think they can take them down.

listen, we have a phrase for this in the intelligence community, a fantasist, it's called tom clancy combat operations, right? where they think they can do whatever they want because they think our military's infallible. we have already been proven by iraq that we don't have the capacity to fight iran much less isis across every battle sphere of the middle east in south a a asia. it's foolhardy to do it that way. >> i don't know if my producers have that map. so people understand, because sometimes we don't think about the geography of it. that is where iran is, right? it's right there, the straits of hormuz, which is where mes of the oil that comes out of the persian gulf comes out. saudi arabia is right there, abuts iraq and turkey. look at just the size of it versus iraq. i don't know if you can see iraq in that map. we're talking about a country of 80 million people versus iraq, a country o20 million people. and look at the quagmire we wound up in the country with 20 million people. it's bigger than turkey. has a bigger population than

england. when you talk about iran, mack, i think iran is an amorphous thing in the mind of americans, not a put-together country like iraq but used to be a persian empire. it's a daunting idea this idea of going to war with iran. >> it's a serious adversary and i'm certainly not advocating going to war with withdrawn, but we do need an integrative diplomatic and military strategy to curb iranian influence. iran has been projecting power to dominate iraq and syria and this is leading to pushback from sunnis and this is helping to fuel the rise of isis and other groups. we need to have a smart strategy to contain iranian power. what i'm also doubtful is whether this white house will be capable of coming up with a smart strategy. >> that's the question i wanted to bring to you. is there any evidence this white house has thought things through? >> i think we should see the pushback on iran as being -- we have to tie it to michael flynn. far long time in his writings

and what he's been saying, he's sbn obsessed with iran and sort of pushing back on iran in this proxy war you're referring to with saudi arabia in the region. and i think we can see that this administration is laying d the groundwork in particular to get more involved in yemen. we saw the recent strike by military accounts went horribly as bad as things could go. i think we'll see the u.s. step up -- the trump administration start to get more involved milli militarily in yemen but they should take caution from terms of overall strategy. when we see how bogged down saudi arabia has gotten in yem. what a mess that's become, that's an example of where there may not be this sort of long-term strategic thinking but this obsession about pushing back on iran in that proxy war in that administration. and i think that also shows the disconnect between trump and some of his top military advisers. some of the top military, dunford, mtisave suggested that russia actually is the

bigger threat and not necessarily iran. so it just sort of shows how there's this sort of disconnect within the administration and we're going to continue to see those tensions play out in terms of national security. >> i wish we had more time. we have to come back and do this again because that is the big question. is it iran or russia our biggest adversary? it feels like this administration is drifting toward a conflict in the middle east. they seem to really relish it and that worries me. thank you all. up next, the bowling green massacre that never was. stay with us. when heartburn hits, fight back fast with tums smoothies. it starts dissolving the instant it touches your tongue. and neutralizes stomach acid at the source. ♪ tum -tum -tum -tum smoothies! only from tums

it's brand-new information to people that president obama had a six-month ban on the iraqi refugee program after two iraqis

came to this country, were radicalized and twr master minds behind the bowling green massacre. let me -- >> no, because it didn't get covered. >> the bowling green massacre of course never happened. while it's easy to poke fun at kellyanne conway for what she later called an honest mistake, there's something darker at play here. the invention of a massacre in order to further demonize muslim immigrants, in this case iraqi refug refugees. joining me, our panel. okay. so, dean, you're here because we were texting about this when you wrote a piece about this sort of broad demonization of muslims, whether it's immigrants, whether it's refugees, or whether it's american muslims, quite frankly. this idea of inventing a ms. kerr. funny or dangerous? >> very dangerous. breitbart during the holiday season said there was another attack somewhere in norway. i looked in the local papers. it was not there. they're literally manufacturing lies about muslims a that

demonizes to gin up the fear. i'm not being hyperbolic, it is like 1930s germany, the demonization of jews. they're making them not human so you fear every muslim. you had a terror attack in quebec where six muslims were killed. donald trump talks about the scary in paris, which he has ta right to, but not at all about the six muslims killed in quebec by a guy who was a trump supporter. our live es don't matter to our leaders of our government right now in the trump administration. in fact, not only don't they matter, they don't like us. they might even hate us. and we're at least a pawn. >> at the same time, jay, you did have the administration come out strongly when they thought the quebec shooter was moroccan and they pulled back considerably when it turned out he was a white trump supporter, right, that he was a christian white trump supporter. it sort of wept radio silent. then you had donald trump friday tweeting about an attack near

the louver in prayers one person was attacked and he said a new radical islamic terrorist has attacked the louver in paris. not true. tourists were locked down. france on edge again. get smart, u.s. there does seem to be a rolling theme only when the attacker is a muslim, only when they can further demonize, the administration seems to be consistently doing this and they don't seem to be turning it around. >> and donald trump did call prime minister trudeau in canada after the attack in quebec and did sort of extend his condolences to the canadian people, but it's true that in terms of what he chooses to highlight, what he chooses to tweet about, and that's really what donald trump sort of stream of consciousness is all about, his twitter feed, he only picks and chooses his news that underlines the scary sort of horrible terrorist threat of muslims and really never strikingly says here are all the good things about muslim society, muslim culture that we should celebrate. and if you consistently sort of demonize thee people, they're making the case, the administration, that somehow

this ban on seven different countries coming in in terms of immigrants to the united states has nothing to do with islam, even though donald trump said the syrian ban would not apply to christians. that's the case the lawyers are making in the courts right now. but it's hard to imagine the two are not tied when they spend so much time, the president spend so much time tweeting and talking about the evils of islam and now they're going to kill us all, they're so -- you know, they're dangerous, evil people as he tweeted yesterday morning, celebrating around the world because the ban has been suspended. and so it is really problematic when you have them going after this one culture in particular as the kind of bogey man. >> you put it all together. you have steve bannon that has this longtime philosophy that the christian white west is at war with islam. you have michael flynn, who has the exact same philosophy, who has essentially said islam isn't really a religion but a radical political philosophy we are at war with. you have numerous members of trump world who thinks this,

donald trump who thinks this, and now you have the trump administration changing the cve, his counterextremism program. and they're going to take out the part of extremism that includes why is nationalists, american christian terrorists, and take them out. and this is the exchange that happened between sean spicer and april ryan on friday when she tried to question the administration abo taking a program that's supposed to counter all violent extremism, including dylann rooff-style extremism and focus solely on muslims. >> when we have something to announce on that we will do. it should .any surprise that the president when it comes to rooting out radical a islamic terrorism, he is going to make sure that is a major focus of his, keeping this country safe. >> just as a matter of, you know, intelligence, as an intelligence matter, does it help or hurt the sort of goal of

