bring in a mere 45 million. final numbers are expected this morning. >> what do you say we go to a 9:00 matinee? >> i already bought my tickets off fandango. >> "morning joe" starts right now. >> republicans are still working on their tax bill and paul ryan even tweeted out his own version of 'twas all the t fight before christmas and changed the words and trump heard ab it. ejust released his own version. take a look at this. >> 'twas the night before christmas in washington, d.c. and not a person was working, but especially not me. when all of a sudden there came a loud bing bing bong and i went to go outside to see what was wrong. and there was st. nicholas who started to say, merry christmas to all and god bless the united state states. >> all right. merry christmas.

huh, all right. trump style. there's as we know, willie, christmas tree from comcast. it's all very moving. always a tear or two in our eyes. but, you know, still, it's something, yesterday, shock waves still over what happened in alabama with doug jones, people still talk to me about it. how it may same the election. you still got a tax bill that's up in the air. donald trump, once again, strangely, embracing his, or actually his most reliable political allie vladimir putin. >> it was a two-way street yesterday. vladimir putin gave that press conference, praising president trump. he gave vlad sld a cal-- vladim putin a call. don't fideutsche is with us. senator at large lee gallagher, columnist and associate editor for the washington post david ignacious and white house reporter for usa today heidi

pryzbilla. mika has the morning you a. joe, i want to go to a piece in the washington post titled newtonian physics. -- and joe, we have tim ryan, congressman tim ryan coming on in a few minutes. the democratic party is energized by what happened in virginia and now the other day if alabama. >> well, you look at everything that's happening right now and it is a clear reaction to everything that donald trump and

his republican enablers have done over the past year or two. and we're talking about alabama. we're talking about virginia. you can talk about the fact that 7% republicans have lost 7% of their membership in terms of women, 5% overall, some people actually leaving the party. we always talked about state legislative seats lost under barack obama. well, there had been 14 switches from democratic, from republican to democratic seats since donald trump was elected. zero flips on the republican side. so i just thought it was fascinating and the reason i wrote the column is because you look at the story of the virginia governor's race, which actually turned out much better for democrats than they expected. it's the women that we always talk about that were standing in long lines. they were going to vote against donald trump's endorsed candidate. in alabama, you have the same

thing happening, where black voters who have felt pushed upon pushed back hard and we're finding that not only is there an equal and opposite reaction, it seems the reaction from democrats the pushback is even stronger than what donald trump has given them, because republican voters are depressed and appear to be staying home. >> i mean, donny, if you look at what happens, we were down there in alabama the other day. we were in a room in mountain brooke, alabama, a group of voters, republican voters. they put on the stop sign. those are republican voters. democrats, african person voters in particular and women and african-american women, those groups pushed doug jones over the finish line and kept doug jones out full stop. >> republicans dodged the bullet. obviously, it was a win for the democrats. it was lose-lose for republicans. had he won, two things, football one, you'd be branned a democrat in the republican party the party of the pedophile the party of trump. they had be lining up to vote

for 2018 now. as energized as the democratic party is now. can you imagine it going the other way? it would be such panic, the energy level would go to another level. as much as it was a win,ed a moore won, it could have been more devastating for the republicans. clearly this is an indictment on trump. you have to look at lee county, which is not as a democrat, it's taken 45% since the civil rights act. it swung 41 points from a negative 24 to a positive 17 on the democratic side. that's all you need to know. >> that's young voters, joe, that's auburn university. >> that's auburn university. the same ting you can say about the university of alabama. the reverse in tuscaloosa county was huge. again, these are not only young voters. these aren't your normal college towns. they're not liberal left of center towns. these are very, very conservative areas. not only were they conservative,

they were trump counties, heidi, you look at again virginia, you look at alabama. you look at the numbers, you look at the generic ballot test, where republicans are getting destroyed like 51 to 36%. that's one of the biggest gaps when you ask people, do you want a democrat or a republican to go for your district to congress. this is the pushback of what donald trump considers the other for hispanics, for blacks, for women, for people that wouldn't have been able get into perhaps his father's 1950s country club or 1950s country clubs across the south and across the country. that's his view of the world and it is plainly obvious when you just look at the people that he nominates. he nominates over 90% of the u.s. attorneys are men and boy women have more of a reason to get out and vote today as do

blacks, hispanics and others than ever before. they are actually doing it. >> you often wonder if the women's march really did precipitate something, joe, because you remember at the time so many people mocked that as a one day hiscy fit. we are seeing this manifest in so many ways, not just women running for congress but also a flip if party i.d., potentially a new coalition forming. i have been going through the numbers, myself, here, not just in bam become but in virginia. what we are seeing is that flip in terms of republican party i.d. dropping. well, that is coming from college-educated white women. some of them who even voted for trump. what we are seeing here, for example, in. have a, in the suburbs of richmond, for the ft. since 1961 that area voting for a democratic governor. my district, where republican barbara com stock won by 13 points there. the democrat ralph northam

carrying that area. so this is what the analysts, like charlie cook and others say is shaping into a wave. because these people are fought just crossing over for a one-time vote. they're actually stopping to be identified with the republican party. >> they may have a couple things to sprinkle in as we think of this election in bam pam. number one we have been saying all week, roy smore a uniquely terrible candidate a. lot of people came out to vote against him and a credibly accused pedophile did not macnight the u.s. senate. if you were vetting in all likelihood, the seat goes back to a republican, if the party nam nates a republican for the state of alabama. >> it may be a protest against moore, who is an outlier in our politics. but i do think when you look at alabama, combined with virginia, combined with the polling we are seeing the reassuring thing is

that it's telling us that the public facing an insurgent president. an insurgent strategy from steve bannon. a group of people that want to overturn the system as we've known it, that's beginning to draw a public weariness. my dad, now 97, likes to make an analogy to a top spinning on a table. can you give a to be a real whack. but if the top is spinning fast if you have. it will wobble a little bit. lit come back towards the center. i really hope that's what we're seeing. our top got a big knock from donald trump. the question was, where's the rest of the country going to be after that disruption? and if these results are right, joe's point about newtonian physics, there is a reaction. it comes back in the other direction. >> well, we'll get back to alabama in a minute. we want to get back to russia now t. president vladimir putin

praised president trump in moscow for the u.s. stockmarket gains and rejected the premise for the justice department's probe into russian meddling as quote spy hysteria. hours later, president trump and putin spoke by telephone. the state-run news agency disclosed details before the american press learned about the call t. kremlin statement said quote -- faye later followed up with a story of trump thanking putin. >> that came on the heels of the washington post report detailing how the president's refusal to

accept the intelligence that russia meddled is interfering with the communication of national security materials. quote, current and former officials said that his daily intelligence update, phone as the president's daily brief or pdb is often structured to avoid unsettling him. zplmplts so, joe, there is a lot to unpack there. number one the very mention of russia apparently infuriates president trump so they avoid it in the daily brief, something you presumed you'd want to be in there. president trump speaking yesterday with vladimir putin after putin heaped praise upon

him at that press conference. >> yeah, willie, again the behavior towards russia, we've said it since december of 2015 is so bizarre. we said it sense he came on our show in december of 2015 and continued to say that slavladim putin was a better leader tan barack obama because he was a stronger leader. he basically brushed off the assassinations of journalists the killing of political rivals the invasions of countries. the shooting down of jets. it's one apology for russia after another and it just doesn't make sense. we all sigh it every day. david ignacious we saw it, of course, yesterday, vladimir putin flattering donald trump. donald trump calling him up, sayingifies things about the stockmarket and what's so disturbing i would note, it has to be disturbing for the men and women that protect our company and the intel community, from the very beginning, donald trump has placed more trust in

vladimir putin than he has our intel community. now you have lackeys for donald trump running around saying that the fbi is turning into another kgb. it's, it's a bizarre, bizarre world and you've got a column about this talking about the russian facts. right there hiding in front of us. >> all right. i did, i wrote this morning, joe, about how you look at the evidence that's emerged that's mostly uncriticontradicted. it tells you a story from the beginning of this campaign, trump and his aides wanted russia to help, in particular, encouraged russia to do what it could to make available e-mails from the clinton campaign at a time we know that the russians were hacking democratic servers

