monday when they meet with president trump. >> that's a wrap for us on this friday. i'm alex wit alongsideshannon? shannon? glenn? this is isn't a tv program. >> follow up. >> you don't get to just yell out questions. we are going to raise our hands like big boys and girls. >> sit down, glenn! just a show of hands. who here hates glenn? everybody? 1-2-3. infinity? let the record show that everyone raised their hands because everybody hates glenn! >> poor glenn! >>. >> c'mon! no poor glenn! have you read glenn's tweets? he's a "the new york times" guy and in the white house briefing room and saying wine served with reporting or something like that. >> i was just kidding.

we handle himself. >> he must be enjoying it. it is quite funny. >> i think he is enjoying it too much being in the middle of it. you can just report from there and you don't have to give commentary. that's what we get paid to do and you get paid to report. >> he does a pretty good job. >> i think he does a good report. but his twitter feed, i think we have all discussed our concern of twitter feeds of reporters who are working to be snarky. >> never seen that on my twitter page, god knows. >> sunshine and light in my feed every day. >> by the way, that is one minute and 18 seconds more than we expected to talk about glenn this morning. >> he's our lead story. >> he is on "snl." we will be talking about him the next three hours. buckle up, my friends. i just got back from the hospital. donny deutsche. >> how is he doing? >> he overdid it. >> at? >> he just overdid it yesterday.

>> too much? >> i think it's a heart problem. unbelievable. >> very glad i wasn't on set. >> he sings on set and tries to become a sympathetic figure and then he -- >> you behafeved? >> no, i did not. we do this thing. he says it actually helps him get dates in the hamptons. he really overdid it. as you said, inot off-season in the hamptons so he had to work a little harder. >> it's slow in the winter so he had to work harder. >> guys! >> it's donny. we go back and forth. then you break character and then laugh. he refused to break character. >> he didn't get to the last moment? >> he was very method until we got to commercial break and then he started laughing. i'm going to get so many dates. >> he also has child actors he pushes around strollers and all kinds of tactic. >> they say he hires child actors to go to central park so

women will come up to him. and he'll be the sensitive father. >> sick, isn't it? >> how does this get to the hospital? >> yeah. >> huh? >> you started i just came from the hospital. >> it's a nurse's thing. >> it's a nurse thing. >> he's doing well. he overdoes it sometimes. >> you mean he is doing well with the nurses? >> let me just say this. hgh really can tear your body apart. >> you don't too little. you want to get swollen but not too much. >> his arms. he is a 78-year-old man. i'm joking. >> we will cut all out and post it. >> there is no post here! >> that's right. no post. >> there's no post here. that was a minute and a half more talking about donny deutsche. >> that is two and a half minutes through the program. >> how many people can tell mika is off this morning? >> when people ask how do you get through three hours?

three hours is a long time. the answer is a minute and a half on glenn thrush and then three and a half minutes on donny deutsche. then three hours has gone by. >> isn't it crazy since trump has gotten into the white house? threerssn't enough, actually. there is so much to talk about. >> some days you think it's normal or quiet and at about 12:00 it blows up. >> it's been more normal and quiet the past five days. >> it has been relatively normal three days. >> relatively is the operative word. >> then we did have yesterday, secretary kelly and the president contradicting each other and steve bannon at cpac. >> the first couple of days you would have white house staffers saying things and the whole world would catch on fire. here we are a month later and you have general, no, actually, no mass deportations.

also no military operations. we are just talking about precision. it's precise and everybody calms down. >> last week, it was general mattis and vice president pence in europe. this is mexico yesterday with tillerson and kelly. in europe general mattis said we are takie ining a role in iraq. >> i guess people get used to listening the calm voices of general kelly and mike pence. >> i think we in the press and foreign leaders look at it and say is this a pattern? as peter baker brought up yesterday on the ow, ihink it was pete. peter said not such a bad deal. you have a president saying all of these things. we are getting out of nato, getting out of nato. then his people go to europe and say we are not getting out of nato but you guys need to by your 2% and they leave and everybody saying, yeah, we will pay our 2%.

the question is, we will have a better grasp of this six months from now is this a good cop bad cop renoutine on the national station? if so, he with not pick mcmasters or tillerson or mattis. he does not want disruption in foreign policy. >> yesterday, when he was talking about it, it sounded like he wanted whatever it was, deconstruction everywhere. he did mention national security issues as well. >> as we said before, let's see steve bannon walk into mcmaster and tell him what to do. that does not end well for steve bannon. >> i think one of the questions is going to be places in national security the administration has to speak in one voice, especially in crises.

you can't have parallel foreign policies. if there is a crisis who is speaking? the president or the defense secretary? you have time to clean up a mess, it's easy. >> or nsc in the white house? >> that's right. >> in time of crisis, it's the president. >> we will talk more about steve bannon's performance at cpac yesterday. a white house official asked fbi to pour cold water on stories that trump campaign advisers were in touch with russian advisers during the election. cnn reported that they refused to bow to that effort. it is reported that reince priebus made the request of deputy director andrew mccain but the question after the bureau told the administration it believes "the new york times" describing those contacts were not accurate. joe, i understand you have new reporting? >> let's build on that aittle bit. two sources. one in the white house and intel

community tell us at "morning joe" that while over at the white house on other business deputy director mccain asked priebus if he could set five minutes at the end of the meeting to discuss another topic. p priebus said yes. mccain said the u.s. report on contacts with russian was overblown and not supported by any evidence the fbi had. priebus asked mccain in the meeting if they could clear it out and get the information out. mccain said think about it and calm him. later that afternoon, mccain called priebus and said even though it was bad information, the fbi didn't want to go into the record because they didn't want to get into the business. i think this is very wise of calling balls and strikes on reporting. fbi director had a follow-up call with priebus and the two had a similar discussion. priebus asked if it's accurate for him to cite fbi sources knocking down the story. comey said yes and that is when

reince went on the news shows on sunday on fox saying the news was bogus. the reporting what cnn was saying and what we are hearing this morning not really that different. >> i guess it's fairly the white house is going to try, right? i'm not that surprised that priebus would go to the fbi and say, listen, this is getting us into a whole lot of trouble, this story. if you don't think the story is accurate, can you help us clarify it? perhaps you have more credibility. >> what depends. >> i was going to say -- going to do it but doesn't surprise me that -- >> if the fbi is there on other business, is this reporting suggest and if the fbi says, hey, can we talk to you, that's one thing. which that is what this report suggests. >> yes. >> if you have somebody doing

what the clinton administration did in 1993 and george stephanopoulos said we need you to write this press release we are putting out late today that crosses the line. based on these reports, the fbi was there for other reasons. still there is a quizzical look in your eye. >> look. i think that there is longstanding practice and guidelines and not -- maybe not legislation to this effect but there is an ongoing criminal investigation of any kind that the white house should not be talking to the fbi about it and the fbi should be talking to the white house about it. the difference between these reports is who initiated the conversation. it seems to me that there will be questions raised about this one way or another that if you think -- if you went to the obama administration and suggested if dennis mcdonough or

rahm emanuel are were having discussions and even the president himself that would be a huge scandal if rahm emanuel called the fbi and said just -- we need you to talk to the press about what you guys are finding in your investigation. >> again, that is the fact pattern. the same exact pattern that happened in 1993 in the travel gate dustup. >> it went the other way. the call came from the fbi. >> it wasn't even a call. >> it was -- >> right. >> they were in white house meeting. here is the question. was it improper for mccain. >> yes. >> -- to go to reince and curry a favor going, hey, listen. "the new york times" report was b.s.? >> my point is i think it is considered standard practice that the fbi and white house and especially if the fbi is investigating people that are close to the white house or involved with the president's

campaign, especially in that instance, but in any instance, there shouldn't be discussions about ongoing investigation. so the question -- >> i totally agree. >> the question is who initiated the conversation? whether a phone call or in this case in person session. previous reporting that priebus raised it with the fbi in which case the burden -- the inappropriate behavior would be on the part of the chief of staff. if the fbi was raising it to priebus these questions should now be directed to the fbi. this kind of conversation should not behaening. >> by the way,willie, agree. it shouldn't happen. i guess under bush, it expanded out who people could talk to. >> and then restricted. >> i guess my question is why would anybody at the white house be allowed to talk to the fbi? o or vice versa if they are in the middle of an staeginvestigation? this directly relates to the

white house. there has to be a chinese wall here. >> the cnn talks about the meeting on the sideline but takes it a step further and saying reince priebus later called the office of comey himself and asked him to talk to reporter on the background to put cold water on the story. that is calling the director and asking him to put his hand on the scale of the story. >> that was initiated in the white house it sounded like. >> took place later. >> right. >> right. >> so -- so you had the meeting in the white house. you had mccain coming up. you had reince saying if that is the case can you guys get the facts out there? mccakab said let me that i abou that. comey said the same thing that mccabe said. >> with comey? >> yes. it was the same confidence with

mccabe saying it's bad information. can you get the information out there and tell them to which comey said we are in the business of calling balls and strikes here. if we did that with this report that is how we would be doing it the whole thing. sort of the fbi's attitude. >> the chief of staff of the white house shouldn't be calling the fbi and ask him to meddle in reports. >> it's not surprising -- here is the deal. if somebody comes in and tells me this story people are suggesting could lead to your becht impeachment is a bunch of b.s. >> how can you help me? >> if i'm sitting there you're telling me it's b.s. you going to clean that up since they are sticking it around your neck that you're investigating something and people from your agency -- i'm just saying what i

would do in congress. your agency has leaked that i've done something -- >> you don't need to shout. you can do it calmly. >> i would be shouting in this office. you're telling me you're sitting there after your people are leaking to "the new york times" that i've done something illegal and now you're saying, oh, i'm sorry, we can't clean it up? i say you need to clean your shop up and probably start by getting the right information out there. the people that were lying about me -- that's what i would do. but it's different being a congressman. i just go through that exercise and say you can understand why somebody would be sitting there going, okay, well, you guys have screwed our life -- >> especially -- gravity of the story. >> yeah. >> the facts here matter a lot and a lot of reporting. >> gosh. >> on the next 24 hours. the reality is that in past administrations, you have here a serious multiprong investigation over the most politically sensitive thing currently affecting this white house over the question of russia, right? i think there is going to be --

as we get clarity about it who called whom, who said what to whom and what circumstances. in any event i think this will increase the pressure among many democrats and others who are going to say all of this just makes it more essential we have an independent prosecutor looking at this because no way this administration can investigate itself on this issue. >> which republicans have no interest in giving. >> clearly. >> just to be clear. i was explaining that little routine there. again, why they may feel the way they may feel and why somebody may have done what they may have done, but there has to be such a massive chinese wall between the white house and the fbi on this, because you're exactly right. it is completely -- it is the issue right now that they are going to be investigating for sometime. >> not be talking to the fbi about this. should not be happening.

shouldn't be happening. >> and conversely. >> conversely, the fbi should not be talking to em. >> if this reporting is correct and it was mccabe who started this. you know i will give them good news, dah, dah, dah, we have sort of had a rough start. wasn't mccabe's wife that ran in virginia? he was part of one of the hillary stories in the past. i think temporary mcauliffe may have raised some money. i got in trouble again! i named a guy named david johnson a couple of weeks and said he is a bigot. it was craig livingstone! >> you throw stuff against the wall and some of it sticks. >> so i need to be careful. mccabe, i don't know. hey, let's clean that up! i take that back! no. i thought mccabe was involved in the hillary thing. >> better do some research at the break.