countering violent extremism if you are singularly focused on one religionous group? >> you know, joy, it's a good question. you know, i'm totally for intelligence-driven police and intelligence-driven national security. look, after september 11th, what did we do? we stopped all air travel to the united states because the intelligence community didn't have fidelity as to what would happen next. with all the leaks happening in the government, everything that's come out, including sean spicer's e-mail pass word, what we haven't had the actually any information that says, look, there is a specific threat between these seven countries, that is, a so, valid and b, so huge that we can't stop it in time that would justify essentially stopping people from seven countries coming. if you don't have that specific intelligence that would justify such an event, you have to wonder what is t inte? look, we have a president who campaigned on a muslim ban, a muslim registry, and i have to tell you, i think there are

people out here that want to use the benjamin moore approach. they want to have a paint swatch and that's how they want to decide who's going to come in. fyi it won't be hot caramel with an eggshell finish. that won't be on the go list. this is a very clear nonintelligence-driven, nonthreat specific action that is meant to frankly discriminate. i can't think of any other cause of it. >> and i think we have to start, dean, using our sort of lurid imagination in a way because you can never predict what this administration will do. you have to start thinking sort of the worst. >> absolutely. >> what is the sfwhors are we talking about a muslim registry? talking about monitoring mosques? what does your community fear? >> i think actually some kind of internment camp. the japanese, when they did the internment of japanese-americans, 60% were born in the united states of america, so i'm born here, but they could do it for a certain group of men of a certain age. they could somehow deprive us of our rights or create a toxic environment. getting back to the cve program,

next week a man is going on trial in tennessee, robert darger, a christian minister, for plotting to kill muslims with machetes and guns. another guy sentenced in december, a white supremacist plotting to kill muslims in upstate new york. in december, three men called the christian crusaders plotting to kill muslim refugees in kansas. media barely covers it. now we get all this terrorism is from muslims. there are white supremacists that want to kill me and people in my xhund and the administration is ignoring it. we'll have a quebec situation. someone will walk into a mosque and kill muslims unless something is done. >> you've had mosques burned. keeping with that imagination, i can't help but put together this idea of demonizing muslims and migrants of the united states and what does sound like the thet of military action or something like that in the middle east. threatening in yemen. threatening in iran.

is that too crazy t think? and getng the arican people to support something like that. >> this administration has taken -- frankly it's how the president campaigned. it was one chaotic moment after another so you just couldn't focus on anything because the next sort of chaos happened. you know, i like to think -- and i've often said this. i'm an american. i have extraordinary faith in our institutions. those institutions will remain after the president leaves and they serve no one president. and i like to think there's checks and balances. but is it beyond the realm of possibility that, you know, there would be some effort to distract what's happening here by something else? no. clearly we also have a president who i think erroneously believes that somehow russia is going to help him fight not just isis but sort of this dwloebl concept of islam. and i think that is just not going to happen. >> yeah. it's scary to think about it. but i think we have to start using sort of our lurid imagine nagts just because you just do not know what's coming with this

administration. thank you all very much. coming up, the ties between donald trump and russia continue to grow more complex. o

ooh.

i would refer you back to the tresht on that one. >> hold on, sean. the language on the treasury department website suggests you are in fact easing sanctions, authorizing certain transactions with the federal security service. does that not suggest a shift from -- >> no, it doesn't. it is from what i understand a regular course of action that treasury does quite often when there are sanctions imposed. but i would you back to the treasury department. >> in the frenzy over thatless than friendly phone call with the australian prime minister or the reports of trump threatening the u.s. se of u.s. troops in mexico, you might have missed the news the treasury department modifies sapgss against russia

allow some american companies to do business with russia, specifically with russia's intelligence agency, the fsb. the obama administration imposed those anxiouses in 2015 and strengthened them in december in response to russia's interference in our election. also this week, ukraine reported artillery attacks by pro-putin russian separatists. by some reports it's the biggest offensive in months. in ere news from the chem lin, new questions this week about the sale of 19.5% of russia's state-controlled oil company rosne rosneft. there were reports in december that qatar and a swizz trading firm were set to buy that stake. but details of the deal and all the players involved remain murky. remember that dossier who deuced by the british intelligence agent who has since gone into hiding? that alleged that rosneft authorized carter page and his associates the brokerage on a 19% stake in rosneft purportedly

in exchange for getting u.s. sanctions against russia lifted, specifically the sanctions imposed in response to russia's aggression in ukraine in 2014. so maybe there was more to sean spicer's apoplexy over buzzfeed publishing that dossier than the part that became comedy gold. >> i want to bring your attention to a few points on the report that was published in buzzfeed last night. it's frankly outrageous and highly irresponsible for a left-wing blog that was openly hostile to the president-elect's campaign to drop highly salacious and flatout false information on the internet just days before he takes the oath of office. >> well, up next, more russian intrigue. why are so many of putin's critics ending up dead? (vo) maybe it was here, when you hit 300,000 miles. or here, when you walked away without a scratch.

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will i get along with him? i have no idea.

>> putin's a kimmer. >> a lot of killers. you think our country's so innocent? >> wow. on thursday we learned that a prominent russian politician and a critic of putin's government is currently being treated in intensive care after his organs failed, part of a sudden inexplicable violent illness. two years ago he suffered multiple organ failure and fell into a coma due to what doctors suspect was poison. high levels of met talts were found in his blood. his attorney believes he's been poisoned again and marco rubio has urged the state department to investigate. kara mirza may be one of the relatively lucky ones at "the new york times" reported in august more of the kremlin's opponents are ending up dead. joining me now, a professor of international affairs at the new school and a chairman of the human rights foundation. thanks for being here. gary, i want to start by getting your reaction to donald trump's statement that essentially you

can't criticize russia too much for killing because we kill. >> disgusting. outrageous. i can hardly find words. it's about influence. off brutal dictator who kills people in his own country, carpet bomb, aleppo, invades neighboring countries and it's just, yeah, you start comparing him to -- there may be certain regularities that do exist by being confronted by democratic institutions. >> you have to example of boris nimsov who was killkilled, righ? >> in front of the chem lin. >> you have opposition politicians being killed feet from the chkremlin. you have people in hiding for fear of being poisoned or killed including this mi6 agent who apparently created this dossier. idea of making that the equivalent of the united states and an american president doing it, it's stunning. >> i think as gary said, it is disgusting. it's inconceivable that we can -- the country that argues