where those e-mails were kept. so i said, it's known in the law if you got the facts, argue the fact, few don't have the fact, don't have the law, pound the table. we're seeing some pounding of the table in this agitation against special counsel robert mueller and other comments from trump. on the trump-putin relationship, it is really remarkable that now for two years, the one issue on which trump really hasn't changed is his desire to have better relations with putin at a time of great tension between the u.s. and russia, nobody should dismiss the idea of there being more talks. but it's just strange, this consistent, sometimes a bromance between the two, that the idea that putin was crediting donald trump for helping the stock market and trump was thanking him. it's just a strange feature of our international scene. just a final thing. we do feed russian help on north

korea. i think the fact that they've talked about that, emphasized that, i'd probably underline that fact in yesterday's events. >> the reporting out of the white house about the call yesterday between president trump and president putin, they led with the fact that the call was made in order for president trump to say thank you to putin for mentioning the great american economy. and yet, wall street so skittish about so many elements every, each and every day seems not to have reacted to an incredibly powerful indictment of policy making as appeared in the washington post yesterday what is going on there? >> i think it's a great point, pike. i think that wall street right now is very focused on the tax cuts that are coming to them and wall street is in the middle of an enormous, bold year. when wall street gets upset it's when things are uncertain, when there is massive geopolitical tumult can you with us events. lately, it's been focused on the

domestic situation. i think that's a great point. i do think things are going great on wall street right now. >> joe, there is something to me very scary on this specific russia thing. what the dynamic of you can't mention russia. there seems to be in the white house the mod us operandi is don't upset or throw trump off. i heard an anecdote fun mrkind funny, trump was working the room, a secret service guy came over to my friend, when you speak to the president. be positive. imagine it's audience warm-up for the president. that's what the secret service is doing now. the entire being of the presidential circle is act managing his imbalance versus making decisions based on what's going on, that's kind of frightening. >> you know, donny, dan dresdner always has a recurring tweet it seems every week or two after

somebody talks about how the staff is handling donald trump like a child. he says, i'll say that donald trump is finally become president when his staff stops treating him like he's a child. bob corker talked about adult day care, that it seems, there have you the top republican in foreign affairs saying the white house, it seems at times reverts to being nothing more than an adult day care center. you see it in the staff briefings. you see it in the press room, where you have people going out before microphones that are afraid to tell the truth because they know they'll upset their boss. we're not just talking about sarah huckaby sanders here. you look what sean had to do for the first nine months in his mind, what he had to do. you can never tell the truth about crowd sizes and it's just bad for america and more importantly, it's bad for the people that are holding these

jobs. if you just want to look at sean and the people that lead this white house. they're not going to be able to go back and fit neatly into washington and work after subing themselves to the humiliation they had to. but it is disturbing, willie, you have secret service people going around whispering saying, hey, be positive to the president. he can't handle it, i go es. >> the worst part to me is there are a lot of good people in that white house who know better. if you that you can to them privately, they rom their eyes or say, i know, i know. we got to management. keep the bubble wrap around him. you shouldn't have to spend the presidency managing a president's feeling and talk about policy and hope he's doing the right thing. unfortunately at this point that's where we are. we will get heidi and joe to explain the tax bill and why marco rubio is holding the fate

of the tax bill in his hands. >> big marco, willie. >> big marco is running things. >> marco is not so little with two ds anymore. marco is capital b capital i capital g. he can hold this. i think it's actually good that marco is doing this. it's actually good for marco. it's good for the republican party. because he's actually concerned about working class americans. and i also, listen, every for wants to be president. i think it's a good step forward for him to send a page, i'm not afraid to buck the entire system and make everything stop if i don't get what i want. i think that's a good development. >> he has been on this position, on this particular part of the bill since the beginning. so he's got a good leg to stand on and president trump very proud. coming up, senator lindsey graham gives the odds of trump

attacking, if. we will bring in james stavride. w iron's remarks felt like the invasion. as i mentioned, tim ryan joins our table, first, bill kearns has a look at the forecast. >> a good friday to you, willie a. change in the forecast for millions of people from i-95 down to washington, d.c. snow is in your forecast this afternoon, early this evening. keep that if mind for your evening compute. 15 million people are now under a winter weather advisory, including d.c., baltimore, atlantic city. new york city not included in that. it doesn't require the issuance of a winter weather advisory. here's the snowfall. again, the timing of it this afternoon during the evening rush hour, one to two inches of snow, from d.c. to new york, through southern new england, a little higher totals there,

maybe two-to-three inches along the jersey shore. a pecky thomas fire t. fourth biggest fire into california history flared up again last fight. new mandatory evacuation orders were issued. a red flag warning for central and southern california, it will be windy, especially on sunday. today's forecast, there is the snow in the northeast. no problems in the south, much of the west is calm, let's go outside, some rain out there in california t. weekend outlook has snow in it. heavy rain along the gulf coast. that's about it for the weekend weather. the worst will be this afternoon, this evening, i-95, washington, d.c., right up to new york city. there is no sign for the snow yet. it will start around noon in our nation's capital, the coating within an inch of that slippery white stuff. you are watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. ♪ a wealth of information. a wealth of perspective. ♪

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plan for tax reform is facing new uncertainty, party leaders are scrambling to lock down enough votes to pass the legislation before christmas. key senators are withholding their support. nbc news' casey hunt has the details. >> reporter: senator marco rubio threatening to vote know, unless they agree to give american families a bigger tax credit. >> let's add it to the 1,100 figure i won't support the bill. >> reporter: for mike lee is undecided because of child tax credit. senator bill corker is still a no on the bill. balls they can only lose two votes that means republicans could be at risk of falling short of the 50 votes they need to pass the bill. the president is confident rubio will come around. >> he's a great guy, very supportive. i think for rubio will be there for sure. >> reporter: but vice president mike pence has had six tied

votes this year delaying a critical trip to the middle east in case they need him in time. also a concern, 80-year-old thad cochran who has missed votes this week because of health reasons and senator mccain fighting brain cancer, hospitalized and absent from the senate this week. >> it's all about timing and managing absences in the senate. >> reporter: with time running out for the president and his party to make good on any major campaign promise be every the year is out. >> heidi, it's obviously very tight and post-people consider right now what marco rubio is doing. is he using leverage, that which he has the right to do. again i personally think he should do it, using lever annual to get what he wants. but, corker is still a no what happens if john mccain can't show up to vote because of his

health, does that derail it? it very well could, you have john mccain and thad cochran that missed votes this week because of his health. the bottom line is you can only lose two votes in this thing. you may have to delay it and a delay, of course, means who comes to the senate, doug jones, so i think what's happening with rubio is a manifestation is these senators, more moderate senators who jumped on board with the promise, they were given certain promises felt they got bad deals, look at susan collins, out there throwing an individual mandate repeal back in there. not necessarily taking care of some of the extra funding that she wanted put back in. i think rubio is making a savvy political decision. i think in the end they will find a way to cut a deal for him. the politics at the moment are

look at the polling on this bill. it does not have widespread support. as a matter of fact, it has widespread opposition. if you see the way that democrats are going to use this going into 2018, it's playing into their broad values argument that they're making, not just about everything that happened in alabama with roy moore but about the economics of how average families in this country are being affected. if i could, just for a moment, joe, you know this country was founded on a rebellion against monarchy. what is monarchy? it's inherited wealth? what's happening with this bill is that it's so tilted towards the upper income elements in this society. it's not just the estate tax repeal. it's the pass-throughs. it's the fact that like marco rubio said, they found extra money to lower the top bracket. they're throwing $100 of trump change his way on the kyle tax credits. so this is a political moment

for him and possibly other republicans to speak out and say, hey, at time when the top problem in this country is not jobs, it's income and equality. how can we find extra money here to help working familys? >> donny deutsche, i think that's why, if you look at again from branding and you have to look at it from branding, because, certainly, if you're a republican leader who sees how badly things are going for the gop, you have to wonder, how do we pass this bill after our attempt to repeal obamacare that's unpopular across america without getting hammered in the mid-terms. this will be one more thing thrown on top of the pile. that itself the first thing i want you to talk about. secondly, though, as a businessman and an entrepreneur, you and your friends and a lot of people that drive the