>> all of this gunk. the bottom line it's a mess at the fbi and i think they need to keep their noses clean like the white house. i'm with you. >> there you go. >> let's talk about glenn a little more. >> cpac, yesterday, steve bannon and reince priebus deny reports of tension and blame the media for negative reports and calling the press the opposition party and fascinating look into steve bannon's world view. next week "morning joe" will have special coverage of president trump's first address to congress. we will be live on capitol hill tuesday and wednesday mornings starting at 6:00. you're watching "morning joe." we will be right back. ♪ (music plays throughout) ♪ announcer: get on your feet for the nastiest bull in the state of texas. ♪

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this morning president trump will speak at the conservative political action congress and the first president to address

cpac during his first year in office. yesterday all eyes were on an unlikely pair. the joint pap appearance of senior counselor to the president steve bannon and chief of staff reince priebus. bannon summed up his administration deconstruction. >> when you look at the lines of work. i break it out in three buckets. the first is national security and sovereignty. the third broadly line of work what is deconstruction of the administrative state. if you look at these cabinet appoia appointees they were selected. if they can't get it passed they put it in an's and that is all deconstructed. there is a new political order that is being formed out of this and it's still being formed, but if you look at the wide degree of opinions in this room whether you're a populace or a libertarian or an academic

nationalist, we have wide and sometimes diversion opinions but i think the center core of what we believe we are a nation with an economy and not an economy in a global marketplace with open borders but a nation with a culture and a -- and a reason for being. and i think that is what unites us. >> joe, that was a fascinating look. we don't get to hear from steve bannon firsthand very often in his world view and a world view that has been adopted by donald trump and really steve bannon waiting all these years for a vessel as he called trump a blunt instrument to use to impose his world view. >> a lot of things about the trump administration and the people around him that are not conservative. they are not conservatives. but that was a conservative speech. and he sounded an awful lot like theresa may talking about economic nationalism saying we are a nation with an economy and not an economy that happens to be a nation reminds me of theresa may when she was

speaking saying that if you're a citizen of the world, you're a citizen of nowhere. something along those lines. and as far deconstruction goes, it sounds an awful lot like what we said in 1994 and i will -- all i will say about the power of the state is i got elected by screaming about the dangers of a $4 trillion national debt. >> 4 seems quaint. >> i would love 4. it is 20 now and headed to 30. you would need about 30 people thinking exactly like steve bannon to simply stop the deficit from being over $300 billion for the next 20 years. probably they probably like him at cpac and people who wanted a smaller, more restrained, state like him probably as well. it's the cpac message. >> in some ways it's not totally the conservative message.

economic nationalism suggests less trade, more tariffs, potentially. that's not a particularly conservative message. internationalism actually goes back in the conservative economic theory. >> there is a split in the party. speaking of '94. half of us when -- first thing newt wanted to do was he wanted to do the mexican bailout which wasn't a bailout of mexico but a bailout of goldman sachs who had invested a lot in mexico and needed to be rescued. that was one of our first economic fights. and i think there are a lot of republicans like me and like all of those that came in '94 free trade, that is great but we are going to ballot that altar. what impact is it having on everybody across the country? there has always been that strain underneath in the house.

certainly paul ryan doesn't share that opinion and most of the leadership doesn't but there is always sort of in that strain conservativism, i think the first time it's ever reached the other side of pennsylvania avenue on the republican side. fascinating. >> it's interesting how protectionism has shifted something being the unions and left supported to now being the mantra o a certain group within the conservative and right movement. it's gone out of fashion. >> willie -- >> you can see why, you can see why it's been part of the more conservative theory. i wonder how does that fit with the chaos theory? you go in and every single department is blow the place up is effectively what he is saying. we want a deconstruction of the state and change everything and

a chaos theory of government. >> if the entire administration and all of the republicans on the hill shared his view, then you might see that. but we have, as donald trump is learning, we have a very complicated system and you've got checks from the courts, checks from the press, checks from congress, checks from mitch mcconnell's senate. yet don't try to move too fast because the senate will always slow you down. >> kasie hunt was inside the room and she is our nbc news capitol hill correspondent and she was at cpac there yesterday. you could hear when steve bannon spoke, echoes of all the speeches donald trump had made on the campaign trail the last year and a half and fatalking a the forgotten man. >> it was fascinating to watch these two men are really embodiments of the half you were talking about. steve bannon on stage next to

reap ins pri reince priebus. he opened saying thank you for invite he me this year. we have gotten a lot of chest beating no one expected us to win, but look, we did. it put priebus in a bit of an uncomfortable position. you could see in the room. i was down in front with the audience kind of watching the two of them to see how they reacted and applause for both of them but some people in the room sat and watched and listen to bannon. didn't stand up, didn't clap. you could hear priebus making kind aftof a pitch to those peo in the room. take a listen to what priebus had to say about that. >> president trump brought together the party and the conservative movement and i've got to tell you, if the party and the conservative movement are together, similar to steve and i, it can't be stopped.

>> you can see that he is kind of pleading with a lot of those people to say, hey, give donald trump a chance. and the other thing that priebus focused on a lot was the supreme court pick, of course. but bannon, as you guys have pointed out, took a distinctly different posture and you could get a feel from him of where the most combative version of president trump is coming from. take a look. >> if you think they are going to give you your country back without a fight, you're sadly mistaken. every day it is going to be a fight and that is what i'm proudest about donald trump. all of the opportunities he had to waiver off this and all of the people have come to him and said you got to moderate. every day he tells reince and i i admitted this to the american people and promised this when i ran and i'm going to deliver on this. >> my question from that was kind of, hey, is it president trump doing that or is steve bannon making sure to be in president trump's ear every time somebody comes up and say think about this idea or try that or work with congress here and bannon is very clearly

singularly focused. i think, look. there was a lot of tension beyond this as well. there was tension over richard spencer, the white nationalist who showed up and held impromptu press conference and cpac threw him out and wanted him to be gone so i think still ungrappling on between these two wings. >> kasie hunt, thanks so much. to hear steve bannon talk about the world view but also about when when they say we read about chaos and media and all the media want to talk about. we have our heads down in here and not change who we said we were going to be in the campaign. all of the things you see donald trump doing raising hell in the press is all of the stuff we said we were going to do and he will keep his head down and do on it. if you listen to bannon they are completely undeterred about chaos in their white house. >> that is because they are in the middle of a lot of the chaos. >> right. >> i don't think there iany doubt that early on especially, it was steve miller and bannon that were in the middle of the

chaos, doing runs around the president, around the staff and getting the president to sign an executive order. they are still having to clean up a month later. but, apparently, everything i've heard, john, there is systems are starting to get in place and some people in the white house figured out that sometimes credit is not the first thing that you want. so now they are trying to get by on more things. there is at least a process is starting to take shape whether you like the policies or not. >> look. by conventional standards it took a little longer than it has in other cases. i think still a lot of tension. even with just those two guys you saw there. the reality is they are a picture. reince priebus and steve bannon about contrasting approach to the world. their ideology is different and their sensibility is different and there will always be that essential i think going forward

even though i don't doubt on some level they get along fine. i think that is kind irrelevant, right? >> you know what's interesting? >> it's relevant but not -- >> what's interesting is that those two, and jared kushner are all completely different but all seem to work together very well. and none of them leak about the others. you can't get any of those three people to leak from the others. if you read a story that is really -- i don't mean -- this sounds ugly but it's just not. it is the truth. i am reporting. if you read a really ugly story about reince priebus or an ugly story about shooean, chances it came from kellyanne. those three, willie, do not seem to leak. >> that certainly the impression they were trying to give yesterday.

a. >> look at. look at the body language. see? he is patting him. and he is saying don't touch me. >> i think he was trying to pat ba but the hand w gone by then. >> is that it? he won't shooing him away? >> i'll say to your point, joe. i think one of the things really you look yesterday there was this show that we saw and you see bannon saying, he's all for -- we are in to fight the war every day for the deconstruction of the administrative state. one of the fascinating news i saw yesterday john boehner coming out and say there is not a repeal and replace of obamacare, right? you think about what would be the main target? if you were wanting to deconstruct the administrative state is repeal obamacare. that was something donald trump said he was going to do on day one in office. we are now more than a month in

and there has been no vote to repeal obamacare and there is a reason for that which is that as you pointed out there is the house, the senate and what is going on in the country there is a lot of pressure to maintain a rather large part of the administrative state. >> exactly. we got to go to break. i made a pie chart and up all night doing it while you were talking. here is a pie chart. this is all social security, medicare, defense and the mandatory stuff that nobody wants to touch. >> donald trump included. >> donald trump has said, not only -- in defense, not only does he not want to touch this, he want to grow it. actually what you're going to have is this, actually, is now going to be -- >> that is the deconstruction part. >> i'm sed serious. right here, this is going to make up and i can write upside down. this is going to make about 12% of this administrative state that they are going to, quote, deconstruct.

thanks a lot. it's a side issue and they are not touching entitlements and not let them go bankrupt. they are going to let them go bankrupt and expand the military and talking about the deconstruction of the state they are talking about a small sliver of this pie which has just gotten smaller because defense spending and donald trump talking about wanting big new beautiful shinier new weapons is going to squeeze out 10% to 12% and immigration agents. that is a tease. >> coming up, what a nuclear arms race fall under the category of a rule in disarray? richard haass wrote the boo on it and he talks about th coming up. ♪ why do so many businesses rely on the u.s. postal service?