that this is the most wonderful democracy in the world has a president that makes statements that are not only irresponsible, they're also incredibly dangerous because you can't equate putin with the united states, you know, that sometimes people die. it certainly doesn't deliberately go after its opponents although it may change with donald trump. >> donald trump threatened to jail his opponents during the campaign. >> that's right. he said he's at war with the media, so be careful. it it seems something another problem donald trump creates for the world and not just for russia. he's setting example that very responsible countries, rogue nations can follow. wow, america kills, too, so why wouldn't we? >> it's something you would expect rogue nation to say about us but not our own president. it's contradictory to his own u.n. ambassador. nikki haley made the following

comment about russia's aggression in ukraine. this was on thursday. >> we do want to better our relations with russia. however, the dire situation in eastern ukraine is one that demands clear and strong condemnation of russian actions. the sudden increase in fighting in eastern ukraine has trapped thousands of civilians and destroyed vital infrastructure. and the crisis is spreading, endanger manager thousands more. this escalation of violence must stop. >> so that seems like a good sign, right, that at least one element of the trump administration is saying what we expect to hear about ukraine. does that make you more hopeful? >> yes. trump spoke about a conflict on the russian/ukraine border. there's no conflict on the border. invaded eastern ukraine. crimea. it's quite different. trump is consistent but his praise for putin is absolutely

consistent. he's criticized everybody, republicans, democrats -- >> australians. sneefsh except vladimir putin. he's never criticized him. >> why do you think that is? what is your theory? >> again, we can find many explanations but i think we should look at the fact, you know, and try not to -- it bothers mae lot because every time, you know, when trump is confronted by the facts that putin did that and that and putin is a criminal, o'reilly called putin a killer, trump always finds an excuse for putin. that should worry all of us. i hope eventually on the hill we seal a reaction because a lot of people, especially on the republican side, who understand who putin is or remember mitt romney called russia number-one geopolitical foe of the united states, and we have very weak response to these irresponsible behavior of the u.s. president. >> so let's have you guys explain to those who don't know or understand who vladimir putin is, nina, give us a sense of what is it that he is after?

who is this guy? and why should we be concerned about him? >> this question on 17th year now. >> yeah. absolutely. >> and we continue to keep asking that. putin wants great russia. >> make russia great again. >> russia first again. i think it's a mistake when people say he wants the soviet union back. i think he wants more than soviet union back. no in terms necessarily about territory but in terms of it is a country that occupies almost the whole continent. this is a country has to be listened to. this is a country has to be respected. and whatever it takes, he's going to get there. and i think that is his primary agenda. his other very important part of the agenda is that he needs to stay in power because he has already killed -- he himself may not have killed but so many people have died under his watch so, he had create sod many enemies and so people are very incensed with his policies, including the former or the --

the example of a disagreement which can develop. so, yeah, he created a lot of people who want him gone. so he need to stay in power because the minute he goes, retires or what not, he's really gone physically. so he needs to stay on. so these are the two things i think. there are other things but these are major things that drive his agenda. >> what could he want with donald trump? donald trump seems to my thi what he wants is friendship or that he respects donald trump. >> set aside all the dossiers or other things that putin has on trump, i think trump for putin is a perfect agent of chaos and that's what putin needs because putin always saw nato, european union, other institutions that guaranteed peace and stability over seven decades, as an obstacle to his plans to spread influence. he wants to divide his enemies and attack them one by one. and trump was the perfect

counterpart. what trump said about nato, what trump said about the european union, lead ertz like angela merkel, who stood their ground against putin, helps putin. even if we assume there's nothing else and almost sinister would be -- >> sure, sure. yeah. is there anyone in the trump administration that can counter the influence of trump himself anl people like flynn and tillerson and other pro-putin types in the administration? >> rex tillerson does seem to have relationships with russia, with putin, probably, certain russian businesses but he also seems to be a very smart man. actually, you showed nikki haley, that clip, in some was it is interesting. i think that's how this administration probably provides some sort of an appearance of balancing act. on one hand trump does support putin and speaks very highly of him so autocrats of the world

unite so, to speak. on the other hand, there is clearly -- i mean 70%, 80% of american establishment of americans generally really are not such fans of putin and russia, and therefore that could be really an interesting play -- >> if they stand up. very quickly. >> i think it's important to fight this myth, you know, okay, you have to do it but not at the expense of american traditional democratic allies. >> well said. nina and gary, we have to have you back. you're a great team. thank you very much. in our next hour, it's super bowl sunday, of course, and even america's favorite sport is not safe from politics.

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thanks to all the tweets. keep the conversation going at #am joy. up next, donald trump is rolling ba regulations meant to prevent another financial catastrophe. what could go wrong? ts

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we expect to be cutting a lot out of dodd/frank because frankly i have so many people, friends of mine, that have nice businesses, they can't borrow money or get any money because the banks won't let them borrow because of the rules and regulations and dodd/frank. >> donald trump on friday gave his friends on wall street a big fat gift and it's not even their birthday. he signed an executive order that lays the groundwork to eliminate some of the safeguards the dodd/frank bill placed on wall street following the 2008 economic meltdown. safeguards designed to prevent another catastrophe. he also moved to block is the so-called fiduciary rule which requires retirement investment advisers to work in the best interest of their clients rather than maximize their own fees. the administration has called that rule, quote, a complete mess. joining me is david kay johnson, pulitzer prize winning journalist and author of "the making of donald trump." donald trump promised to drain the swamp.

apparently he's going to drain it into the bank accounts of every single wall street banker because he has now eliminated the rule that says that investment managers who manage your grandma's retirement account have to act in grandma's best interest. now they can rake in the fees and cheat her essentially. isn't that what he just did? >> well, he's taken the first step to doing exactly that. this is known as a fiduciary rule and let me explain that big word. it means that whoever is managing your retirement money has to put your interest first, not theirs. it's designed to stop these many, many cases we've had where the broker drains all your money through high fees on investments that are not suitable and the broker gets rich and you end up with nothing. and donald trump's argument and his memorandum to the labor department saying i want you to go this direction is i don't want to take away your freedom of choice. what donald trump, a man who has often cheated his workers and vendors and investors is saying is, you really should live in a

world where other people are free to cheat you out of your hard-earned money. that's what i want. your freedom of choice to be cheated. >> you know, it's sort of a piece with the same idea they want you to be free to buy a junk health care plan that doesn't actually cover you when you're sick, but that's your freedom to choose a junk health care plan so it is in keeping with his and paul ryan's philosophy. on this issue of the banks, donald trump -- and it's sort of rich given all his debt and whether or not he's paid back the banks he's loaned from -- he said his friends can't borrow money. he's sort of indicated part of the reason he's doing these policies to help his friends. have you ever heard an american president say that particular thing? >> no, but let me tell you why i don't believe that donald trump is operating from any set of facts. it's not because of his past tales with imaginary employees and imaginary lovers. it's that i just looked up the official data on commercial bank loans since 2010, and what does it show? going this way. right through the roof.