stockmarket have to just love what they hear on the macra level the top rate goes down to 37% and corporate taxes to 21%. talk about both of those things. >> well,a it was latter, if are you in a blue state, maybe not necessarily even all of our fancy wealthy friends, of course, that i will jump by about five or six points, from a big macro point of view and to heidi's point, this is exacerbateing the number one part in this country wealth redistribution. we're redistributing it to wealthy guys t. one thing that's working right now in this country overall is the economy and a lot of our economists say this will have a negative infect. i can't wait joe no your first point as a brandon guy, i'd like to give my number on the air, they're making it easy, beyond what we talked about in the first segment the party of moore and the party of trump and extremists. i can cut 20 commercials today

basically saying the republicans have screwed you. the very thing that brought trump into office, the middle class white vote. guess what, you are getting screwed on tax, on health care, sign me up right now, because it's easy money, they're walking you into a buzz saw, it is fundamentally so flawed from both a welfare point of view in this country to a strategic branding view what this tax plan is doing to get that w. >> that w is actually going to be on l. democratic tim ryan of ohio is joining us here in new york. let's stay on the corporate tax rate comes down, the corporation tax rate comes down for wealthiest americans, if it pass, congressmen can cobble this towing and get to 50 or 51 votes, what would it do in the short term to middle class family in youngstown, ohio, for example? >> look, there is nothing worse

than when someone makes a promise to you, you rely on that promise and they go back on that word. you feel in your gut, i have just been betrayed. people in youngstown feel betrayed because president trump was saying, i'm going to tut your taxes during the campaign, i'm going to expand healthcare for you, i'm going to make life better for you, and everything he's done in the last year has either thrown someone off of health care or taken care of the wealthiest people in the country. so the person in youngstown over time is going to pay more in tacks. they may lose the child tax credit. you look at the groups against this teachers, aarp, veterans groups, catholic bishops, mr. barnical, all against, not that you are a bishop. >> far from it. >> in spirit. >> he's a bishop. >> these groups are all against it because it is going to put the screws to the person in akron, ohio or youngstown, ohio, not to mention to pay for this entire ting. wooer going to borrow $2

trillion from china and china is going to take our interest payments that we're making on this money that we are borrowing. they're going to build high speed rail. they're going to move to battery-powered cars. they're going to continue to go down the road of renewable energy and all that, the benefits that come from that. they will build islands ift south coin sea and put military bases on them. they will build bases in africa. we are paying for china to move into a modern economy. >> you know, we are even seeing readers of our ceo daily fuse letter, which is written by our content officer alan purchase ray voiced their displeasure with this bill. we know the public is deeply acted with it. the concerns being it raisings the debt so much and it favors corporation. the corporate tax revenue as a percent of overall tax revenue was so small, it's been getting smaller. so that's not, you know, most of the tax income comes from individuals, income tax, payroll tax, so that's what's going to

feel the brunt of this. so, you know, there's widespread, even among, remember when gary cohen asked a group of ceos, who would hire? nobody raised their hands. >> so the bill is an insult to common sense. take me, drive me through your district and two aspects of this bill and other things going on in walk. the impact of basically the removal of obamacare, health care, that i assume many in your district and the impact of ignoring or not doing as much as we should do about the opioid crisis, which i assume is december stating in your district. what's happening? >> we in ohio we will have hundreds of thousands of people thrown off their health care, many of these people, we do have an opioid crisis, many of these people are working class people, that are going to work every day, they're playing by the rules, they have trouble making

ends meet, they literally live pay check to paycheck. this was a lifeline for them to have decent health care, now the president is going to take that. here's the other thing, if businesses wanted to hire people and we do them them. this, we're not hostile to business. we want private investment in places like youngstown, who is going to hire our people? they have $4 trillion in corporate profits. if they want to hire somebody, they can hire them. if they see a good investment, they can make it notice. they don't need this tax cut. but you know what's not happening? when you drive through communities like mine and others across the country, there are thousands of blighted homes that need to come down. >> that needs to be a public investment we need to make. we need urban agriculture. we feed dream space. we need new -- we need to build few communities and right now, we don't have the money to do it. so these guys will run a $2 trillion hole in the deficit and borrow the money from china,

mark my words, they're starting to do it. we need money to take down dilapidated homes in youngstown to build roads, bridges, broadband and the new energy grid. they will say, you know what, we don't have the money. >> to your point earlier about branding, we came up with the commercial, it's the president trump tax plan. you see the guy, it's the trump tax plan, the reason it's the trump tax plan is he is saving billions and becomes of dollars, you know who is paying those becomes, putting them in his pocket, a thousand other people. you. you. the money is coming from your pock. $100 bucks at a time so that trump's grandson can save his becomes. he screwed you. here's your commercial. >> the average people in youngstown, ohio will have $20,000 more in national debt on to that family in youngstown because of this bill. >> yeah, comeman, i'm sure you know, donald trump went to places like youngstown, they went to your district. he went to my district in

pensacola, florida. he told working class americans and middle class americans all the things he was going to do for them and that he was going to go against the money interests, the political interests, against the international interests and i'm sure you like me as donny is talking about branding and commercials, the most powerful thing you can do in a political ad is use somebody's own words against them. and my go, on health care, on taxes, on everything he's promised working class americans in youngstown an pensacola, he's gone back on those words, hasn't he? in dramatic, dramatic fashion. >> yeah, no doubt about it. no doubt about. he is betraying the very workers that he was able to convince to come and vote for him. and look, these people were taking a chance. they were taking a chance on the blue collar billionaire, a chance on the guy who maybe had enough power and influence and

money to be able to take on the money establishment in washington, d.c., in the centers across the country. he hasn't done anything, really this tax cut is a missed opportunity. we did need tax reform. the tax system is too complicated. the corporate tax system is a mess. all of these things do need reform, but he's not doing anything to drive investment in pensacola or into youngstown, if you look at the fact that 80% of venture capital money goes to three states, to new york, california and massachusetts. and 90% of it goes to men, only 1% to african-americans. if you reform the tax code, you look at the system and say, how can we get this wealth that's being created in the united states and get it to the communities left behind in the global economy. so he's betrayed these workers and come up with no plan to help them. >> congressman tim ryan of ohio. always good to see you.

coming up next. admiral stavrides joins. and lindsey graham says time is running out. "morning joe" is back in a momen moment. end sales event. ♪ what i want, you've got, ♪ but it might be hard to handle ♪

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to north korea now, north korea is saying that should the united states enforce a blockade, which has been alluded to, not officially proposedpy the administration the dprk would quote take merciless self-defense measures against a violation of its sovereignty. that would consider to be quote an act of war. meanwhile, senator lindsey graham is spending a lot of time golfing with the president and spending hours upon hours with the president of the occupation is talking about the possibility of war with north korea. in a recent interview, lindsay said there is a 30% chance that president trump will decide to attack north korea first and there is a 70% chance that donald trump would attack north korea if they conduct a seventh nuclear tested. graham said that this was discussed during his round of

golf with the president at trump's golf course last sunday. let's bring in now former nato supreme allied commander, now the dean of the fletcher school of law and diplomacy at tufts university major general stavridis, the diplomacy analyst for nbc news and msnbc. thank you so much for being with us, admiral. first i must ask you, what is your reaction to a member of the armed services committee who spends probably more time with the president of the united states right now than other members of the senate saying that we have a 70% chance of going to war if there is another test? >> it worries me a lot. let's face it. that's primary source information. i'd probably put those percentages slightly differently and a little bit lower. i'd say there is probably a 10%

chance we end up in an all out wheels off war on the korean peninsula, i think there is a 20% chance we will end up exchanging ordinance with north korea at some point in a fairly scene of the accident way. about a 30% chance of war from where i sit right now. personally, if there is an above ground nuclear detonation, i don't think we'll attack, but i think that's where you could get into a maritime block cade, which i think is the next logical step in this thing. >> so, admiral, this david ignacious in washington, i just want to ask you, one of the scary things to me about what senator graham said is that if you begin preemptive action against north korea, you'd have to go all the way. you don't know where all their missiles are hidden. you have to take out everything, have a worst case scenario, when you think about war on the korean peninsula, you have done that a lot in your career, you've had to. what do you think about in terms of the dangers of something