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trump's relationship with the press could still use some work so that during the campaign trump staff will try to keep him calm by showing him pro trump news coverage. his current staff is trying to do the same thing but tough to find anything positive. check out what she thoed hthey this week. >> donald trump is remarkable and handsome. >> might have been edited a little bit. >> yeah. >> so the president wants to enhance the american nuclear arsenal. "morning joe" is coming back

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speaking about his desire to add to the country's nuclear arsenal telling reuters that the u.s. has, quote, fallen behind on nuclear weapon capacity. >> it would be wonderful, a dream would be no country would have nukes but if country are going to have nukes, we are going to be at the top of the pack. >> in december president-elect trump cold mika let it be an arms race. we will outmatch them at every pass and outlast them all. joining us is richa haass the author of the book "a world i disarray american foreign policy and crisis changing the way we

think about outdoor grilling." >> a wild best seller. we haven't thought about the nukes since 1971. the soviet union goes away and we are much more concerned about grilling. do we have to worry about nukes again? >> the short answer is not a lot. we have more than adequate nuclear weapons. the last place we want to invest other defense dollars. >> where is this coming from? >> i don't have the answer to that. a small group of people worried about nuclear modernization and we should do a bit. the previous administration -- >> we heard putin has invested a lot in this and putin's arsenal is bigger than donald's nuclear arsenal. >> henry kissinger said what is in god's same is superiority? we got enough and you have an agreement that runs until 2026. >> there is any strategic advantage in investing in

nuclear weapons? >> other than modernizing our arsen arsenals. >> why would we do that? because some things get old. >> are you saying some are saying the quality is not adequate? where he is getting this from? mcmaster say to him, you know, we have sort of gotten lazy when it came to nukes? >> in my experience people in uniform are worried about the adequacy. number of ships, number of planes, whether we have enough equipment for our army. training. all of the manpower issues is where defense dollars needs to go. no one virtually has wanted dollars to go into nuclear weapons. you don't fight wars with these forces. these are the things on paper. we got a framework, given a new start agreement. it goes until 2021 or 2026 as a

five-year extension option and brings down the number of warheads on both sides and brings down the number of bombers and missiles on both sides. allows you to keep certain numbers in reserve. you need to do a bit of modernization on war heads to make sure things are still adequate. but this is not an area we want to have for -- >> i think -- i don't mean interrupt you but it rais an question about the way the president speaks. is this the president speaking in slogans, we want our nuclear arsenal to be bigger than everybody else because america needs to be bigger and better than everybody else? it's a bit like yesterday when he talked about a military operation and then down goes general kelly saying absolutely not a military operation. you can see why if you're an ally or adversary of the united states you're confused at the moment. what does the president mean? was the president making a sophisticated case as richard haass just outlined for the mead -- need to modernize and upgrade nuclear stockpiles? or was he rifting?

>> this administration has a review of its nuclear weapons posture and there is not an administration. not the officials at the pentagon or the state department or the nsc. >> i'm not sure when there is an administration it will make much difference. donald trump will speak the way donald trump speaks. >> that is another issue. i'm saying it's highly unlime a comprehensive careful review. i don't think this grew out of that. there is a case for amping up defense spending but defense -- so you have to fight defense spending versus everything else. entitlements and discretionary and more. do you want defense dollars to go here as opposed to other directions? i would say most definitely not. >> richard, we got a lot more to talk to you in a minute. stick tight. ahead, former u.s. ambassador ambassador martin indyk. president trump set to take the stage at cpac after his chief

strategist said everything in the white house is, quote, going according to plan. jeremy peters will join us with his reporting. "morning joe" is back in a moment. looking for clear answers for your retirement plan? start here. at fidelity, we let you know where you stand, so when it comes to your retirement plan, you'll always be absolutely...clear. it's your retirement. know where you stand. you'll always be absolutely...clear. this is the story of green mountain coffee and fair trade, told in the time it takes to brew your cup. let's take a trip to la plata, colombia. this is boris calvo. that's pepe. boris doesn't just grow good coffee, boris grows mind-blowing coffee. and because we pay him a fair price, he improves his farm to grow even better coffee and invest in his community, which makes his neighbor, gustavo, happy. that's blanca. yup, pepe and blanca got together. things happen. all this for a smoother tasting cup of coffee. green mountain coffee. packed with goodness.

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the anger on the left. i've never seen anything like that. they are now opposing everything. democrats in the senate are filibustering absolutely everything. their base, there is a attack term for their base. >> moscow. >> i was going a different direction which was bat crap crazy. right now, democratic senators are more scared of their base than they are of the voters. >> that was senator ted cruz yesterday at cpac. the last time he spoke there, he was an odds on favorite to be one of the last candidates standing as his peararty's nomi. in a few hours, it's donald

trump's speech. we will look ahead at his speech when "morning joe" comes back. did you know 90% of couples disagree on

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what are you reading, willie? >> what it says. >> getting caught up on my tabloids. >> anything good in there? >> mayor de blasio with an interview. >> barbecue thing is everywhere. >> i know. grilling bill. >> wow. dramatic cover there. >> dramatic. welcome back to "morning joe." it's friday, the 24th of february. mika has the morning off. with us is co-author of "game change" john heilemann and katty kay and richard haass from the council on foreign relations. katty, you were noticed and other members of the press

noticed that things are a bit calmer coming out of the white house, in part, because there are fewer tweets. >> yes. i tweeted on wednesday that it had been three relatively normal days. you had the sweden flap over the weekend which, again, was precipitated by something donald trump said at a speech and tweeted about. >> did you notice, even on the sweden cleanup tweet, instead of sad, bad, mad, glad, he just gave the facts. >> we did have a sad this week. i was glad to see that. >> which was a change i saw this report on fox news. >> yeah. >> and it was actually just a statement of fact. >> it was not a statement -- it was a statement of what he had seen on fox. >> but yeah. there seems to be a correlation between him tweeting less and a certain amount of normalities.

some people pointed at the rescinding of the protections for the lgbt kids in schools and the harsher executive order when it comes to immigrants and you may not like those things, but you can't deny that the tone of the white house is -- the heat has been lowered around the chaos factor. >> there seems to be less chaos on the surface but, richard, that doesn't mean that a lot of the battles aren't still going on underneath. i sense a huge battle between bannon and miller and that faction versus priebus and some of the more institutionalized republicans? >> it's between radicals or radical conservatives and traditional conservatives. and i think that battle is now, in some ways, institutional in

this administration. as long as those people are in place not a battle that is resolved but a battle that continues and you'll see it on issue after issue and see it between bannon and mcmaster when it comes to national security that this administration in some ways institutionalized he's ideological struggles about the role in the united states and the world. i don't think a day in saens where there is thebattleship" missouri" is something that happens. >> we have periods of calm. maybe it's changed. then he'll explode with a tweet the next ten minutes. >> you're predicting. >> i think he just lost -- >> we haven't seen what mcmaster is doing in terms of shaking up. story of steve bannon setting up a alternative within the white house his own group. how is mcmaster going to change that and how he is going to look at that chart and shake things up? that is interesting to see and three days. >> we saw some of that also over

the weekend where you had the vice president going around europe trying to reassure about the united states support for the european project for the eu. you know the stories about bannon trashing the eu and saying it needs to be disrupted, it's counterproductive force and that is exactly the thing. american officials can't reassure if it's not clear who is speaking athorough tatively for the government and what the government line is. >> i was about to say how strange was it that you would not have your main players moving foreign policy forward? but we go back to the obama administration. and how dysfunctional. you had the nsc director cut out. you had kerry cut out. these big decisions were barack obama and ben rhodes, and occasionally, i heard dennis mcdon docdonough would have a s

>> you can't sustain a successful foreign policy that way. it's going to happen -- >> when did that start? when was for the first time we saw that tendency to the white house and president and a couple of people basically deciding -- >> to the exclusion of the cabinet. >> under bush, too? >> you are some under w and i think much stronger under obama. the size of the nsc is ten times than bush 41 and gives you some sense of the drift in personnel. what is exacerbating in this administration is tillerson don't have a staff yet. they simply don't have staff. by the time he chooses them they still have to get their clearances and go through senate confirmati confirmation. this could take another six months before tillerson and company are up-to-speed. >> there was cleanup yesterday. members of the trump administration had to walk back the president's description of his effort to deport undocument immigrants after calling the measures, quote, a military operation.

here first is the president during a meeting at the white house with manufacturing ceos followed by homeland security secretary john kelly and white house press secretary sean spicer. >> we are getting really bad dudes out of this country and at a rate that nobody has ever seen before. and they are the bad ones. and it's a military operation because what has been allowed to come into our country, when you see gang violence tt you've read about like never before and all of the things, much of that is people here illegally. >> no. repeat no use of military force in immigration operations. none. yes, we will approach this operation systematically and in an organized way, in a results-oriented way. and in an operational way and a human dignity way. this is the way great militaries do business. the united states, mexico and

many others. >> the president was using that as an adjective. it's happening with precision. in a manner in which it's being done very, very clearly. i think we have made it clear in the past and secretary kelly reiterated what kind of operation this was but the president is clearly describing the manner in which this was being done. so just to be clear on his use of that phrase. i think the way it's being done by all accounts is being done with very much a high degree of precision and in a flawless manner in terms of making sure the orders are carried out and it's done in a extremely and efficient manner. >> sean spicer used it as an adjective, he said. c'mon! that is a poor guy. seriously? thrown -- he literally thrown into media-fed fire pen every day. yeah. alex said he is playing mad lib. can you imagine?

he is walking out, by the way, today this is what you're going to tell. it's not -- go! >> he is saying what the president meant was that we will have military precision the way they remove undocumented immigrants who have committed violent crimes. >> thank you for that. >> he said it was being used as an adjective. he is not only is giving us information from the white house, but -- >> maybe trump's translator in chief? full-time job. >> also very educational. we can find out what adjectives are. i still haven't figured out what a gerand is. >> charles krauthammer wrote a new piece in "the washington post" about what he calls trump and the madman theory. quote.