loans are spreading like crazy so if his friends are not able to borrow money maybe it's because, like donald, they have publicly announced to their banker, this is a quote from donald, i borrowed money from banks knowing i would haven't to pay it back. y that atour local bank, joy. >> and i mean the other issue we seem to have gotten away from but i don't think we should let it go is we still don't know to whom donald trump is in debt, how much debt he's in, so we don't know to what extent he's making policy through these executive orders that directly impacts himself, his family, his kids, and his company. >> well, we do know a few things, but we certainly don't have a full picture. we know basically american banks will not loan money to donald unless it's incredibly well secured, the equivalent of having a 10% mortgage on your house and 90% as your equity, we know that he is deeply in debt to the communist chinese government in beijing, which owns the banks there, and we know that he's gotten tens of millions, in fact, hundreds of millions of dollars from the russian oligarchs whose fortunes

all depend on the continued good graces of vladimir putin. this rule he's talking about, the dodd/frank rule, has nothing to do with loaning money. it has to do with financial drich tifs and other instruments in which the banks on wall street want to take your money and risk it in derivatives and other financial instruments, not traditional banking. that's what the rules are focused on. his argument that banks can't make loans, dodd/frank doesn't have anything to prevent you from making loans like that. if there are bankers that think otherwise, i invite them to e-mail me and show me where that's the case. i don't think they can make that case. >> let's quickly play what donald trump had to say about the wall street banks he's with his pals and friends back on the campaign trail. >> wall street sweet backing hillary. guys i know very well from new york, they're pouring money into her campaign.

they're doing it for a reason. i'm not going to let wall street get away with murder. wall street has caused tremendous problems for us. we're going to tax wall street pip sat there watching ad after ad after -- false ad all paid for by your friends on wall street is that gave so much money because they know you're going to protect them. >> at one point, david, will donald trump supporters realize all that rhetoric, that you just heard, they were had? >> one hopes that at some point people realize that, yeah, we put in office what is now the most successful con artist in the history of the world. he's conned his way into the white house by claiming to be the champion of working people. many people who voted for him weren't listening when he said wages are too high. they weren't listening when he now is saying i want wall street to be free to cheat you out of all your money with no serious repercussions because of something called the arbitration

system. at some point, yes, people should begin to recognize this but i don't think we're anywhere close to that. >> let's not forget donald trump won the votes of seniors who are now going to be the targets of his friends who cannot put their own interests ahead of grandma's. going to work out fine. david, thank you very much. appreciate you. >> thank you. after the break, the battle continues between donald trump and the media and one of trump's biggest nemeses sl shutting down at an event. are of. home, car, life insurance obviously, ohhh... but with added touches you can't get everywhere else, like claim free rewards... or safe driving bonus checks. oh yes.... even a claim satisfaction guaranteeeeeeeeeee! in means protection plus unique extras only from an expert allstate agent. it's good to be in, good hands.

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>> it is an honor to be here at my last and perhaps the last white house correspondents dinner. >> you know you miss him. good morning and welcome back to "a.m. joy. "president obama -- come back -- at last year's white house correspondents dinner by dropping the mike literally for the last time. this year jaws might drop and don't count on a swanky afterparty either. "vanity fair" has dropped out of co-sponsoring its usual star-studded soiree this april. editor and longtime trump nemesis graden carter says he plans to go fishing in connecticut in connecticut instead. ouch. the new yorker which typically hosts its own cocktail reception the night before the big event has also cancelled this year. there is a party that might attract a crowd. comedienne samantha bee is set to host a trump roast on the same night as the dinner.

wow. why these changes? it might have something to do this with this. >> as you know, i have a running war with the media. they are among the most dishonest human beings on earth. a big portion of the media, the dishonesty, the total deceit and deception makes them certainly partially the opposition party. >> loot of the media is actually the opposition party. they're so biased and really it's a disgrace. >> joining me is a senior fellow at media matters, a former anchor of abc weekend world night, a scholar of authoritarian states, and a contributor from "time" magazine. you have this the fact there have been a lot of unkind magazine covers an stories about donald trump covering hi conflicts of interest or the muslim ban or the things that he's done. a little montage. some of those are pretty harsh. that "der spiegel" cover is probably the most harsh of all.

globally unkind covers. donald trump hates that, for sure. they really hate that, the trump administration. but the idea that he hates the media is something i want to ask you about. this is his friend howard stern on whose radio show he's appeared many times and this is howard stern talk about what donald trump actually this about the elites in the media. >> he wants to be liked. he wants to be loved. he wants people to cheer for him. >> do you think this could take him down? >> yeah. i don't think it's going to be a healthy experience. all these people who are -- and by the way, now on this anti-hollywood kick, he loves hollywood. >> anti-perez, anti-everything. >> first of all, he loves the press. he lives for it. he loves people in hollywood. he only wants to hobnob with them. >> which is true? does he hate or love the media? >> he love/hates. he's obsessed with this. his tweets are based on what he watches on television.