really getting out of control of being devastating for the population there? >> yeah, i think, david, i think it's probably about a 10% chance that it all falls apart and we end up with nuclear detonation on the peninsula from king john eun. i disagree with the idea that we would have to go all the way the minute the first missile goes. i think you can do a lot going after the north american fleet, can you go after specific sites. the worry is kim jong-un would respond with artillery on seoul, it ratchets up. legitimate worry, i think there is room for negotiation here, i think if kim jong-un launches one above ground, a nuclear debt nation, that will be the moment of peak tension. it will also be a moment of peak opportunity. because, hopefully, at that point even china would step in with us and put a block cade

around this guy par right time and on the land order with coin. that would choke off the economy and force him to the table. >> there is the question of iran, standing behind a backdrop, consisting of military equipment. nuclear ambassador nikki haley accused iran of violating u.n. resolutions, offering up what the administration says is definitive proof. >> in this warehouse is concrete evidence of a legal iranian weapons proliferation, gathered from direct military attacks on our partners in the region. behind me is an example of one of these attacks, these are the recovered pieces of a missile fired by houthi militants from yemen into saudi arabia. the missile's intended target was a civilian airport in riyadh. all of these weapons include parts paid in iran. some by iran's government-run defense industry. the evidence is undeniable.

the weapons might as well have had made in iran stickers all over it. the nuclear deal has done nothing to moderate the regime's conduct in other areas. where do we go from here? well, i think the president made the first start by dessertfying the iran deal basically with congress, so that congress can start looking at these other things that eastern is doing. yes, we have already started to talk to our partners in the security council. >> in a statement the iranian government says it categorically rejects it as unfounded, provocative, destructive, adding, quote the reported everyday is as much fabricated as the one presented on some other occasions as a part of an agenda and iran's foreign minister tweeted, quote, when i was based at the u.n., i saw this show and what it begat and showed a picture of colin power outlining the invasion of iraq.

admiral stavridis, she is laying the groundwork. what is it? >> she trying to hold together a shaky coalition of our european ourselves and with the sunni arabs so we can confront iran in all of these capitals, these proxy wars going on in yemen, in syria, in lebanon, and most importantly, i think, in iraq. so she's trying to hold that coalition together. i really disagree with the iranians on this one to try and say this as echoes of pollen powe -- colin powell. this is more substantive in terms of laying out the hardware. it's a little overly dramatic, perhaps, but i think it makes a pretty clear point, and i think iran is pushing on all these points and we're going to have to stand against them. that does not mean we should walk away from the nuclear deal. we should keep the nuclear deal

but built a front to prevent them. >> david, i'm wondering what insights you can give us from the nikki haley presentation yesterday and also with what the trump administration is trying to do here. >> well, i think the trump administration has decided it's time to step up the pressure on iran. nikki haley was arguing iran is in violation of a u.n. security council resolution passed in 2015 at the same time of the iran nuclear deal and trying to rally members of the security council to address this and take it seriously. she has in that sense a stronger international footing than we do, arguably, in dealing with north korea. i do think we're in a period now where the u.s. working with saudi arabia and the uae are going to take firmer steps to deal with iran, especially in yemeni. the saudis are nervous about the

missiles that as haley says, the evidence pretty strong that they have been moving missiles into yes, ma'a yemen. there's a feeling inside saudi arabia and the uae, we're livering undliving under the gun. they're feeling the trump administration has their back. i think we are heading toward greater confrontation. what's worry someis having confrontations on both sides of the world. north korea at the same time as the persian gulf with iran. but that's the moment we're in right now. >> all right. david, stay with us. admiral, thank you very much. always good to have you on. appreciate it. coming up, trump's lies versus those told by obama. the big difference, obama stopped saying things checked by fact checkers. we have the list of trump's

first year falsehoods, ahead on "morning joe." >> jerry? just remember, it's not a lie if you believe it.

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you know, we're covering a lot of ground this morning as we do every morning, but you're going to be on the hill today, and there's only going to be one topic, taxes. what do you expect to happen today? >> well, i think that they're going to be pressing hard on folks like marco rubio, susan collins, trying to get them in line, trying to maybe throw a little more money at rubio in the end so he can look like a hero and probably at the end of the day, they're going to get this over the line, joe. but i've spent a lot of time on the phone lately with another group that's a holdout on the plan. that's economists. and what they're telling me is that there was a way to do this

to make this a middle class tax plan. that was to give a payroll tax cut. everybody pays the payroll tax cut. that would put money back into the hands who buy washing machines and cars. but in this case, what you have here is primarily a corporate tax cut. and guess what. there was a way to do that, to give a lower corporate rate which a lot of economists agree with. and that was to do a revenue neutral plan by closing loopholes. so we don't have either of these things in this plan. that's why it will have no democratic support, but in the end, i think they're going to get people like rubio. >> okay. heidi, thank you. we appreciate you being with us today. stick around, because coming up at the top of the hour, we're going to be talking about russia, north korea, the fallout from alabama, and we're going to have peggy newnan. we'll be right back. ♪

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more people shop online for the holidays than ever before. and the united states postal service delivers more of those purchases to homes than anyone else in the country. because we know, even the smallest things are sometimes the biggest. zbljtds t the stock markets is hitting a all time high record. >> how they've grown. >> economic. >> investors show. >> consumer confidence. >> in the american economy. >> surged to 3.3%. >> they have trust in what president is doing. >> it's all psychological and what's that creates greatness. >> with all due respect.

>> they call themselves the resistance. you ever see the signs? >> you know, all of this has been invented. >> and these fake people back here. >> made up. >> but i tell you what. willie, that is message discipline. you've got to really respect those two guys. just for no other reason to have the sort of message discipline. it's so jarring. we're going to be introducing peggy newnan in a second. for those of us who grew up as conservative republicans during the height of the cold war, it really is jarring to see donald trump in a mind meld with a man who runs a country that invades other countries, that shoots down passenger planes, that assassinates journalists. that assassinates political leaders. it's pretty jarring, but he's doing it, and as david ignatius

says, the facts are hiding in broad daylight. >> and putin knows exactly how to play president trump. he says exactly what he needs. donald trump will respond. and he got a phone call from president trump yesterday. donny deutsche and mike barnicle are here along with l lee gallagher, peggy newnan, david ignatius, julie pace, and former chief of staff at the cia and department of defense now at nbc news national security analyst, jeremy bash. mika has the morning off. joe? >> so, peggy wrote a column this morning in the washington post talking about the laws of physics apparently apply to politics in the age of trump because for every action, there is an opposite and equal reaction except in this case it

appears that the reaction to donald trump pushing back on the rights of women, pushing back on the rights of minorities, it appears that the pushback in alabama and virginia and across america seems to be even stronger than the push that donald trump and republicans are providing. republicans are just losing across the board. >> yeah. virginia was followed by alabama. somebody said the other day the actual fact here if you just reduce it down to its essentials is that democrats hate donald trump more than republicans love him. and i think there may be something to that. i do think that this alabama setback might reorient some thinking in the white house about the fact that the president has failed in the year since the election to expand his

core of supporters. it's still a core. it's still there. but your job when you come into the past si with a limited core is expand the edges. keep persuading. keep bringing people in. do this with an air of personal moderation and political moderation at this moment a sort of soft populism. he hasn't been able to do that. >> peggy, you and i were both in tuscaloosa, alabama. hold on here, 33 years ago, in 1984. >> it was my first political rally. it really was. >> your first political rally, and i remember you reading about it, reading about what you'd written about it, but it's hard to believe that in that state,

in that conservative state that republicans actually lost the senate seat for the first time in a quarter century, but doesn't that really speak to just how bad things have gotten for republicans under donald trump, that perhaps it is alabama, ironically, it is alabama, the state that trump has always bragged is his number one state? that maybe it's the state where the fever of trumpism finally broke? >> yeah. you know, donald trump won alabama in the 2016 presidential election by i think with i think 62% of the vote. hillary clinton got 34%. it's a 28-point spread. that's a big a spread as you get in the natural political universe. so one of the things you see is that -- one of the things that caught my eye in the exit polls after the alabama voting was