>> kissinger actually would tell anybody that would listen in '73 and '74 that nixon was -- was detached from reality at times and could be a dangerous man. and he did use it to his advantage in negotiations. charles krauthammer, do you buy

his theory here? >> on not even close. the downside is much greater. first of all, with friends it doesn't work at all. friends get up every morning and put all of their reliance in you and their security in their hands and can't live with uncertainty. if they don't think we are dependable they will go other ways. tactically it work but selective on when you do it and don't pick on china on the one china policy. they care about it more than you do and you have to back down and you have to choreograph this with precision and care. this administration is not in a position to choreograph this sort of stuff with great precision. >> what is the theory? >> the tremendous unpredictablity. the americans night do crazy things and we can't risk that. therefore, we are not doing anything that is going to -- >> great dizzy dean coach, great pitcher for the cardinals. it always help if the batter thinks you're a little crazy. good for baseball but not good

for our beautiful head of the pack nuke arsenal. >> john heilemann was talking about the idea the problem is what happens when there is a crisis, right? say there is a crisis over north korea and you're playing the madman theory. i don't see them saying i think i'll play nice because donald trump is a little unpredictable. >> look. i think this is the point -- i agree with richard. donald trump has said throughout, he said throughout his campaign and he continues to sort of seem to believe that unpredictability is a vir tou v virtue. it it seems to me in terms of international economics and in terms of national and security issues that reliability, predictability, knowing what is going to happen when you're the world's one remaining super power and you have alliances all over the world that rely on you in terms what have you're going to do next that reliability and predictability are vir to virt .

the members of the president's cabinet saying on a regular basis pay no attention to the president of the united states. just doesn't seem to me the right way to proceed with global affairs. >> richard, john just said, rightly, and you said allies wake up every morning wanting to be able to depend on the united states of america to be there. let's look at it from the other side which is we need them. there is going to be become a point where we will need germany in some matter, we will need australia. maybe it's south china seas. we will -- >> even mexico. >> even mexico. we found even after 9/11, we needed iran to help us out with what we were doing in afghanistan. unfortunately, when i hear people in the white house talking about how this is like

some one-sided relationship, no. we actually need nato as much as nato needs us. we actually need australia as much as they need us. you can go through the list. maybe not every day. maybe they need us more than we need them. but there always comes a point in time where you're like, oh, wow. i better call merkel because we really need this right now. and maybe merkel picks up the phone and says, okay, i'll care of it now, maybe she doesn't. >> you're absolute right. whether it's dealing with terrorism or the spread of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles or stamping out an infectious disease or dealing with climate change. we need partners. they are force multipliers. these relationships go two-way. not an act of philanthropy on

our part. george h.w. bush had great relationships. when he had to get countries to come with us in 1991 there were a lot of leaders that had to make decisions that were not popular in their home country. but they did it for bush. if you're merkel right now and donald trump asks you to do something that the united states really needs but your people may not like it, let me get back to you, i'll think about that for a little bit, mr. president. that's what he doesn't understand. >> you have to bank goodwill in these relationships. >> bank goodwill. >> bank goodwill. you can't pick a fight on every subset of the relationship. you have to think about the relationship as a whole because days will come you will need them and it's not just the other way around. >> even the trip to mexico. mexico is now the secondiggest recipient of american exports. american exports natural gas to mexico more than any other country in the world they help

us with intelligence, they help us actually with keeping other latin american immigrants out of the country. you destroy that relationship too much, that goodwill evaporates in the country. they can't do it. you put nieto in an impossible position. >> we will make sure the next president of mexico is a populous named pepo mexicans will come back to the united states. >> american exports will suffer. >> donald trump have to explain why illegal immigration exploded on his watch. they have better play nice in mexico. >> richard haass, thank you, sir. still ahead on "morning joe," we go live to nbc's peter alexander at cpac. the president will address the conference later this morning. joining us is two-time ambassador to israeli martin

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president trump brought together the party and the conservative movement and i got to tell you if the partynd t conservative movement are together, similato steve and i, it can't be stopped. >> that is white house chief of staff reince priebus speaking yesterday at cpac in a joint appearance with steve bannon. joining us from the site of the conference is nbc news national correspondent peter alexander. on capitol hill, "the new york times" reporter jeremy peter. peter, start with you. the president will be there speaking today. what do we expect to hear from him? >> what is notable about the fact one year ago, president trump didn't show up to this event and went to a campaign rally instead and a threatened

walk-out by people in this room. this time is back not just as president but the headliner. i spoke it a senior white house official his remarks will be a thank you and reaffirmation and focus on the eyes in the white house he has had over the course of the first 30 or so days as president in implementing a conservative agenda. one note he'll make is the fact that he nominated neil gorsuch for the supreme court. it is a full couple of days here at cpac. i was browsing through the brochure. to give you a feel of what is taking place here, they have names like prosecutors gone wild. when did world war iii begin and threats of arm and fabulous the new normal. some of the conversations that will be taking place here at the conservative political action conference over the course of the next 48 or so hours. yesterday was notable because you got to witness how team trump is in effect taken over

this event, even kellyanne conway, the senior counselor to the president said it's not cpac but to be tea pack preferring to president trump himself. here is a moment steve bannon, the chief strategist to the president came out side-by-side with a man who is rumored to be his rival reince priebus. here is more on ban none. >> is that the opposition party? >> yes. >> if you look at, you know,he opposition party and how they portrayed the campaign, how ty portrayed the transition and now they are portraying the administration it's always wrong. if you remember, you know, the campaign was the most chaotic, you know, by the media's description no kay chaotic and no idea what they were doing and then they were crying and weeping that night! >> joo in simple words the course of that conversation bannon said among his priorities his goal is, quote, the

deconstruction of the administrative state. so we wait to see what the president has to say a short time from now. >> peter, my friend, we here at "morning joe" think you are armed and fabulous, my friend. have fun there today, buddy. >> cpac doing an entire panel on biceps. >> touchy stuff. >> jeremy has got today's front page piece in "the new york times" about steve bannon's appearance yesterday at cpac. we have been talking all morning about it. pretty extraordinary, jeremy, because we don't get to hear firsthand from steve bannon very often. >> no, you don't. compelling yesterday is one of the most elusive figures in washington and one of the most mysterious men in the world right now and addresses a audience and reassure them that everything is fine in the white house. they are proceeding as planned with the deconstructionf the administrative state. don't listen to the cry babies

in the media who say everything is falling apart. but what is funny is while bannon says that about what he calls the corporatist globalist media he directs those same criticisms at the establishment of the republican party, which he may actually hate more than he does the left and the corporatist globalist media. let's not forget. trump was never supposed to be on that stage and neither was steve bannon. bannon was essentially banished from cpac a few years ago and had to start his own rival conference down the street that he called the uninvited and trump was almost denied a speaking slot a few years ago because the cpac organizers thought he was a fraud that only wanted to sell his ties and sqas casinos. the conservative movement as far as steve bannon feels is ready to be reshaped with his nationalist populace brand of

conservati conservatism. >> "the washington post" a column this populace wing in cpac was loud but we could always beat it back and go on and win. he said now that wing of the party is the center of the party. they are running the show. >> the thing is everybody takes all of the results from the last election and i think overgeneralizes. i think the conservative movement and cpac is what the conservative movement and cpac has always been but they are going to have the president and all of trump's people there. same thing with the republican party. just underneath the surface. . that is what steve bannon needs to be concerned about. the problem was there weren't any establishment figures that could stand up and defend the republican party. and what it had done. i always say george w. bush, get george w. bush on a stage with donald trump and let's see how that goes. and richard's thought should do pretty well against george w. bush. he was a tough guy to debate but

no type a like republican candidates that could stand up to trump. >> do you think it was a question of the candidates or that trump's message which is so powerful that whoever, even george w. bush this year this time in our country it was trump's time? >> i think it was -- i think it's everybody's reaction to donald trump. nobody punches back in an effective way. and so he plays by his own set of rules and everybody else they get their white gloves up to their mouth and so shocked. nobody punches him back in the face. >> by the way, the press basically has done the same thing as the republicans which is, oh, i'm so shocked, it's so horrible! then they overplay their hand instead of just barreling in and just, you know, doing their job day in and day out. i don't think people know how to react to this guy. i think they are just starting to learn how to react.

>> in some ways the people who are there at cpac, while they may have longstanding ideological difference with donald trump must be thrilled legitimately what he has given then. the most conservative cabinet in 50 years and neil gorsuch and deregulation is starting to happen and he has given them a lot more than they might have actually anticipated he would give them. >> as everybody is saying he's not a conservative. he's not a conservative, but you look at the results. gorsuch. you look at the most conservative domestic cabinet since herbert hoover and looking and talking about less regulation and leg taxss taxes. a grand slam for conservatives sitting at cpac. >> in a big tent, if you have a big governing majority and big movement, right? you're going to have differences and conflicts and contradictions, right? but when bannon make the list, he made yesterday talked about if you're a libertarian or

conservative or economic nationalist huge difference between those. if you're a limited government conservative you want there to be the actual role back up large government programs. is donald trump committed to that? >> no. >> is that where we are going? >> absolutely not. >> steve bannon and i think donald trump don't care about the expansion. they don't care about social security or medicare. >> they don't care about the debt or on the deficits. >> which republican party is it? one question. on the question of nationalism, is the full throated and four square commitment to nato, that has been a traditional part of republicanism, of international republicanism for 50 years. 40 years, right? steve bannon, i don't think, cares about nato very much and that has huge global implications. is the republican party the party of internationalism and longstanding alliances or is it the party of bannonism? >> on your two issues.