he wallos in this kind of defining insecurity. if you're going to sit in the oval office, that's not a good trait to have. he can't take the criticism. the white house correspondents dinner, i kind of get the feeling like tights frog in the boiling water. the press doesn't quite realize what's going on here, and they should not be having this kind of tony dinner. this is an administration that pushes back on the press. this is an administration that's trying to destroy the fourth estate. and so trump does it because he's injured. he's insulted. and so he lashes out. but it's not just the attacks on the press. virtually every initiative that he's rolled out has been racked in lies to thes pre, the travel ban, the yemen raid, the inauguration size of the crowd. so this is a very dangerous combination. and the press needs to realize that we are in radical times. it's not time to kind of sit down and have some jokes at correspondents dinner. >> carol, isn't that in a sense

this president may be breaking what is a tradition that maybe should be broken, this idea of sort of sitting down and gig wlg the president of the united states and sort of canoodling with his team? is it maybe time for that to end anyway and is this particular administration, one that particularly the press should not be trying to have cozy relations with because of what eric just said, they're not being particularly honest with us often? >> i have been to many of the white house correspondents dinners, and one of the things people started talking about is should we really be having these dinners with the politicians and with members of the hollywood elite? is that really a message we want to send to the public that we're all cozy, cozy, cozy? so i think they've been rethinking this even before trump, that it had become more hollywood stars rather than journalists trying to give awards for good journalistic

work. so i don't think this is a really good time. i don't know if they can change the tenor of the dinner and make it something else. but that's what we seem to be doing since this president took office, is things are changing. they're becoming something else. >> absolutely. and, jay, you know, there is the potential, the likelihood probably that a white house correspondents dinner, should trump attend and take the ribbing that you have to also take being at that dinner as the president, that the backlash from the white house against the press could be ratcheted up by any sense he's being ridiculed or shunned by the marked for identification elite and by the press. so it's sort of a vicious cycle, potentially, right? is that what a lot of d.c. journalists are anticipating? >> well, i'd be surprised if he shows up for the white house correspondents dinner this year. people say actually -- people forget that he took a huge ribbing in one of the last -- one the sort of i think in the last five years, 2011, barack

obama openly made fun of donald trump and his hair and his presence from the stage, and he was in the audience. a lot of trump aides have said that that was actually one of the impetuses for him to run for president because he was so angry and humiliated by the president of the united states mocking him on stage like that. it does become kind of a vicious cycle. as i've been a longtime member of the white house correspondents association, we have no control over the median. there's always a comedian that comes in. sometimes they can be increed pli insulting. it's happened before where they've really angered the white house. wanda sykes really upset the bush white house when she went after dick cheney and george w. bush in the last dinner of that administration. so it can actually be a dinner with a lot of pit first of alls and a lot of potential problems that create bigger rifts with an administration and with the press. like everyone else has said,

this is the kind of dinner every year in washington we sit here and say is this the right thing to be having? it's grown from being this one-night event to an entire week's worth of parties in washington where everybody has to have a big party with hollywood celebrities an that's not the kind of thing you want to have in this day and age. >> absolutely. i was at one where baltimore was happening and we were completely unaware of it. you're sort of insulated in the wrong place at the wrong time. sarah, on a darker sort of side of this, this is an administration that is mimicking some of the sort of worst traits of sort of autocracies too. is there a special peril in this ongoing war as donald trump sees it -- i don't think the media sees it as a war, so it's not two ways, but this war donald trump believes he's in with the press? >> yeah. i mean, the media should see this as a war when the president declares you their enemy, declare you the opposition party and when they have that executive power and are issuing a bunch of unconstitutional

executive orders. you should take that very seriously and not necessarily take your first amendment rights for granted. that said i think that press should continue doing their job regardless of what kind of fear this administration thinks it's going to instill. i think the obligation of the press is to serve the public and they should put that first. i think they should have been putting that first all along instead of playing a part and propping up this dictator that we've got going on. you know, and i'm glad to see the press taking a more aggressive stance, you know, doing more investigative pieces, acting less like a bunch of botoxed people propping up this guy. that's the way we need to keep going. we need to accept things have definitively changed. he is in power. this is not a campaign. this is real life. and make look at some of these attorney country, see how their journalists have been treated and how they have responded and ke our cues for them as to how to proceed from there. >> let's look at ts on a serious level, one of the defining sort of moments this

week in, you know, what was a blatant falsehood that came out of the administration but that could have real consequences for muslim-americans who are already being sort of targeted and looked at in a way that isn't very good. let's listen to kellyanne conway talking about this fictional bowling green massacre when she spoke with chris matthews. >> i bet there was very little coverage. i bet it's brand-new information to people that president obama had a six-month ban on the iraqi refugee program after two raukis came to this country, were radicaliz radicalized twr mastermind behind the bowling massacre. >> there was no -- >> it didn't get covered. >> she did correct it with a tweet where she meant to say bowling green terrorist and claimed also in that statement it didn't get covered, but in her tweet she linked to abc coverage of the arrest of these two iraqi citizens in bowling green. >> massacre isn't a word that kind of tumbles out of your mouth by mistake, i don't think. look, this is alternative facts

meets alternate universe. they are now ak live the creating their own parallel universe where there are refugee massacres of americans and the so-called liberal immediate kra covered it up. this is kind of the fantasy they live in. as you say, this is incredibly dangerous. if you're an iraqi american or muslim-american, you wake um and live in bowling green and you're told your community was part of a massacre? luckily this got debunked incredibly quickly but look at what happened in quebec last week. that was a homegrown anti-immigrant radical white male who decided he was going to take action into his own hands and kill muslims. this is insanely dangerous. again, this goes back to the white house correspondents dinner. we are not living in traditional times. we are at war with the press and they are trying to create their own violent reality. >> carol, this presents a real challenge for the media because it's one thing to ridicule things like the bowling green massacre, but they have real-world potentially deadly

kwe consequences. >> i just want to say that i'm sure i'm speaking for many journalists when i say i am offended by this administration's characterization of the american press corps, that we are scumf the earth, dishest, deceitful, and he keeps saying it, and his people keep saying it. and then the people are going to believe it. i remember during the campaign lying ted, crooked hillary. after a while you keep hearing that and you believe it. i spent 40 years trying to tell the people, the american people, the truth about something that's happened that they should know about. we have a sense of ethics. we don't want to lie about anybody. why are they saying we're lying about them? and the opposition party. i don't know what's going to happen, but i know we journalists -- i teach journalism at emerson college, and we're trying to come up with ways of how we can get around

this president's opposition to do the job we're intended to do for the american people. >> carole, to stay with you for a moment, because you bring up an important point, which is now there is this siloing of information where people who support donald trump, a, may not ever here some of these stories of things that are happening in his administration because their facebook feeds are filtering out, filtering in only information that's positive to him, they may be listening to media that's only positive to him. if a journalist such as yourself or jay or sarah were to say this happened, they simply dismiss it as fake news. it's dismissed out of hand because it's disfavor to believe the administration. how can the media cut through when off portion of the american public that simply won't believe anything that's said if it's negative to the administration? >> i think we've lost a couple of generations. the only hope is the young people coming along to try to

explain to them again the importance of knowing civics and knowing that their three branches of government and the fourth one is the fourth estate, it's the press. we are codified in the u.s. constitution. the only profession that is talked about, freedom of the press and the founding fathers wanted that. and the president talks about how constitutional he is and how much he wants the constitution followed. well, that's one of them, is freedom of the press. and freedom from being called these horrible names and being -- shedding doubt on our profession and what we do. >> absolutely. well, i think well said and a good note to end on. thank you so much. next up, the real-life consequences of donald trump's travel ban. stay with us. that college experience that i had.