that the president's approval, disapproval numbers were 48/48. so it used to be 64. you know? now it's kind of 48. so that's not so good. but that, you know, alabama once was on fire with a kind of i think beautiful, modern ascendant conservatism, and sometimes things turn into a racket. i think in the case of roy moore, there was a bad candidate who seemed not -- who was kind of easily detected by a number of people to seem not essentially well-meaning, and then he is charged with these bad crimes having to do with teenage girls. so i don't know. i guess i thought alabama, the outcome in alabama had to do with a return or a reassertion

of political standards of what we will accept and what we will not accept. >> this is too about political standards but not about alabama. this is about the phrase preserve, protect, and defend the constitution. and it is about an amazing piece in "the washington post" yesterday having to do with president trump being briefed on all sorts of situations. the presidential deal. he briefed my vague familiarity with the presidential daily brief is that the cia director is in the oval office along with a professional career briefer. but why don't you talk about your reaction to the post story, the nuts and bolts of the story, and actually how the briefing takes place? >> yeah. two things, mike. first, in terms of the morning intelligence briefing for the president and his senior team, that is usually led by a career professional cia analyst or an analyst from another intelligence agency. and they are putting forward a

consensus intelligence product. when you have an intelligence briefing for a president where they are shading the truth, leaving out intelligence, changing the order so as not to offend him, that's not an intelligence briefing. that is story time. that is fiction. that is basically telling the president something he wants to hear, and i can't think of anything more dangerous during a time when we have crises in asia and the middle east, all around the world. the president needs the truth and emblazoned on the wall of the original cia's head quarters building is "know the truth and the truth shall set you free". that's the motto of the intelligence briefer. for the president to receive anything less is a disservice the intelligence community is doing for him and the nation. it's a dangerous precedent. >> if you read the piece the thrust is the people giving the briefing danced around any questions of russia and russian interference so as not to outrage president trump. meanwhile the russian president praised president trump

yesterday speaking to reporters at his end of the year press conference in moscow. he praised trump for the u.s. stock market and rejected the premise for the probe into russian meddling at spy mistear ya. hours later they spoke by telephone. the state-run russian news agency disclosed details of the conversation before the american press learned about the call. the kremlin's statement said, quote, acute issues of bilat relations as well as the situation in crisis hot spots worldwide for discussed with an emphasis placed on the issue. president trump thanked president putin for acknowledging america's strong economic performance in his annual press conference. they discussed working together to resolve the dangerous situation in north korea. later there was a story about president trump thanking putin. julie pace, what was the sort of order of this? was the phone call from president trump to putin a

reaction to the praise that day at the press conference or was it already planned? >> well, it's hard to say exactly what the order was but the fact that putin was in russia and was praising the president caught trump's attention, and it's clear that putin has learned a lesson that i have heard diplomats in washington, lawmakers, business executives talk about when it comes to their own dealings with the president and that's that flattery is everything. if you want something from this president, the best way to get his attention, the best way to butter him up is to praise him. and in this case it's the economy. you hear trump talk about this frequently. he doesn't think he's getting enough attention for the way the stock market is rising. he doesn't think the strong economy -- he's getting enough credit for the strong economy. putin clearly has been briefed on that. he clearly knows that's the way to flatter this president, and then get into whatever else he wants whether it's in north korea or syria.

it's a lesson that has been learned across the board. it ties into is there anybody in the white house who can talk to the president about expanding his base? right now there's really not because people in the white house tend to be focussed on flattering this president. he doesn't have a lot of people around him who often will tell him difficult truths because this strategy of flattery has become so pervasive. >> on the question of flatter i, back to the president's trip to the middle east where they projected his image and face on to the side of the hotel and had his face on flags on the route he traveled. people around the world, and especially vladimir putin know exactly what to say to butter up donald trump. >> that's right. the whole game for foreign leaders is trying to figure out how to play our president, how to make him feel important, how to make him feel bigger than he is. and it's, again, dangerous, because it shows that other countries are able to ma nip you

la -- manipulate us. the fact that the president has been opposing sanctions and other measures to get tough on russia, this isn't merely his insecure about the election. it's gone beyond the election and predated his election victory. it's gone back as you and joe and mika have talked about since the beginning since december of 2015 since the president has been beholden to russia. it's almost like the borrower and the indebtedness. the president of the united states has put american foreign policy of collateral, and putin has the leverage. >> david ignatius, also, let's just talk about this relationship with the intel community, fraught with pitfalls from day one. from even before donald trump became president, he spent a great deal of time attacking the intel community. now the intel community is coming to donald trump

whitewashing the briefing so as not to upset him. you have donald trump's allies on the hill starting to bash the fbi, trash the federal bureau of investigation. some people on cable news comparing the fbi to the kgb, and then strange things happening at the justice department. the text messages being improperly late because now the justice department admitting that actually everyone inside there has the right to hold their own political opinions. so long as it doesn't interfere with the investigations. the intel community right now is obviously going around in circles trying to figure out how to deal with this president. what's your take away from what we've heard over the past 24, 48 hours? >> joe, i think the intelligence community feels like a punching bag sometimes with this president. there were two important

pushback moments this week. one was wen chris ray, the fbi director chosen by donald trump defended the fbi's professionalism. that was actually last week, but it was a key message. he said the fbi isn't in tatters. the bureau i represent is doing the job of the american people. i thought it was also important this week that the deputy attorney general rod rosenstein appointed by trump stood up for the justice department for special counsel bob mueller, his investigation. he said the investigation is not tainted by the political views by people who work for mueller. he didn't see any reason to fire him. i thought those things were all important. i would note one thing on this question of president trump's ability to absorb reality about foreign policy. the biggest worry i would have this week is if he doesn't understand just how danger the situation with north korea is,

and the fact that he talked with his pal vladimir putin about getting russian help on north korea to avoid getting in a military conflict to get additional russian pressure, i think trump is realizing china alone isn't going to do it. that was their strategy. i don't think they're getting there with that strategy. if he's reaching out to putin and saying you need to help us convince kim jong-un to stop this nuclear program before we get into much more dangerous territory, i think that actually is a useful development. >> lee, with all this going on on the foreign policy front, president has a few days to get a win on tax reform. a win. he wants to get something done by the end of the year to have a legislative achievement. rubio is holding things up in regard to the child tax credit. the margin is raiser thin. bob corker is a no. if they don't bring rubio

around, there's trouble. >> susan collins, we don't know. there's a lot in the air still. >> that's right. if this does pass and they can cobble this coalition together, what it will mean for the american economy? >> well, look, business will sing and celebrate. the stock market will go up. it should be noted that business already pays basically 18% to 20%. when you factor in the loopholes and everything. it's not like this has been so desperately needed as everyone would have you believe. but i think we will see there's so much public disaffection with the bill. i think that will be even more reflected. there's been picketing. my father is very active in local politics, and very active in the resist movement. you guys talk a lot about nicole wallace's father, my father is the counterpart. he was at the picket lines last week in delaware county, pennsylvania. it's a place joe brings up a lot. and they had trump tax scam carols last week, and i brought

them just to show them here. we wish for a better tax bill. you're a mean one mr. trump. my father thinks this is too silly and diminishes the real point here, but i think we're going to see an incredible movement, the dissatisfaction will deepen. i wonder what will happen among trump's base. we haven't really talked about how are they going to feel about this tax bill? it's -- i mean, they're the ones who are going to be the most affected. >> president trump promised in his live presentation yesterday with people saying they will benefit from the tax bill, citizens, et cetera, he said you are going to see, you regular americans are going to see a lowering of your taxes by february. i think he meant on your february payroll tax. if the economy, the proof is in the pudding. if after this has passed and i'm

not certain it will be, but let's say it's passed, if the economy goes up, the stock market goes up and people feel they have a few extra bucks, when they're being paid, that will be fairly popular, but i think there's a real argument to be made that this doesn't really serve the president's base so directly. i think marco rubio is onto something when he says whoa, don't worry as much about the tax rate. worry about the deduction for parents who have kids. you know? we love parents. we like kids. america is actually in a birth dearth. we need more kids. have a baby. let's try to make it easier. there's another thing i want to say. the corporate tax thing, i am a conservative, so i like to cut taxes. i think it's a good thing. i don't know all of the things you know about the corporate tax rate. in other words, that's it's

functionally 18% and 20% or not 30%, but i know if they benefit corporations and appear to be benefitting, and they do not translate those benefits into expansion, development, jobs for people, if instead they just hold the benefits to themselves, pay off their debt or whatever they do with their money, that will be a scandal. that will be a real shame. >> speaking of scandals -- >> just a scandal, and sometimes i think corporate chiefs, koreas, wall street, they have to remember they are citizens too. they have a stake in this thing. they've got to create jobs. they've got to help young people entering the market who aren't fully -- what's the word, trained? >> what happen with all the mergers and acquisitions? i'll tell you what happens. people get laid off. >> any benefits of that will happen with the big disney thing.