on u you had george w. bush spend money like it was going out of style. he took 155 billion dollar surplus and turned it into a trillion dollar deficit and doubled the national debt. he was a big government republican. on foreign policy, he was a big internationalist, but he was also sort of a unilateralist in that everybody had to follow his view and richard pearl's view. >> a big spreader of american yi ideals around the world and a lot of republicans quite agreed with. >> i just -- i think -- basically what i'm saying i think they will cave to trump. i think we are going to have a 30 trillion dollar national debt and unfortunately people are so excited to be in power. as i found under brush they

don't give a damn. the things they would fight against a democratic president, they suddenly don't give a damn because the republicans are in power. >> i ask the question as you think about going forward, is the republican party and the conservative movement now a party and a movement that is about international institutions and international internationalism, or is it not? >> no. >> a party in trade wars or a party part of or not? i don't know the answer to those questions. >> the answer is if you look at bush's administration, they will cave to their president and whatever the president wants, that defines the party and they will cave because they caved shamelessly and they did not want people like me or tom coburn saying, hey, republicans are actually spending more than democrat. >> i think my question -- >> are you going to ask this a third time? i just answered it! asked and answered! the judge steven miller would say. >> where is trump in this? >> you going to -- aren't you? >> tillerson and mattis and

mcmaster are traditionalists, right? >> right easement they are the people he appointed. he has appointed steve bannon and a cabinet in national security -- looks much more traditional. >> we have to go to break. >> where do we end up? >> again -- >> do we end up with bannonism or mattis and tillersonnism? >> we end up with bannonism and millerism and two will mix and massive debt and nobody will care because we have tax cut and regulatory reform. i think the foreign policy giants he will listen to mattis and mcmaster's way before he listens to steve bannon in the time of crisis. so now you know. >> i got the next three years figured out. thank you for that. >> jeremy peters, what say you? >> i think on the domestic side in terms of spending, bannon is eager to get in and blow a trillion dollars on

infrastructure because that is the key component to making his economic nationalist message work. people have jobs, if people feel like their livelihood is better that gets trump a second term and validates their vision for what trumpism is, whatever that is. >> by the way, that is -- this is how the white house thinks. what jeremy just said is exactly what they are thinking. a lot of distractions and crazy things going on. yes, there is chaos in the white house. they will admit behind the scenes. we are getting all of those systems figured out but at the end of the day we e looking at wisconsin, we are looking at michigan, we are looking at pennsylvania, we are looking at ohio. those people don't care about tweets. they don't care about white house organizations. they care about jobs and, katty, they say inside the white house and i think they are dead right. if we deliver jobs to wisconsin, michigan, pennsylvania, and ohio, they give us the votes. >> let's be clear. the jobs will probably have to come as jeremy is saying from a trillion dollar infrastructure program because he can tinker

around the edges on manufacturing and coal but he is never going to revive those industries in the way of bringing back thousands and thousands of jobs. so it has to be an infrastructure spending bill. that is what he has to go up against republicans on. >> your point is essentially what bannon said yesterday. the stories about chaos in the white house don't matter to the people they are talking about. their agenda is what matters. >> jobs, jobs, jobs. >> jeremy peters, thank you very much. >> thank you. >> the world according to trump is coming up. the first meant on substance and policy have been very, very strong strong. you look at the cabinet appointments. this is an all-star sabt and the most conservative cabinet pef seen in decades. did you know 90% of couples disagree on

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joings us now national security correspondent for "the new york times" david sanger. >> you know what david did for the world?

he gave donald trump the america first slogan. >> how did that turn out? >> we were doing this interview last march with maggie haberman. i said to him at the end of an hour and half of conversation if i had to sum up what i'm hearing here it sounds a lot like america first thing he would say it doesn't sound like lindbergh but he said i kind of like the sound of that. >> it stuck. >> the news and finance anklor at google is bianna golodryaa. >> she gave him the russian american great again. >> the hat. >> in washington steven hadley and ambassador martin indyk and served twice as america's top diplomat to israeli. they contributed to a brookings report laying out a strategy for the future of u.s. national security policy. >> steven, why don't we jump that that immediately. tell us how your report lines up

with the challenges facing this administration over the next four years, and the people that he has put in place to run that foreign policy. >> well, i think, actually, our report shows a blueprint, if you will, a way forward for the trump administration in this sense. what president trump has talked about is america ought to take care of its own interests first. i don't think anybody would disagree that our foreign policy ought to reflect our interests. if you listen to mr. tillerson, they have not rejected the notion there is an international order that the united states to defend. the issue is how do you revise and revitalize that international order? we make some suggestions in our report. president trump has talked about things he want to do more. allies do more and different kind of trade agreements. i think the opportunity here is to figure out how we take this international order that we have maintain for 70 years, how do you revise it, revitalized it, and see if we can get agreement on that and that could be a

basis for a bipartisan foreign policy that would bring congress and the democrats and republicans together and bipartisan foreign policy is a much stronger and sustainable foreign policy. i hope it's in some sense a road map for a dialogue with the administration going forward. >> martin, let me ask you on that note with regard to foreign policy, whether it be in the middle east or russia or what have you, we know the president is inclined to bilaterally agreements as opposed to lateral agreements. using that how will that impact relations? let's stay in the middle east and with israeli. >> well, i think first of all, the critical point that steve makes here is renovation revig ration of that. i think we both disagree with that kind of approach.

as far as the middle east is concerned, there is a need, which we identify in the report and which i think president trump understands and is pursuing is to try to rebuild trust with our traditional allies. the saudis, egyptians, gulf states and israeli, of course. and try to use that as a basis to forrestoring order in that region where there has been in effect a collapse of order. when it comes to the peace process, we don't advocate making this a major priority. donald trump seems to think that that is doable at the moment. we think that that first things first, we need to deal with the multiple crises in the region before making peace between the israelis and palestinians. >> steve, you served as national security adviser to on president bush. i wonder what you think about the choice of general mcmaster as a replacement for general flynn and how that role plays to the president of the united states?

>> i think it's a brilliant choice. i think he is a very successful military officer. he has a reputation for having a sense of history being innovative in what he does. i think he understands the role of the national security adviser, particularly in this administration, will be to run a process in which cabinet secretaries have an opportunity to present their views to the president, that it's not just a white house-run operation and that could be the basis for developing the policies that will be the cornerstone of the foreign policy for this administration but take time. they don't have their people in place and don't have their processes staeble es establishe. i think people need strategic patience here and let them get organized and we will have a better understanding what we are dealing with in terms of this administration. mcmaster is a great choice and i think he'll play the role very

well. >> david sanger is bus and with he has a question. >> martin and steve, one of the things we saw last week is while the president has made statements about -- not sure that our nato commitment should be followed through unless nato countries pay more. he said the same thing about the asian allies. we saw secretary tillerson and secretary mattis all make much more traditional statements. in fact, the things they said on-to-me sounded like when you were national security adviser, steve. i wonder how they walk this line between what you hear in the white house and what we are hearing from the cabinet members. >> well, i think, actually, we have been saying -- that is to say u.s. officials have been saying for a couple decades that the europeans need to do more. what president trump has said and what mattis said was if you don't do more, we will have trouble convincing the american people that we shouldn't do less.

and that put a bit of a point on the stick and ramped up the rhetoric a little bit. i think in that sense, mattis was basically communicating what president trump has been saying and i think this is easily remedied. i think the allies are already doing more and will agree to do more. secondly, i think they will agree to take a look at nato's strategic concept, its basic strategy to make sure it is adapted to the challenges of the 21st century and i think that is the way you bring the trump administration policy into line with what nato allies can and should do in order to strengthen the alliance. >> the new bipartisan brookings report on a strategy for the future of u.s. national security is out today. a fascinating look at where we are. ambassador indyk and stephen hadley, thank you both. >> thank you, guys. >> the president tweeted the following.

david sanger, i feel like saying to the president, one month late, welcome to washington. >> yeah. >> because every president finds out that you get checked, barack obama certainly did, by judicial review, by a free press, the first amendment, and, yes, even leaking from inside and outside your own administration. >> that's right. and he has had to face a couple of types of these. first of all, because of the sku executive orders came out so hurriedly, people in his own administration did not have a chance to see and review them. i think a lot of the leaks we saw, some that "the times" published and many "the post" and others published was a way for the leakers to identify members of his own administration you need to read about this and think about its meaning and that worked because some of those executive orders

got pulled back and some got amended. >> somebody from the dhs letting, i think "the times" know that they actually had tried to correct miller and bannon on the green card exemption and then overruled overnight. that sort of thing did send a message. but donald trump acts like this is the first time this has been happening. the white house under bush was horrified. i mean, obama, obviously, more aggressively went after leakers than anybody. but even under bush, a lot of the bad news bush received early on with the iraq war came from inside his own cia. >> that's right. there can be a destructive nature to leaks and can be an extremely constructive nature to leaks because frequently a way for people on-to-make sure an issue is aired and because it's a leak does not mean it's necessarily damaging. i would argue in the case of the

executive orders some of these leaks actually helped the trump administration get its act together earlier in this first month. >> he seems so focused on leaks from the intelligence agency when we know that there is a lot of leaks that come from his own administration. people a that have been in a room with him sometimes phone calls five people we see the photo have been in the room and yet we know details that only one of those five people would know. so we see this on a repeated basis here. journalists getting calls within somebody from the administration and not just intelligence. >> i said that priebus and bannon and kushner didn't leak about each other. but there's a lot of leaking going on about other things. >> yeah. >> and other people from everybody. >> details of phone calls with heads of state a only a few people would be privy to. >> facial expressions during those phone calls. not what we see in the photo but what is happening inside the room. >> david, you've covered a lot of these administrations and seen some roll out better than others. how unusual and how strange and how different is this really from the trump administration

from barack obama, george w. bush, going back? >> willie, i think it could settle into something more normal. the first month has not been normal. usually, what happens in an administration is they are fairly leak-free the first couple of years because the people who come in around the president are convinced that that president is the best thing ever, th ce through the campaign. then they make their way out and there is a rescue team that comes in to go fix things and they immediately say, well, we are going to make this better. you can't believe what the last folks did. this time, this is all happened in the first month or so. i think, in part, it's the fact that you've got an administration here full of people who have never been in government before and just don't know these levers. >> doesn't this remind you a good bit -- obviously, donald trump is everything a super-sized. but doesn't it remind you a lot of the first few months of the clinton administration that just had one -- they starred with y

gay -- started with gays in the military and that was world war iii and i think two of their justice picks were immediately disqualified. they had travel gate early on. they had stephanopoulos going to the fbi saying write this press release. we forget the first six months and that was so chaotic, i guess until gergen and panetta came in. >> gergen came in and said it reminded him of the set of "home alone." >> i don't remember that! that is devastating! >> that is a little "home alone" going on if you go into the agencies. at the state department these days a secretary sitting up there and doesn't have a deputy yet or any assistant deputies. the structure isn't there yet. now the structure will impose some discipline on this conversation. but, so far, it's not there. so the other day on a subject i was getting ready to write

about, i heard that there was a deputies meeting at the white house and my first question was who showed up? there weren't any deputies. the answer was a bunch of holdovers from the obama administration. >> wow. >> fascinating. david sanger, thanks so much. always good to talk to you. >> thank you for the "home alone" quote. i like that. >> john boehner's prediction about his party's ability to repeal and replace obamacare. he is a lot more candid now that it's not his problem! "morning joe" is coming right back.