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the fight over donald trump's travel ban is literally a matter of life and death for one little adorable girl. 4-month-old fatem action will now be allowed to enter the u.s. for a surgery for a heart condition. mario cuomo intervened to obtain a waiver. she and her family can sfwroovl the country and thanks to a federal judge's restraining order, so can thousands of others who were waiting in limbo, visas reinstated by the state department. among the crowds protesting that order last weekend, new york democratic representatived ed d adriano, thank you for join us. let's talk about the travel ban. donald trump reacted to the

judge, judge james robart, staying the travel ban, tweeting he is a so-called judge. let me let you listen to his vice president mike pence reacting to criticism of that comment on abc's "this week." >> is it right for the president to say so-called judge? doesn't that undermine the separation of powers and the constitution written right next door? >> well, i don't think it does. i think the american people are very accustomed to this president speaking his mind and speaking very straight with them. >> do you think the american people are going to be able to get accustomed to that, a president speaking that way? >> this is not the first time he speaks about a judge. remember how he spoke about a judge in indiana of mexican descent, that he called him a foreigner. so he has this persistent behavior to criticize judges on the bench, the judicial branch, the independent judicial branch. >> right. and this is really upsetting to many of us. now, this is a conservative judge that he's talking about

right now. >> a george w. bush appointee. >> correct. so this is a member of the bench that was appointed by a republican of conservative values and he's calling him ill equipped, calling him not prepared to do his job. this is more of the same of donald trump's intolerant, you know, behavior and words. >> another clip from vice president mike pence responding to the question of the religious test in this order because of course it carves out religious minorities coming from these muslim countries. take a listen. >> i think the president was reflecting on the fact that christians who have faced persecution across the wider middle east have not been treated -- >> so it's relsous. >> it's not a religious test. people have been straining to i'd -- identified seven countries irrespective of the religious composition of those countries, seven countries have been compromised by terrorism. >> irrespective of the relsous

composition of those countries. all muslim. >> when i went to jfk airport, all families i met with were muslim families. a u.s. soldier's mother was stop and detained and questioned. another young man a member of the armed forces, his aunt was stopped and detained and questioned. this is not the america you and i love. this is directly a religious litmus test and it's not including christians or protestant. it's purely muslims, and this is trying to equate the muslim faith into terrorism. this is horrible. this is not what america is about. >> where are your republican colleagues? because there was a time when even mike pence used to say he was very much opposed to banning muslims and to a religionous test when people like paul ryan, speaker of the house, claimed to be opposed to religious tests and muslim bans. where are your friend on the

other side of the aisle? >> frankly they're afraid of donald trump's tweets. >> they're afraid of tweets? they're members of congress. >> they're members of congress but they're not stepping up. they're dragging their feet, timid about criticizing trump. we see anytime they make an independen decision, donald trump goes ahead and tweets and they fall right in line. they're in lock step with him. they can say whatever they want but they're in lock step with donald trump. >> you're saying essentially the entire republican caucus, including the speaker of the house, are being controlled by donald trump's twitter feed? >> at this point, yes, the republican majority in the house of representatives is pretty much, you know, responding to what his needs are. and i think that, you know, we'll see as we move forward, when we get really deep into the budget and other substantive stuff whether they'll remain in lock step. but for now they seem pretty much his groupies. >> absolutely. let's turn to another big irk shoe, health care, the affordable care act, which donald trump and also all of the republican leadership if not every republican has said they want to repeal.

let's take a look at what happened when your colleague, republican congressman, thomas mcclintock, had a town hall in his california district. and this i believe was yesterday. this was him leaving under police escort. there was a huge crowd that gathered to protest him. this is happening at town halls that republicans are holding all over the country. do you feel that the momentum has swung against the idea of repealing obamacare? >> you will see more of that, joy, because obamacare not only provides services and benefits for people with pre-existing conditions, not only does it provide ability for you to keep your child under the same umbrella, but it also funds medicaid and medicare. it funds things like mental health services, drug prevention services that have not been funded in the past. so americans will be hurt by this. when the rubber meets the road, when they feel what kind of benefits have been cut from them, you will see more of that across the united states.

>> is that why they have had frank lutz come in and change their wording from repeal to repair? >> repeal and repair. yet they have not come forward with a replacement plan. in fact, they're looking to kick the can down the road. they don't want to make a decision right now because they understand that they will see more of that across the united states. >> are democrats organized for the midterms in order to try to take back one of these houses of congress? >> we're beginning to organize. i'm feeling we're gelling together, coming together. i think we're going to have a good opportunity to take the majority and we can bring some balance and sanity back to the united states. >> i have to put you on the spot. do you have a favorite for dnc chair? >> not yet. two good ones. tomas bettis is a good one and so is my colleague ellison. >> let us know when you figure it out. >> i will do ta. >> thank you very much, congressman. coming up, "saturday night live," yes, is back! >> it's not a ban. >> i'm sorry? >> it's not a ban. the travel ban is not a ban which makes it not a ban. >> you just called it a ban. >> because i'm using your words!

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"saturday night live" has returned with alec baldwin reprising his role as donald trump and you may or may not recognize a certain chief strategist by his side. >> let's call mexico. i figured out a smart diplomatic way to get them to pay for this wall. >> hola. president nieto. >> guy the guy who's going to pay for the wall says what? no, guy who's going to pay for the wall says what? >> que? >> you have to say what? >> you said what. you're going to pay for the wall. >> no. loser. you're a bad hombre. here come our tanks. prepare to go to war. >> all right. and by far the hit of the night

was the hilarious melissa mccarthy as white house press secretary sean spicer. >> settle down! settle down! settle down! before we begin, i know that myself and the press have gotten off to a rocky start. all right, all right, all right! in the sense when i say rocky start i mean like "rocky" the movie because i came out here to punch you in the face and also i don't talk so good. i'd like to begin tonight by apologizing on behalf of you to me. for how you have treated me these last two weeks. and that apology is not accepted! >> up next, it's super bowl sunday. finally a break from politics. never. stay with us.