>> trump university. that's what's happening here. through his base, it's the same thing. pulls people in with a promise. nothing happens. he gets rich. we are living through trump university. >> well, we also, lee, you can speak to this. everybody keeps comparing this to the reagan tax cuts. things are different today than they were in 1981. the highest tax rates i think were up in the 70s or 39% now. we may get a couple off of that. we had an economy that was struggling back in 1981. right now we have an economy that is for the past several years improving every single month. so that's one part of it that doesn't make sense. but also the entire way corporations work. in 1981 if you gave a corporation a tax cut, chances are good they could have to re-invest into the production which would mean assembly lines

and more americans getting more jobs and that being spread out. now explain. if the corporation makes more money, chances are good they're not going to hire more people. in fact, it's more likely than not they won't hire more americans to work. they will buy back more shares of their own company. >> that's true, joe. they'll do that. they may make some mergers and acquisitions, the results are very really depend on each case. even jamie diamond said this week you might not see it for a while if there is a benefit to corporations. but you're making great point here. and the other thing that economists pointed out is that just by adding this massive bill to the debt, interest rates are going to go up which could wash away a lot of the benefit you could see from the theory that the cut will spur growth. there's a lot of issues that you raise. and also our tax policy, it incentivizes people and corporations to avoid, to find

ways to park the money. it's flawed in many ways. those things are not addressed by this bill. >> as you talk to people inside the white house, what's the level of desperation or choose a better word of getting tax reform passed after having lost the promise to repeal and replace obama care earlier in the year, what does it mean to lose on this campaign promise? >> i think desperation is a good word. they are facing the prospect of ending the year with no significant achievements. this president made a lot of lofty promises. and he continues to talk about this year in a really lofty way. he talks about historic achievements, but we have a poll coming out later today and one of the questions we asked people was do you believe that the president made good on his promises. i won't give away the full number, but it's a pretty low percentage of americans who believe he did. when i talked to a lot of americans who did the survey for

us, their takeaway from the year is that trump talks a big game but there isn't a lot to back it up, and if they know anything about the tax bill, it's that it benefits the wealthy. one gentleman said the one thing i know for sure is if this passes, it will benefit president trump and his wealthy friends. even if this passes, i think the white house has a big hurdle in front of them, republicans as well, a big hurdle in front of them to try to prove to americans that this wasn't just a package for the wealthy, for business leaders. this will help the middle class, and based on estimates from economists, the impact on the middle class doesn't seem as great as for the higher income earners and businesses. >> we'll find out if it passes before the end of the year. julie, thank you. still ahead on "morning joe," we'll bring in one of the reporters who had washington abuzz about paul ryan's future. tim alberta is next whith what he's hearing about ryan's

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the president did speak to the speaker not too long ago and made sure the speaker knew very clearly and in no uncertain terms if the news but true he was unhappy with it. the speaker said they were not accurate reports and they look forward to working together for a long time. >> thank you very much. i appreciate it. >> that was house speaker paul ryan. and before that press secretary sarah huckabee sanders reacting to our next guest reporting yesterday that ryan is eyeing an exit from congress in 2018. joining us now is tim alberta. tim, if i understand it correctly, you had three dozen sources, 36 sources that said paul ryan in no uncertain terms was planning his exit around the

2018 midterm election. those denials yesterday from the white house and from paul ryan, how do you react? >> well, willie, i think it's important to realize why paul ryan can't afford to look like a lame duck. he's the most prolific fundraiser. and on the one hand they need his continued financial might, on the other hand, he loses all of his negotiating leverage with democrats, with his own conference if he looks like a lame duck. when john boehner left, the night before his spokesman came out and said he wasn't going anywhere, and 12 hours later he was. that's how these things work. >> why now? still a young man to step away. >> i think it's important to understand sort of the context of his career arc here. ryan when he came back from the 2012 campaign trail when he was the vice presidential nominee almost left congress. he made clear he was ready to go

home. john boehner twisted his arm to bring him back. when he was there, ryan realized at that point he wanted to chair the ways and means committee, hope to rewrite the tax code and pass it into the law with the help of a republican president. if he could accomplish that, he was going to go home. he told friends and family that at the time. then he becomes speaker reluctantly, but he told john boehner and others this was a short-term proposition. this is my last job in politics and i don't want the job to begin with. now fast forward, he's looking at the landscape and says look, i have tax reform in my back pocket. i'm going to use next year to try to get entitlement reform. his children are in their teenage years. he has never lived at home with them. he would like to. he's made it clear to people close to him. people have picked up the message. he's told his inner circle about this and it's spread.

and you know have steve scalise and kevin mccarthy, his two most likely successors jockeying behind the scenes. they understand the writing is on the wall and at some point in the next year, there will be a leadership shakeup. >> tim, you're touching on the point of curiosity to me. what will your report, and the reports that the speaker will leave in after 2018, what will that set off? what is it going to look like in the congress? you'll have scalise and mccarthy. we have a bunch of other possible candidates for the job. what's it going to look like? >> well, i think it's going to be a bit of a mess, frankly. kevin mccarthy had the opportunity to become speaker several years ago when john boehner left, and kevin mccarthy didn't have the votes to get the job. and others were uncomfortable with him taking over.

his cal cue louse this time is because he's a strong ally of president trump's, the white house will help to get him over the top. there are deep concerns about that in the halls of congress. so kevin mccarthy is going to take another crack. he's made it clear to his allies if he does not have the numbers, then steve scalise will jump at the job and try to become speaker. what's important to realize is the freedom caucus has all the leverage. they view themselves as the king makers of the next speaker. what they're looking for, it's important, they want significant process reforms in exchange for their votes. that means specifically restructuring the steering committee so there is a more dispersed way of selecting committee chairman and handing out committee assignments and potentially creating another leadership position where there would be another leadership official who would be almost e =

in power to the majority power. there's almost a triangle. these are the things they're discussing behind the scenes. dpl. >> tim, the freedom caucus. on a day today basis, the weight of angst that paul ryan must feel from people like the guy from no coat from ohio, mark d meado meadows, the entire freedom caucca cauc caucus. how is it they've tormented leadership for eight to ten years, this group? >> i think it boils down to strength in numbers. there are about three dozen, as of right now, 35 members of the freedom caucus. paul ryan can only afford to lose a certain number at any time. and nancy pelosi is loathed to have any break in her ranks to help ryan pass anything. freedom caucus members realize they hold the critical margin on anything anything the republican

leadership wants to do. now, if, in fact, republicans lose seats in 2018, the members who are most endangered are swing district mostly suburban center right establishment friendly moderate republicans. freedom caucus districts are almost entirely off the board for democrats. if the republican majority shrinks next november, which we expect it to, then the margin for error paul ryan has is smaller and the lerch the freedom caucus has is greater. i think that's factoring into hisalculations. he understands the map. he realizes that if republicans hold the house next november, that there's going to be a much smaller majority that he's working with and these folk who have made his life so difficult will have an even bigger role to play in the process. >> it's a fascinating piece. speaker ryan denies he's living but in recent interviews, not a

single person believes he's still in congress past 2018. check out the piece if you haven't read it at politico yet. tim, thank you. good to see you. thank you. coming up, he's been called vladimir putin's public enemy one. when asked if he knew anything about the russian lawyer that met at trump tower, our next guest responded i know a lot about her. bill brouder joins us next. it can detect a threat using ai, and respond 60 times faster. it lets you know where your data lives, down to the very server. it keeps your insights from prying eyes, so they're used by no one else but you. it. is. the cloud. the ibm cloud. the cloud that's designed for your data. ai ready. secure to the core. the ibm cloud is the cloud for business. yours.