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at least two people in chicago were shot last night following the city's deadliest day of the year. 13 people were reported shot in nearly as many separate incidents on chicago's south and west sides on wednesday. seven died of their wounds, including 20-year-old jones, who was nine months pregnant with her first child, an unborn baby

girl who did not survive. last night, president trump tweeted seven people shot and killed yesterday in chicago, what is going on? totally out of control, chicago needs help. he's right. tammy duckworth responded tweeting won't address the violence, how about the root violence like economic justice and gun trafficking. if you are serious about stopping the violence, there's a lot we n do. through wednesday, there have been 379 shooting incidents in chicago this year according to the police department's numbers, up from 365 at this time a year earlier. by the "chicago tribune's" count, 495 have been shot in the city of chicago this year as the crisis continues day by day. still ahead, the cpac stage is set for president trump. did the white house call the fbi or the fbi call the white house?

it's the big question after the report the trump administration tried to get the fbi to cut back on claims they were in contact with russian officials during the campaign. we are back with that story and more in a moment. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ announcer: get on your feet for the nastiest, most terrifying bull in the state of texas. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ (crowd cheers)

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so when it comes to your retirement plan, you'll always be absolutely...clear. it's your retirement. know where you stand. you'll always be absolutely...clear. this is the story of green mountain coffee and fair trade, told in the time it takes to brew your cup. let's take a trip to la plata, colombia. this is boris calvo. that's pepe. boris doesn't just grow good coffee, boris grows mind-blowing coffee. and because we pay him a fair price, he improves his farm to grow even better coffee and invest in his community, which makes his neighbor, gustavo, happy. that's blanca. yup, pepe and blanca got together. things happen. all this for a smoother tasting cup of coffee. green mountain coffee. packed with goodness. is that the opposition? >> yes. >> did you look at the opposition party and how they portrayed the campaign, how they portrayed the transition and now they are portraying the administration.

itis always wrong. if you remember, the campaign was the most chaotic, most disorganized, unprofessional, didn't know what they were doing and they were all crying and weeping that night, on the 8th. >> welcome back to "morning joe." 8:00 a.m. on the east coast, 5:00 a.m. on the east coast. mika had the day off. we have co-author of game cnge and washington anchor for bbc world news america, katty kay. >> we are doing to talk about steve bannon's performance at cpac. they asked the fbi to pour cold water on stories trump campaign advisers were in touch with russian officials during the election. the fbi refused to bow to that pressure. they report it was reince priebus who made the request of andrew mccabe. that came after the bureau told the administration, it believed

"the new york times" report describing the attacks were not accurate. we have new reporting on it. >> two sources, one at the white house and one at the intel community tell us at "morning joe," while at the white house on other business, deputy director mccape asked reince priebus if he could set aside five minutes after the meeting to discuss another topic. priebus said yes. mccabe said "the new york times" report is overblown and not supported by evidence the fbi ever had. priebus asked if they could clear it up and get the information out. mccape had to think about it. later, mccabe called priebus and said even though it is bad information, the fbi didn't want to go into the record because they didn't want to get in the business. i think that's a wise calling balls and strikes on reporting. th fbi director, james comby

had a follow up with priebus. he asked if it would be accurate to cite sources knocking down the story. comey said yes. that is, of course, katty, when reince went on the shows over the weekend, i think it was fox news sunday saying that the information was bogus or however he said it in his wisconsin accent. so, the reporting, what cnn is saying, what i'm hearing this morning, not really that different. it's pretty consistent. >> the white house is going to try, right? i'm not that surprised that priebus would go to the fbi and say, listen, this is getting us in a lot of trouble, this story. if you don't think the story is accurate, can you help us clear it up. perhaps you have more credibility. >> whether the pins went to pins -- >> doesn't surprise me. >> if the fbi is there on other business, is this reporting

suggests, and if the fbi says, hey, can we talk to you, that's one thing. that's what this report suggests. >> yes. >> if you have somebody doing what the clinton administration did in 1993 and george stephanopoulos cowelled the fbi, the head of fbi for the white house and said hey, we need you to write this press release that we are going to put out later today, that crosses a line. based on these reports, the fbi was there for other reasons. still, there's a quizzical look in your eye. >> there's long standing practice and guidelines and maybe not legislation to this effect, but when there's an ongoing criminal investigation of any kind, the white house ou not be talking to the fbi about it and the fbi shouldn't talk t the white house about it. the difference is who initiated the conversation. there will be questions raised

one way or another. if you think, if you went back to the obama administration, if rahm emanuel were having conversations with the fbi while the fbi were investigating people close to the president, people on the president's campaign and potentially, certain circumstances, the president himself, that would be a huge scandal saying hey, just we need you to talk to the press about what you are finding in your investigation. >> again, that is the fact matter. that is the same fact pattern that happened in 1993 in the travelgate dust up. >> he went the other way. the call came -- >> actually, it wasn't even a call. they were at the white house meeting. here is the question. was it improper for mccabe to go to reince going, hey, listen,

"the new york times" report is bs. >> this is my point. considered standard practice the fbi and the white house, especially if the fbi is investigating people close to the white house or involved with the president's campaign, especially that instance, but any instance, there shouldn't be discussion about ongoing investigations. >> i agree. >> who initiated the conversation? whether it was a phone call or in-person session. previous reporting was priebus raised it with the fbi, in which case, the inappropriate behavior is on the chief of staff. if the fbi was raising it to priebus, these questions should be directed to the fbi. this kind of conversation should not be happening. >> by the way, willie, i agree, it shouldn't happen. i guess under bush it expanded out who people could talk to and restricted. i guess my question is, why would anybody at the white house be allowed to talk to the fbi or vice versa if they are in the

middle of an investigation. i can understand saying you are going to see something in the press, but this directly relates to the white house. there has to be a chinese wall here. >> the cnn report talks about the meeting on the sideline saying reince priebus called the office of jim comey and asked him to talk to reporters in the background. that is priebus initiating a phone call directly to the director and asking him to put his hand on the story. >> that is subsequent to what is nic initiated in the white house. >> you had the meeting at the white house and mccabe coming up, reince saying, okay, if that's the case, can you get the facts out there. mccabe said hold on, let me think about that, later decided we don't want to get in the business of balls and strikes, then you have the conversation with comey on the same matter and comey said the same thing mccabe said. >> did you have reporting on the

conversation priebus initiated the comey? >> with comey, yes, it was the same conversation they had with mccabe, which was the fbi saying, yes, it's bad information. well, can you get the information out there and tell him to which comey said we are not in the business of calling balls and strikes here. if we did that with this report -- it was the fbis attitude. >> good for him for refusing. the chief of the white house staff shouldn't call the fbi to ask him to meddle in media reports do we agree? >> it doesn't surprise me that he did it. >> it's not surprising. so, here is the deal. if somebody comes in and tells me, hey, this story that people are suggesting could lead to your impeachment is a bunch of bs, if i were sitting in my seat, i can only put myself in my congressional office, i would say, so you are telling me it is

bs. are you going to clean that up since they are sticking it around your neck that you are investigating something and people from your agency leaked -- i'm just saying what i would do if i'm in congress, your agency leaked that i did something illegal. i would be shouting in this office. you are telling me you are going to sit there after your people are leaking to "the new york times" that i have done something illegal, now you are saying i can't clean up. i would say you need to clean your shop up. you could start by getting the right information out there. the people lying about me -- that's what i would do. but, it's different being a congressman. i'd just go through that exercise and say you can understand how somebody would be sitting there going, okay, you have screwed our life up. >> the gravity of the story. >> the facts matter. there's going to be a lot of reporting on this. the reality is, in past

administrations, if you have a serious multi-prong investigation over the most political thing affecting this white house, over the question of russia. i think there's going to be this, as we get clarity about who called whom, who said what to whom, in any event, this is going to increase the pressure among many democrats and others who are going to say all of this just makes it more essential we have an independent prosecutor looking at this. there's no way this administration can investigate itself on this issue. >> the republicans have no interest. >> clearly. still ahead, steve kornacki joins the political round table plus -- >> this is something the opposition party never caught. if you want to see the trump agenda, it's simple. it was in the speeches. he went around to rallies where the speeches had a lot of content. he's probably the greatest public speaker.

>> steen bannon and reince priebus share the stage. at the event kellyanne conway is calling t-pac. we'll explain if we really, really have to, while we are gagging when "morning joe" returns. don't ever let anyone tell you you can't change. that is what life is. change. it's not some magic trick. it's your will.

your thoughts become your words become your actions become your reality. change is your destiny. now go chase it. i voted for trump. i love my popsy from here to knoxville. popsy had to see a doctor. i was diagnosed with esophageal cancer. a lot of people think that people that are on the affordable care act are gaming the system. it's just people like me.

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you know what? the establishment never saw it coming. the media, elites, insiders, everybody else, the status quo, they dismissed our president in every step of the way. in dismissing him, they also dismissed millions of the hard working men and woman who make this country great. >> this morning president trump will speak at the conference. the first to address cpac during his first year in office. the unlikely pair, steve bannon and chief of staff, reince

priebus. bannon laid out his plan for the administration which he summed up as deconstruction. >> i line it up in three buckets, the first sovereignty, the second is economic nationalism. the third, broadly, line of work is what is deconstruction of the administrative state. if you look at the cabinet appointees, they were selected for a reason, that is the deconstruction. the way the progressive left runs, if they can't get it past, they are going to put in a regulation in an agency. that is all going to be deconstructed. >> there's a political order being formed out of this. it's still being formed. if you look at the opinions in this room, whether you are a pop list, a libertarian, an economic nationalist, we have wide and sometimes divergent opinions. the center core of what we believe, that we are a nation with an economy, not an economy

in a global marketplace with open borders, but a nation with a culture and a reason for being. i think that's what unites us. >> joe, that was a fascinating look. we don't get to hear from steve bannon firsthand very often. his world view and a world view adopted by donald trump. really, steve bannon waiting for a vessel as he called trump a blunt instrument to use to impose his world view. >> there are a lot of things about the trump administration and the people around him that are not conservative. they are not conservatives. that was a conservative speech. he sounded like teresa may when talking economic nationalism saying we have a nation with an economy. it reminds me of teresa may speaking saying that if you are a citizen of the world you are a citizen of nowhere, something along those lines. as far as deconstruction goes, it sounds a lot like what we