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my main note motivation is, you know, representing my family, representing my team, representing my teammates, representing our fans. you know, that gets me motivated every week, so i don't want to go do great for them and, you know, i want to try and go out and win every time we take the field. >> d trump call you? i'm joking. don't answer that question. >> not you. >> i'm not -- >> welcome back to "a.m. joy." super bowl sunday is finally here. tonight the new england patriots square off against the atlanta falcons. the patriots' star quarterback was asked at least four times monday night about his friendship with the president but managed to stick to his no-trump policy. this year politics have bled into the country's biggest sports stage more than ever before. the patriots owner, the coach, and the quarterback are all chummy with trump. and that holy trinity of bronson

arroyo mance -- of bro mances h up to the game. and houston, a high refugee population, residents came out to protest the ban. and the fact the patriots will be facing the hometown team of civil rights icon john lewis. joining me sports editor of the nation and of sorts magazine and an editor of the early lead and from houston, william rhoden, columnist for espn the undefeated. i have to go to you first because you're in houston. what's the vibe there? is there a preponderance of patriots fans or falcons fans and is the politics already bleeding in among the fans? >> reporter: well, yeah. first of all, in terms of -- in this compound, it's about football and atlanta. atlanta fans are kind of getting there. it's sort of their fist time at this dance and i think they're

getting over the disbelief that they're actually here. so they're kind of getting into it a little bit. the politics, somebody was just coming by chanting -- oh, what are they chanting? they were chanting atl, atl. within this compound the politics are the politics of atlanta winning. and, you know, clearly sort of a victory for the patriots, a victory for trump, and, you know, victory for atlanta kind of seeing sort of there are a lot of black fans here, more black fans fans in atlanta than you normally see around the nfl. so for lack of a better thing, it's a victory for black americans. >> it's pretty stark. it's donald trump versus john lewis. not that complicated politics. there was this weird thing that happened that i think is emblematic of wa a lot of people hate about the way the nfl operates. let's first look at tom brady's comments on opening night and he e sechblly said i'm not talking about politics at all.

that's according to nfl.com. however, despite the fact he was asked about four times about trump, no trump, no goodell at the super bowl, at least according to the informal inform transcripts, hundreds of reporters peppered members of the team with all manner of questions including what they thought of trump. when the nfl posted transcripts of interviews with members of the patriots and falcons there were almost no references of trump. they scrubbed the transcripts of any references to trump. >> that's the nfl, doris kearns goodwin -- roger goodell, and how they operate and that's how the president trump wants to run the presidency. kismet there although roger goodell and donald trump don't necessary hi like each other. patriots fans will say time and again, they'll tweet this today, tom brady hasn't said he supports donald trump. he just says they're friends. bill belichick hasn't said anything about politics. stop trying to turn them into donald trump people, whatever. the fact of the matter is donald trump mentions tom brady in speeches more than he mentions his own wife. that is a fact.

i've done the count. and he does so because he has divided the world into winners and losers. that's hi view of the world. and nobody is more of a winner than a celebrity. and tom brady is the only legit "a" list slib ti who returns donald trump's phone calls. so he wields tom brady for his own legitimacy. and tom brady, that is now a political responsibility on him. am i allowing myself to be a prop of donald trump and what we see up to this point is that tom brady has no problem with bei a prop for donald trump and that is a problem if you happen to a victim of donald trump's policies. >> tom brady also put himself in this situation. in september of 2015 he posed very publicly in front of a locker with a make america great again hat in there. he can't have expected nobody would notice that and he can't play this i don't want politics part of my game when he injected himself into this conversation. >> that is the question because he seems to have wanted the cache among trump supporters of posing with that hat but not the

responsibility, right. he's not stepping up in sort of a colin kaepernick sense and saying this is my politics, light it or hate me if you want, he seems to want to have the politics but not get the blowback. >> he had the hat in his locker but he always tries to frame it as fit's a golf thing. you know, i just want to play golf with it. we're just golfing buddies. i have friends with whom i don't agree. i will say this to be, you know, a little fair here to brady, he doesn't really say anything about anything, you now? >> true. right. >> he only gives you cliches. of course he's not going to weigh in on trump. he doesn't weigh in on anything. >> yeah. >> it's just game. i want to do my job. i love my teammates. so i'm not really surprised he hasn't said anything about trump and hasn't been pinned down. >> so i want to turn, you know, to the other big issue of course that the super bowl bringing to the fore, this muslim ban, the travel ban that donald trump initiated that the courts have now staid. but it is an issue that's going to be sort of an undercurrent in the super bowl.

let's play this anheuser-busch super bowl ad. this was made way before president trump's travel ban and before anyone thought donald trump was going to become president, but it has sort of become symbolic of the resistance to trump and t underlying sort of threat to the idea ofmeri that muslim ban represents. let's play this. adolphus bush's arrival in the united states from germany in 1857 depicted in this ad. >> you don't look like you're from around here. >> welcome to america. >> you're not wanted here! >> beer for my friend, please. >> thank you. >> and, you know, david, this has become sort of the undercurrent that's even run into the super bowl part because in houston you called houston the heart city for a reason in your column. this is actually a thing. >> yeah. a heart city was a nickname houston received after it took

in people from hurricane katrina and new orleans. but a lot of people don't realize this. if houston was a country it would take in the fifth most number of refugees on earth and it takes in more refugees than any city in the united states. anybody who thinks houston is just barbecue and records don't know what houston is in 2017. it's a place that has people from all over the world. and that's why you can have a place like george bush intercontinental airport, which is what it's called, have hundreds of people prosting last weekend and hundreds more outside beating the win dose and chanting for the end of the refugee ban. that's houston in the heart of texas. it's a sign of how this country has changed, how it's rebelled against trump, and i have to say that makes it absolutely the appropriate super bowl city when you have these new england patriots against these atlanta falcons. >> broader than that, texas of course also home to a large mexican-american population. it would be the most economically devastated were there to be, you know, a trade war with mexico. it does billions of dollars with trade with mexico, more than any other state.