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welcome back to "morning joe." joining us is bill browder, the man who inspired a bill that singled out a number of putin allies and denied them u.s. visas. because of that he's been called putin enemy number one. jeremy bash is back with us. he's former chief of staff at the cia and department of defense. bill, good to see you. i want to back up and explain that you were the largest foreign investor in russia for a time or one of them. your attorney exposed some tax fraud that was happening in russia. he was jailed and killed in jail. and you continue to fight the putin regime every day. why do you fight so hard against

russia and putin? >> my lawyer was killed, i should say tortured to death in a russian prison in 2009 for uncovering a massive putin russian government corruption scheme. they killed him effectively as my proxy. they killed him because he worked for me, and that's a big responsibility. he was 37 years old. he left a wife and two children after being tortured to death. and so on the day when i learned of his murder, the day after they killed hip, i made a vow to his memory and his family and myself to make sure i would go after the people who did it. i've spent eight years doing that which resulted in legislation making asset freezes. so against people of the putin regime involved in this and who do other terrible things in russia and putin went crazy.

>> give the scale so people understand, if you were assigned a dollar amount to the affect of putin's oligarchs, the money he controls, we're talking the hundreds of billions of dollars here? >> i believe that putin is the richest man in the world. i believe that he personally is worth $200 billion. and i believe that people around him, let's say the top 1,000 officials in russia, are worth a trillion dollars. there's so much money at stake here. this is such an important issue. i should point out this money is not kept in russia. as easily as they stole it from other people, it could be stolen from them. they keep it in the west, in the united states and london. >> to draw a line back to trump where he was to anxious to get rid of this, to lift this act to get rid of the sanctions, draw the line back to trump. what's his incentive? >> we don't know trump's position on the sanctions.

putin's position is he wants the sanctions lifted as his number one foreign policy priority. we know he got this agent, the famous russian lawyer, he got her to go to trump tower when trump was just nominated to go on a quest to donald trump junior, paul manafort and jared kushner to repeal the act. we don't know the trump camp's reaction to that. and so we're sort of sitting here, and it's an important month. this is the month more names get added to the list. trump will either do that as scheduled in the law or not. and this is a significant moment. >> you mentioned the russian lawyer, the woman who was in the june 2016 meeting at trump tower. you've known her for some time. is there any chance that she was

not acting on behalf of vladimir putin and the russian government? in other words, could she have been freelancing? >> there's no chance. we have multiple pieces of evidence that she was acting as an agent for vladimir putin. we have the evidence she was working closely with the general prosecuter of russia, the equivalent of the attorney general who is putin's main enforcer. and many other things as well. she was an agent for vladimir putin showing up in trump tower. that's for sure. and what she was asking for is also for sure which is repeal of the act. what we do not know is the reaction to her request. >> bill, jeremy bash has a question for you. jeremy? >> bill, i'm going to put you on the spot here. have you been interviewed by robert mueller or the intelligence committees investigating the money trail between vladimir putin and the trump organization? >> i can only talk about what i've done publicly. i have been interviewed by the senate judiciary committee.

i cannot talk about any law enforcement interactions i-had. >> fair enough. we respect that. talk about the money trail for a moment. do you believe you reference vladimir putinen's personal wealth and the wealth around him. do you believe that some of that money that was leaving russia in the 80s and the 90s actually went to trump and the trump organization? did they use russian money either through offshore accounts or shell companies to fund trump business projects? >> i'm not an expert on trump finances or russians' connections to trump finances. what i do know is many russians bought condominiums in various different projects in florida and elsewhere. and that may not be too different than other developers, but we know that for sure. we're skeffectively arm share investigators. there's 1,000 times more

information than that us. they have subpoena powers. they can get people to become witnesses. we'll find out in due course if there's anything else and if there is, what it is. >> and finally, bill, can you quickly explain the connection between the act which was named after your lawyer and russian interference in the election? what were they trying to do in interfering from your perspective? >> the way i put the pieces of the puzzle together is putin says he doesn't like the act. it upsets him personally. he wants to get it repealed. he sent in people to meet with the trump camp to try to repeal it, and for some reason or another, and putin, maybe that's the reason putin decided trump was his favorite candidate in the u.s. elections. we know as well that putin went in with various types of techniques to hack, to influence

the outcome of the elections, et cetera. what we do not know for sure is whether trump participated or if putin was just expressing his interest in the sidelines. >> the assets in london, paris, chicago, how do they hide them? how do they wash them? >> putin doesn't keep any money in his own name. he keeps all money in the name of oligarchs. when you see a rich spectacularly rich russian and you see their name on the forbes list, multiply it by 50%. the other half of the money is putins. they keep their money, or he keeps his money through oligarchs in hedge funds and private equity funds and trophy property in the united states and all these other places you named. >> and given the scope and the reach of vladimir putin in the west, and in the world, do you fear for your own personal safety? >> um, well, two questions. am i living in fear? the answer is no. i'm out there campaigning every day to old putin to account.

am i at risk of being killed? the answer is yes, a high risk. they've threatened to kill me, kidnap me. they've tried going to interpoll to have me arrested? >> they threatened to kill you? what form does that take? >> for example, the prime minister of russia was at the world economic forum in davos and was asked by a group of journalists, what do you think of mag knit ski, he said it's a shame he's dead and bill browder is still alive and running around. >> let me ask you a question. as you think about the whole trump magnitski act, do you get a sense president trump then candidate trump was an unwitting mark or someone who was a witting mark, somebody who didn't understand white what was

going on -- who didn't understand what was going on or someone who got it? >> it's impossible for me. i'm slowly looking at the pieces of the puzzle being put together. i know for sure what the russians wanted, and i do not know how the trump camp reacted. but we will know, and quite soon, i think. >> it's great to have you here. great courage. you've been speaking about that at great risk to your own safety. thank you for being here. he has a book called "red notice" if you want to see how the pieces of the puzzle come together. a new poll finds most americans say president trump has done something illegal or at least unethical when it comes to russia. we'll dig into it when we come back. online u.s. equity trades...

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difficult" opened in theaters. the preview expected to pull in $45 million, second only to "the

force awakens." numbers are expected this morning. willie, this sunday, big interview connected. >> that guy right that, adam driver, the guys who play kilo wren. adam driver, fascinating guy, joined the united states marine corps after 9/11, served the country, came out, started acting a little bit. did only stage work. best known early on for his role on "girls," that lena dunham series, played her boyfriend and got this part that turned him into an international star when he did "the force awakens." kyle low wren this sunday on nbc. >> couldn't get chewbacca? >> no, chewy doesn't do press. the reviews on the movie have been incredible. university good. >> i was a teenager when it came out, i never bit.

it's like christmas if you're jewish, you feel like you're not part of what's going on. >> you can skip three. >> peggy, where are you coming out on star wars? >> i was never into it. on when it came out and it was a phenomenon and everybody saw it, it's just not my cup of tea. >> it's never too late. i think you'll like this one. >> i love him. i love that actor. he's really impressive. he has extraordinary presence. >> that's what they say about mike barnicle. >> adam driver. every president tells untruths. a new list from "the new york times" puts president trump in a category all his own. we'll break that down ahead. plus president trump spoke to vladimir putin yesterday by phone hours after putin praised trump and sided with him in the russia vaks. plus, the republican plan for tax reform suddenly on shaky ground this morning. senator marco rubio is threatening a no vote and other key republicans on the fence.