said in 1994. all i will say about the power of the state is, i got elected by screaming about the dangers of a $4 trillion national debt. >> four seems quaint. >> i was love four. it is 20 now, heading to 30. you would need about 30 people thinking exactly like steve bannon to simply stop the deficit from being over $300 billion the next 20 years. cpac and people that want a smaller, more restrained state probably like him as well. that's the cpac message. >> yeah. in some ways, it's not totally the conservative message. economic nationalism suggests less trade and more tariffs. that's not a conservative message. go back in the conservative

economic theory quite a long way. the idea of globalization and trade is something that republicans traditionally supported. >> katty, there has been a split in the party. in '94, half of us, the first thing newt wanted to do is the mexican bailout, which wasn't really a bailout of mexico, it was a bailout of goldman sachs. so, that was one of our first economic fights. i think there are a lot of republicans, like me, and like all those that came in '94, yeah, yeah, yeah, free trade, that's great. we are not going to bow at that alter. what impact is it going to have on everybody across the country? there's always been that strain underneath, in the house. certainly paul ryan doesn't share that opinion and most of the leadership doesn't. there's the strained conservatism. it's the first time it ever reached the other side of

pennsylvania avenue, on the republican side. >> yeah. >> fascinating. >> it's interesting how protectionism shifted from being something that unions and the left supported to having become the mantra of a certain group within the conservative and right movement. it's gone out of fashion. >> again, willie -- >> you can see why. i wonder whether they have the notion of conservatism. how does that fit with the chaos theory of government bannon is exposing? you go in and the mission is to blow the place up, effectively, is what he's saying. we want deconstruction of the state, radically change everything. it is a chaos theory of government. how does that fit with people in the audience who are consvatives? >> if the entire admistration and the republicans on the hill sharedis view, you might see that. we have, as donald trump is

learning, we have a very complicated system. you have checks from the courts, checks from the press, checks from congress, checks from mitch mcconnell's senate. don't try to move too fast. the senate will always slow you down. coming up, we are going talk about the health o. nuclear arsenal. president of the council of foreign relations and noted barbecue master, richard haass joins us when we return on "morning joe." this is the story of green mountain coffee and fair trade, told in the time it takes to brew your cup. let's take a trip to la plata, colombia. this is boris calvo. that's pepe. boris doesn't just grow good coffee, boris grows mind-blowing coffee. and because we pay him a fair price,

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the president, once again, speaking about his desire to add to the country's nuclear arsenal telling reuters the u.s. has fallen behind on nuclear weapon capacity. >> it would be wonderful. a dream would be no country would have nukes. if countries are going to have nukes, we are going to be at the top of the pack. >> in december, then president-elect trump said let it be an arms race. we will out match them and out last them all. joining us now richard haass, the author of the book, a wild

best seller called a world in disarray and the crisis of the old, changing the way we think about outdoor grilling. >> yes, it is. >> a wild best seller. we haven't thought about these nukes since 1991. we are much more concerned about grilling. do we have to start worrying about nukes again? >> the short answer is, not a lot. we have more than adequate nuclear weapons. the last place we want to invest. >> where is this coming from? >> i don't have the answer to that. there's a small group of people worried about nuclear modernization. we should do a bit. the previous administration budgeted. >> putin invested in a lot of it and putin's is bigger than donald's nuclear arsenal. >> henry kissinger sd what is strategic superiority? we have enough. we are comparable.

we have a new agreement that runs until 2021 or 2026, with a five-year extension. >> is there a strategic advantage? >> other than modernizing -- >> why would we do that? >> to make sure the quality is adequate. certain things get old. >> people are saying quality is not accurate? i'm sorry, katty. where is he getting this from? masters say to him, you know, we have gotten lazy. >> people in uniform are the last people. they are worried about the forces, number of ships, number of planes, whether we have enough equipment for our army, training, all the manpower issues. that is where defense dollars need to go. no one in the military, virtually no one over the years wanted marginal defense dollars to go into it. usually it's civilians.

you don't fight wars with these. they are on paper. we have a framework. it's got a ways. it goes until 2021 or 2026 with a five-year extension option. it brings down the number of warheads, bombers and missiles, allows dwrou keep certain numbers in reserve. do modernization on warheads so things are adequate. this is not an area w want to have -- >> i think, it raises an interesting question about the way the president speaks. is this the president speaking in slogans, we want our nuclear arsenal to be bigger than everybody else? it's like yesterday, talking about the military operation and general kelly says there will not be a military operation. you can see why you are kind of confused at the moment. what does the president mean? was he making a sophisticated case for the need to modernize

and upgrade certain nuclear stockpiles or riffing? >> it's unlikely this administration has a systematic review of the nuclear weapons posture. there's not an administration yet. there's not officials a t the pentagon or nfs. >> i'm not sure when there is an administration, donald trump will speak the way he speaks. >> that's a different issue. it's highly unlikely there's a review. again, there's a case for amping up defense spending. so you have to fight defense spending versus everything else. domestic, paying more interest on the debt as rates go. do you want defense dollars to go here? i would say most definitely not. >> richard thank you so much. republicans across the country take different approaches to town hall meetings. next week, the president

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i need to know this. what is the best podcast? >> i believe richard simmons, the search for richard simmons. >> it's a podcast? >> you said you were obsessed with podcasts. >> i haven't listened yet. >> how can you be obsessed with something you haven't listened to? >> i'm obsessed with yours. >> how many listen to hers? >> 87 million around the world. >> i'm looking at richard simmons. the democratic party chooses a new chair after town halls, tv interviews. south carolina party chair, jaime harrison dropped out to

support tom perez. they are locked out of the white house, congress and increasingly state legislatures and governor's mansions. the approach for democratic leaders may have been decided for them. the paper writes, spurred by explosive protests and angry phone calls and outrage themselves by mr. trump's swift moves, democrats have all but cast aside a notion of conciliation with the white house. the party of no. wagering that brash obstruction will pay similar dividends. all week the contentious town halls around the country lawmakers are facing in their home district. bill kassidy faced a crowd in new orleans shouted down with demands to do his job. the office sent out a fund raising blast with the subject line, stop shouting. liberal groups are organizes to keep conservatives in congress

and the white house from doing the job we were elected to do. by compareson, yesterday, he was in smaller towns with crowd that is were much quieter. >> you know, the good thing about today is that people actually respected others desire to hear. there were good questions. some of the best questions i have ever had in a town hall were today. even though there are folk who is agree and disagreed, they would listen to each other. >> among the best. other senators are asked, when will they meet with the public. here is senator marco rubio. >> i found missing child posters all over the town. are you going to host a town hall? i'm glad you are okay, but are you going to host a town hall? a town hall today. we need to hear from you, senator. >> senator rubio's office notes he had been in germany and france as part of the work on the intel committee. he hosted a round table on

opioid addiction in his home state in florida. in arizona, two members of congress opted for two approaches to engaging their constituents. >> republican congressman cannesling his public town hall. >> if you would like to ask a question, press zero. >> reporter: instead, holding one on the phone. >> thanks for joining us. >> reporter: seven call-in questions, zero a posing views, a far cry from the scene outside his office. on the flip side, martha mcsally proceeding with her in-person town hall in tucson, despite a rowdy crowd. >> joining us to sift through this, steve kornacki and contributor to the guardian and host of jaime podcast. >> i think we are just under 1 million under what the population in the united states

is. it's huge. >> it's a big audience. >> the ratings are unbelievable. >> john heilemann is back as well. >> steve kornacki, are the democrats going to completely tear a page out of the tea party play book in 2009? does the party go as far left as the tea party went right? >> it looks that way. there was a poll that asked democratic voters what are you most worried about when you think of congressional leaders and how they deal with trump? most are worried democrats will not go far enough in opposing donald trump. 20% thought the democrats had a risk of going too far. that is the mood of the party. i have been having on the show, candidates and asking them, do you consider yourself part of the resistance and they don't want to necessarily say that word. they don't want to say they are not. i look at where donald trump stands in the polls right now

and look at what i'm hearing from democrats and thinking back so much to the campaign. the campaign was about record shatteringly low numbers, brutal headlines, republicans saying this guy is committing political suicide and democrats believing they were on the verge of finishing him off. i'm seeing that confidence return to democrats. i'm not sure anything changed since the election. >> jaime, i mean, conservatives, you are like, oh, okay, you are going further left? you are so culturally disconnected in america, you lost 1,000 state legislative seats and you want to go further left? culturally, that seems like a win for the republicans. >> hard to see what the pay off is for going left or not cooperating for the next two years. in 2018, the senate map favors, heavy favors the rublicans. i'm not sure, you know, they can go farther left, do a strategy,

a smart strategy of opposition. the best strategy won't win them many senate seats in 2018. the map heavily favors republicans. >> john heilemann, i don't think democrats faced this, yet, but, the cultural disconnect from the national party and the rest of america that when i say the rest of america, you know, 1,000 state legislative seats, the governorships they lost and the house seats they have lost. it's hard to believe that going left gets them any closer to power, going further left. >> the question to me, i genuinely don't have the answer to this. you might have argued the same thing in 2009 and 2010 that going further to the right wouldn't help the republican party. by tapping into the energized base that became the tea party movement then. it benefited republicans because that's where the energy was.

the problem the democrats have had in off year elections, the last few cycles, their base hasn't turned out. if you are a progressive democrat, the argument is we need to get people to come to the polls in an off year election that don't normally come out and say this is the way to do it, to energize the left. i don't know if that's the right strategy or not. that's the argument for why going further to the left makes sense. >> that argument does make sense, actually, since it's a low turnout in the off years. maybe that does make sense if you can get these people whipped up the way they are now and keep them that way, i guess screaming moderation forever doesn't quite do the trick as much does it? >> governor terry mcauliffe said that. what makes him angry about the presidential election is 92 million people didn't vote and now they have woke up say whag happened. take all the people marching in the streets now in january and

february of 2017 and get them to go out and vote. take that energy and turn it into something electoral. >> the thing is, one of the truisms of american politics is the best thing that can happen to a political party is losing an election and losing everything. i mean, i think back to 2004, george w. bush got re-elected. democrats went in thinking they were going to beat bush, take back the senate, the house in play, they got nothing. we had the talk about the republican mar jorty out of '04 and in '06, when they had nothing, they were the default party. if you have a problem with anything happening in this country, there's one party to blame, the party that controls everything. you catch all the buyers remorse. democrats may be in line to catch that. >> republicans own everything. they own washington. they can't blame anybody anymore. >> they do. you see internal riff within the party themselves instead of the democrats veering further left,

they could focus on the frustration within the party when it comes to the affordable care act that we are seeing in town halls. republicans are saying they are hired. i'm not so sure. republicans outrage and concern about their health care taken away may be a reason donald trump was in the beginning trep tr -- former house speaker john boehner doubting the republican led effort to repeal and replace obamacare, listen. >> republicans never, ever, one time agreed on what a health care proposal should look like. not once. all this happy talk that went on in november and december and january about repeal, repeal, repeal. we'll do replace, replace. i started laughing because if you pass repeal without replace,

first, anything that happens is your fault. they will fix obamacare. i shouldn't call it repeal and replace. that's not what's going to happen. they will fix the flaws and put a more conservative box around it. >> that was a post cocktail post 18-hole chat john boehner had. jaime, as you are reporting later this afternoon, boehner makes a couple great points. the last thing you want to own and people inside the trump white house know this, the last thinyou want to own is health care. thehave said all along, it was wreck before obamacare. it's a wreck now. it's going to take ten years to try to fix it systemically. >> that was a man free of any responsibility. >> just, you know, monterey golf and merlot.