it is sort of interesting this is the place where america's clash of the titans take place. >> absolutely. i have to say it's not new that the super bowl would be used for political demonstrations. last year i was in san francisco and, you know, a lot of the local issues of the time, the homeless population, the rents rising, all of that, those were very much protested as well. what's different about this, this is part of a national movement. it's not localized. it's specific to houston but also to -- so broad. >> so bill, donald trump has of course commented about the super bowl and of course and himself. let's take a listen o friday to what he had to say. >> tom brady, great guy. great guy. great guy. great friend of mine. great, great champion. unbelievable winner. he called today and he said,

donald, i support you. you're my friend. and i voted for you. and they handed me a letter and it was from coach belichick. [ cheers ] and he wrote me the most beautiful letter. >> okay. that was donald trump in one of his rallies, his manchester, new hampshire, rally, the night before the election. recruiting tom brady and belichick into his team. let's listen to him on friday talk about the super bowl. >> one of the things that i heard this morning in watching the news was that amazingly it's never happened before that politics has become a much bigger subject than the super bowl. this is usually super bowl territory and now they're saying the politics is more interesting to people. >> bill, you know, trump says he's bigger than the super bowl. >> let me just say something,

joy. in about five hours i'm going to go to the press box and i'll probably be one of about six african-american reporters in a press box that holds about 300 people. you know, the immigration i'm interested in is immigration of more african-americans in the sports industry. i'm sympathetic to the immigration, but i'm really -- the lane i drive in is getting more young african-americans into ts business. you come around here basically outside of the atlanta falcons and the back players on the new england patriots, the black presence here is basically nonexiste nonexistent. so the immigration i'm interested in and the lane i drive in is to get more, you know, black sports editors here, more black producers, more black people who are responsible for pressing the yes button. i'm into immigration but the immigration i'm really interested in is basically desegregating this industry. >> important point. you had a comment? i'm sorry. >> no. just that i totally hear what

bill is saying there. and ayles add as we're talking about the patriots that they have players like martellus bennett, devin mccourty, who raised their fists and bennett said he would not go to the white house if the patriots win. it's not entirely, pardon the expression, black and white. >> in that respect it is. i think we can't really get this twisted. it is kind of black and white. it really is. >> sidney, do you expect there to be any kind of a protest meaning either a national anthem protest or the question of what lady gaga might do during halftime? what is expected? >> well, she's been very coy about this and said only she will conduct a show of inclusivity. that's always been her act. she has spoken out in the past. she was a supporter for hillary clinton. i don't imagine that she will be very political. she has only a very small window in which to perform.

i don't really expect a lot. i think it will be more subtle than anything. >> very quickly, because first of all you cannot get more political than beyonce bringing the black panthers out onto the football field. do you expect anything like that this year? obviously lady gaga is not going to do ta but even anthem protests, anything like that? >> i think we'll see something for the anthem. definitely for lady gaga it will be a wardrobe choice of some kind. that's usually how she demonstrates. i think fans are struggling to reconcile how they can continue to root for patriots and it will be interesting to see what happens tonight. >> when you're playing john rue lew wis' team, i don't know what you're going do in that situation. dave will be back. thank you very much. coming up at noon, alex witt takes a look at donald trump's media consumption and whether it's getting in the way of them running the country. first, next week's headlines today.

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all right. here comes the part of the show where my guests predict what the headlines will be and back with me are dave, eric and carol. carol, i'm coming to you first. what's going to be the big headline next week? >> it's going to be law and order because i think the week is going to be consumed with sorting out this mess about the immigration ban. this is supposed to be the president's honeymoon, the first two weeks of his presidency, but it's turned into a honey mess. so i think there's going to be a lot of courtroom drama and it

will be interesting. of course, he may find an opportunity to talk about "the apprentice" again. >> or tweet about arnold schwarzenegger. donald trump has named in the 40s and the lowest-ever recorded approval for president, as was supposed to be his honeymoon phase and typically they go down from here unless there's a war and we have to watch what they're doing in the middle east because it is scary. let ate come over to you,erec. what do you think? >> kind of in the same vein in terms of it's supposed to be a honeymoon. we'll see more and more people in the white house to distance themselves from trump already. we saw ivanka and jared kushner, the story came out in "the new york times," they saved the lgbt -- >> don't you think that floated by. >> they made themselves seem like heros and not d.c. publicists. they're nervous about their brand. she got kicked out of being major department stores and

saying i am way too close to my father, and we've seen other pieces, you know, in terms of this internal chaos and who is left out of meetings and who was to blame. this is remarkable for two weeks in we're seeing an internal unraveling and people saying that wasn't me. usually you want to grab the credit in the first two weeks. the amount and intensity -- >> the state department has become very, in terms of just a quick point. they said trump spoke with these diplomats and here's what they said and a couple of days later we found out that's not what we said. >> it's amazing, it helps get away from this idea of access journalism, because what we want is access to leakers and not officials. >> this will be the subject of your show next saturday and sunday, i believe. thousands upon thousands of people will be coming out into the streets to defend planned parenthood. this all started at the march for life, the anti-choice march that took place in d.c. they

said they were going to come out this saturday to defund planned parenthood. the move to defund has turned into a movement to defend. if you look beneath the surface and online, people are organizing themselves around the country and thousands of people from d.c. outside the heritage foundation this saturday and people defending clinics because guess what? planned parenthood is profoundly more popular in this country than you've had protests over devos and protests coming up over planned parenthood. the scientists are going to march. you'll have a march for science. at some point do you think protest fatigue starts to set in among the public or protesters. >> dr. king said you have to give the people victories and that's the greatest antidote to protest fatigue. so let's see what happens with devos and see what happens with the muslim ban and see what happens with planned parenthood. if we start thinking that we can make him blink and we're the only power with the judiciary

that seems to do that right now then people will keep hitting the streets and we're going to become the true opposition party for the people. >> the people and the court, that's all that stands between the institutions fighting this president, carol simpson, thank you guys very much for being here. that is our show for today and be sure to join us next week when a.m. joy will come to you live from california. arnold schwarzenegger country. coming up next, how a donald trump supreme court -- sorry, donald, how they will react with the travel ban in court. alex witt has more at the top of the hour. car? i am! you got it. just say show me millions of used cars for sale at the all new carfax.com. but, i don' want one that's had a bunch of owners just say, show me cars with only one owner pretty cool it's perfect. that's the power of carfax® find the cars you want, avoid the ones you don't plus you get a free carfax® report with every listing start your used car search at carfax.com

justice is spelled b-o-x. say hello to a powerful tool that gives you options to fit your budget. ♪ oh, i'm tied to this chair! ♪ dun-dun-daaaa! i don't know that an insurance-themed comic book is what we're looking for. did i mention he can save people nearly $600? you haven't even heard my catchphrase. i'm all done with this guy. box him up. that's terrible. hi there, everyone. i'm alex witt in new york at msnbc world headquarters. it is high noon in the east, 9:00 a.m. out west and we have critical developments on this, day 16 of the trump administration. the trump travel ban in limbo at this hour. the white house fighting to get it reinstated, but whoos side is the law on? the president or the travelers?