>> this is tied to the last discussion. it doesn't matter necessarily what the democratic strategy is here, it's dependent on the republicans. the democrats fortune to rise will depend on how republicans deliver. they are going to be blamed for whatever happens to the health care system. if things go south, that's going to be on republicans and the democrats are the beneficiaries of that. if the economy doesn't improve or gets worse, the democrats are the beneficiaries of that. the republicans, as you say, own what happened. >> why should democrats do anything? i'm not saying democrats don't play tough, they need to try to tear republicans to shreds, but you can do that, clinton could do that and still appealing to yes, i will say it, white, working class voters that abo abandoned them in record numbers. the question is, are they going to figure out a way to culturally reconnect? joe biden warned us about this.

>> get sanders, the great democratic senator who figured out how to bring the white working class voter into the democratic side. mudcat is a character. a good man. >> call me mudcat joe. that's my name now. we have been talking this morning on mudcat joe about parallels and looking for the clinton administration and doing the same thing in 1993. early in the clinton administration and early crisis in the clinton white house ghanded an fbi release of a statement to be helpful to their cause as reported in may of 1993. >> reporter: the white house called the fbi directly to investigate the travel office. thursday, the fbi said it would wait for a report before proceeding. that wasn't good enough for the

white house. an fbi official was summoned to the white house friday and a new statement was drafted, which men included the words that additional criminal investigation is warranted. >> steve kornacki, isn't that crazy? talk about history not repeating itself, but rhyming. an administration in turmoil asks the fbi for help now and then. >> you think back to those first six months or so of the clinton presidency in 1993. i remember the cover of "time" magazine in june, 1993, the incredible shrinking president, it was bill clinton reducing this big. approval rating fell below 40%. one story after another. there was the $200 haircut on the tarmac of l.a.x. and the air traffic was stopped. so many mishaps. he came in saying i'm going to do the economy like a laser

beam. gays in the military was a controversy. >> the hollywood friends trying to get supposedly business from the travel office. it was a crazy time. we just had david sanger say when david gergen came and tried to clean things up, it was a scene out of "home alone." >> right. that was part of it, too. you have this administration and you don't have a washington vet running it. there's shades of what you see with trump here in terms of people not experienced in a lot of ways with the inner workings of the white house, washington and they came in as outsiders. there were definitely growing pains then. >> it will be interesting to see if it changes over time. come in with mike flynn, now general mcmaster and the figures that came in without experience and replaced. >> let's see what happens inside the white house. >> let's go to wall street. dom chu is at the new york stock exchange. what are you looking at? >> we have a huge deal going on

right now, a lawsuit between a tech giant, google's parent company is suing uber because they alleged they stole self-driving car technology. that court ce is gngo go forward. lot ofoney is at stake here. a lotf that frontier, for the next generation of cars is about autonomous driving. whether you are see uber and google going head-to-head is going to be a big deal to watch in silicon valley. watching what's happening with the big, private prison companies. we heard earlier this week, we are going to see a rescinding of obama administration policy to phase out private prisons. a lot of the stocks have seen their stocks surge since the election, up big. of course, a little controversy by some people's minds because names like core civic and geo group donated to the trump

campaign in the past. to be fair, many companies are donated or have donated to the inaugural committee. private prison is one to watch. watch jc penney. the retail operator is going to close 140 stores that are underperforming, also give payout package to 6,000 employees. we are going to watch those as well. warren buffett's annual letter comes out tomorrow. he's selling his laguna beach house for $11 million. he paid $150,000 for it in971. >> wins again. >> always winning. >> i have rode in one. i went to pittsburgh and wrote about the self-driving fleet. it was a fine trip. >> that's horrifying. >> they are working out the kinks. >> it speaks to automation being the wave of the future. more americans drive cars in this country than any other

profession. we are seeing shift in educating them as far aztecnology. >> this doesn't get easier. >> we will watch your podcast and richard simmons. that's our home work. >> will politics get the e got. keep it on "morning joe." so how old do you want to be when you retire? uhh, i was thinking around 70. alright, and before that? you mean after that? no, i'm talking before that. do you have things you want to do before you retire? oh yeah sure... ok, like what? but i thought we were supposed to be talking about investing for retirement? we're absolutely doing that. but there's no law you can't make the most of today. what do you want to do? i'd really like to run with the bulls. wow. yea. hope you're fast. i am. get a portfolio that works for you now and as your needs change. investment management services from td ameritrade. wheyou wantve somto protect it.e, at legalzoom,

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academy awards is sundays night. like everything else these days, politics is going to seep into the show. here is nbc's friar with more. ♪ >> reporter: how brightly will the city of stars shine upon la la land. they need 11 oscars to tie the all-time record. >> i got a call back. >> reporter: they will tell you what the front-runner is. >> la la land is a perfect film. >> reporter: "snl" poked at the fact it's not everyone's favor rit. >> it was good. i didn't think it was amazing singing. >> reporter: the biggest challenge is moonlighting. the lead actress casey affleck swept upmost of the awards this year. denzel washington is gaining

momentum. >> you best be making sure they are doing right by you. >> reporter: when it comes to leading ladies, la la land's emma stone faces the toughest competition from natalie portman. >> i got 18 years of my life to stand in the same spot as you. >> reporter: in the supporting category, viola davis seems unstoppable. a role that brought her a tony. moonlights and lion best supporting actor with a diverse of nominees following the oscars controversy. no matter who wins, politics will likely take the stage if the golden globes are any indication. >> we need the principled press to hold power into account, call them on the carpet for every outrage. >> our nation is more divided than ever. >> reporter: "the new york times" will debut the ad with

the message, the truth is more important than ever, a sign that with millions watching, hollywood's biggest night could become the most political. >> jn heilemann, you want to get people mad at you again? >> you know, they are mad at me all the time anyway. >> these movies. everybody that's seen these movies, i can go down the list, it's overrated. >> it's a weak year. >> they are indy films 10 years ago. >> my thing with la laland is it's a fine movie. i enjoyed it. but the idea that it is the most nominated movie in the history of the academy awards, it is not a movie worthy of that stature. >> i haven't seen it. everybody that has seen manchester by the sea says the same thing, wildly overrated. >> i agree with that. >> i'm only the piano player,

elton john's album said. overrated. there you have it. with with us now, leading spine surgeon and established newsletter thrive, dr. dave campbell. we want to start with opioids. chris christie is finally here, his big focus. marco rubio talking about it in the state of florida. it's been a real problem in new england. in new hampshire, that's what everybody was talking about. are we making progress on this battle? what's going on? >> it's a terribly big problem. it's ahronic disease. it's a disease of addiction. it's been spiked by the up tick and the availability of the synthetic version of the potent opioid. if you look at the cost of heroin per kilogram, $35,000.

>> right. >> a kilogram of this is like $3,000 and would kill an entire city. most of the drugs available now are laced with this because it makes the drug go further for the drug distributor. kids are dying. it's cheap and very, very potent. 50 times more potent. >> what is the answer to the problem? we hear donald trump talking about a crackdown on the border and all the stuff they are going to do, a war on drugs that's been fought 30 years. what do you do about this, mostly a prescription drug epidemic? >> it's a prescription and synthetic, chemicals made in a lab. i like the idea of harm reduction. harm reduction is a technique and topic, instead of arresting everybody, you create policies

to make it less harmful for individuals. we will all know people, young adult college kids who die from an overdose because it is so rapidly depressive of your respiratory system. reducing the harm, especially to those who don't know they are taking a potent opioid is one answer. it doesn't mean let drug dealers run rampant. it's a valid approach that seems to be taking ground. >> young americans have access to the drugs in ways they don't have access to alcohol and cigarettes. let me ask you about another thing, that's social media and what effects that has, if any, on the body and health and stress. >> social media, as we know, it's gone from a small percentage of individuals ten years ago. >> it is driving america in sane. we all agree with that. >> when they calculate and stress as it relates to social media by measuring anxiety

through questionnaires, a dramatic incrse is developing in millennials. millennials have gone from over 90%, kind of linked to their social media. i found one thing very interesting in that study. 35% of those that are constant users of social media describe they have decreased the interactions with their family members and their friends. i would say that if you pulled their family members and friends of the constant users, constant checkers, 100% of them say you are checked out. >> it's much different. >> my mom and i argue about this. she thinks i don't call enough. we text all the time. for me, it's my mode of communication. she wants to hear my voice. >> there's an addictive nature to it for people who just text, twitter, instagram. they move from one area to another. >> yeah. >> much worse than this.

>> it's similar in their addictive description. when you look at constant checkers and texters. look at the definition for addiction, they overlap tremendously. >> no doubt about it. dr. dave campbell, thank you so much. >> my pleasure. >> that does it for mudcat in the morning. i'm joe scarborough. >> we made it through another show. >> we did. >> we are still alive. >>barely. thank you for being patient this week. i know it required more patience. >> it's friday. >> it's friday. people are very patient. i was having a bad day yesterday. >> i thought they were patient. >> incredible. we started with week with all due respect "morning joe." stephanie ruhle is patient. she's always patient. we thank you for your patience. >> we thank you for your great content, joe scarborough. have a great weekend. good morning. i'm