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republicans are still working on their tax bill and paul ryan even tweeted out his own version of "twas the night before christmas" and changed the word to make it about taxes. trump just released his own version. >> twas the night before

christmas in washington, d.c., and not a person was working and especially not me. when all of a sudden there came a loud bing, bing, bong, and i went to go outside to see what was wrong. and there was st. nicolas who started to say merry christmas to all and god bless the united states. [ laughter ]. >> all right. merry christmas, trump style. as we know, willie, the commerce christmas tree from comcast. it's all very moving. again, always a tear or two in our eyes. still it's something. yesterday shockwaves over what happened in alabama with doug jones, people still talking about it and how it may shape the election. you've still got a tax bill that's up in the air and donald trump, once again, strangely embracing his -- actually his most reliable political ally,

vladimir putin. >> it was a two-way street yesterday. vladimir putin gave the press conference praising the achievements in the first year of president trump, president trump gave vladimir putin a call yesterday. we'll get into all that and a lot more. veteran columnist and msnbc contributor mike barnicle. donny deutsch at the table. senior editor at large for fortune lee gallagher, from "the washington post" david ignatius and white house reporter for u.s.a. today heidi przybilla. joe, i want to go to "newtonian physics will crush the gop." i didn't know you were such a physicist. the laws of physics apparently apply to politics. newton's third law that every action has an equal an opposite reaction explains much about the democratic party's resurgence. physics professors teaches that force always comes in pairs. the harder trump and his republican allies push in gains made by women and minorities, the harder these same americans

push against trump and his republican enablers. the political reaction likely to result from this newtonian cycle is a complete collapse of the grand old party. joe, the democratic party is energized, both by what happened in virginia and now the other day in alabama. >> you look at everything that's happening right now, and it is a clear reaction to everything that donald trump and his republican enablers have done over the past year or two. we're talking about alabama, talking about virginia. you can talk about the fact that 7 -- republicans have lost 7% of membership in terms of women, 5% overall from people actually leaving the party. we always talk about state legislative seats lost under barack obama. there have been 14 switches from republican to democratic seats since donald trump was elected. zero flips on the republican

side. i just thought it was fascina fascinati fascinating. the reason i wrote the column is because you look at the story of the virginia gov ernor's race which turned out much better for democrats than they expected. it's the women that we always talk about that were standing in long lines. they were going to vote against donald trump's endorsed candidate. in alabama you have the same thing happening where black voters who have felt pushed upon pushed back hard. we're finding that, not only is there an equal and opposite reaction, it seems the reaction from democrats, the pushback is even stronger than what donald trump has given them because republican voters are depressed and appear to be staying home. >> donny, if you look at what happened -- we were in alabama the other day with a group of voters who were republican voters. but they ran the stop sign. those are republican voters. democrats, african-american voters in particular and women,

african-american women, those groups pushed doug jones over the finish line and kept roy moore out of the senate. >> and the republicans dodged a bullet. obviously it was a win for the democrats, but it was lose-lose for republicans. had he won, two things. number one, you'd be branding the republican party as the party of the pedophile. they'd be lining up to vote for 2018 now. can you imagine it going the other way? there would be such panic, the energy would even go to another level. as much as it was a win, strangely enough, from the long ball point of view, had moore won, it could have been more devastating for the republicans. clearly this is an indictment on trump. lee county, no democrat has taken more than 45% since the civil rights act. it swung 41 points in 13 months. 41 points from a negative 24 to a positive 17 on the democratic side. that's all you need to know.

>> that's young voters, joe. that's auburn university. >> that's auburn university. the same thing you can say about the university of alabama, the reverse in tuscaloosa county was huge. again, these are not only young voters, these aren't your normal college towns. they're not liberal left-of-center college towns. these are very conservative areas. not only conservative, they were trump counties. heidi, you look at again virginia, alabama, look at the numbers. you look at the generic ballot tests where republicans are getting destroyed like 51 to 36%, that's one of the biggest gaps when you ask people do you want a democrat or a republican to go in your district to congress, this is the pushback of what donald trump considers the others for hispanics, for blacks, for women, for people that wouldn't have been able to fit into perhaps his father's

1950s country club or 1950s country clubs across the south and across the country. that's his view of the world. it's plainly obvious when you look at the people he nominates for judge. nominates over 90% of the u.s. attorney attorneys, are men. boy, women have more of a reason to get out and vote today as do blacks, hispanics and others than ever before. they're actually doing it. >> you have to wonder if the women's march really did precipitate something. joe, remember at the time so many people mocked that as just a one-day hissy fit. we're seeing this manifest in so many ways, not just women running for congress, but also a flip in party id, potentially new coalition forming. i've been going through the numbers myself here, not just in alabama but in virginia. what we're seeing is that flip in terms of republican party id dropping, that is coming from

college educated white women. some of them who even voted for trump. what we're seeing here, for example, in virginia, in the suburbs of richmond, for the first time since 1961, that area voting for a democratic governor. my district where republican barbara comstock won by 13 points, the democrat ralph northah carrying that area. this is what analysts like charley cook and others say is shaping into a wave. these people are not just crossing over for a one-time vote. they're actually starting to be identified. >> a couple things to sprinkle in. number one, something we've been saying all week is roy moore is a uniquely terrible candidate. a lot of people came out to vote against him and make sure a credibly accused pedophile didn't make it into the united states senate.

the other thing is, if you're betting in three years the seat goes back to a republican p the party nominates the right kind of republican for the state of alabama. >> maybe just really a protest against moore who is an outlier in our politics, but i do think when you look at alabama combined with virginia, combined with the polling that we're seeing, the reassuring thing is that it's telling us that the public facing an insurgent president, an insurgent strategy from steve bannon. a group of people who really want to overturn the system as we've known it, that's beginning to draw public wariness. my dad, who is now 97, likes to make an analogy to a top spinning on a table. you give a top a real whack, but if the top is spinning fast enough, it will wobble a little bit but then come back toward the center. i really hope that's part of what we're seeing.

our top got a big knock from donald trump. the question was where is the rest of the country going to be after that disruption? if these results are right, joe's point about newtonian pha physics, there is a reaction. it comes back in the other direction. >> we'll get back to alabama in a minute. we want to get back to russia now. president vladimir putin praised president trump yesterday speaking to reporters at his end of the year press conference in moscow. he praised trump for the u.s. stock market gains and rejected the premise for the justice department's probe into russian meddling as, quote, spy hysteria. hours later putin and trump spoke by phone. disclosed details of the conversation before the american public learned about the call. acute issues of bilateral relations as well as the situation in crisis hot spots worldwide were discussed with an emphasis placed onseting the korean peninsula nuclear issue. the white house statement said,

quote, president trump thanked putin for acknowledging america's strong economic performance in his annual press conference. the two presidents also discussed working together to resolve the very dangerous situation in north korea. later a story about trump thanking putin. that call came of the heels of yesterday's wide ranging "washington post" report, detailing how the president's refusal to accept the intelligence that russia meddled is interfering with the communication of national security materials. quote, current and former officials said that his daily intelligence update known as the president's daily brief or pdb is structured to avoid upsetting him. russia related intelligence that might draw trump's iers included only in the written assessment and not raised orlando li said a senior intelligence official familiar with the matter. a veteran cia analyst adjusts the order of his presentation and text aiming to soften the impact. a second former u.s. senior

intelligence official said, quote, if you talk about russia, meddling, interference, that takes the pdb off the rails. a lot to unpack there. the very mention of russia infuriates president trump, so they avoid it in the daily brief which is something you'd want to be in there. and president trump speaking yesterday with vladimir putin after putin heaped praise upon him at that press conference. >> willie, again, the behavior towards russia, we've said it since december of 2015 is so bizarre. we've said it since he came on our shore in december of 2015 and continued to say that vladimir putin was a better leader than barack obama because he was a stronger leader. he basically brushed off the assassination of journalists, the kelg of political rivals, the invasion of countries, the shooting down of jets. it's one apology for russia after another, and it just doesn't make sense. we all see it every day.

david ignatius, we saw it, of course, yesterday, vladimir putin flattering donald trump. donald trump calling him up, thanking him for saying nice things about the stock market. what's so disturbing, i would know it has to be disturbing for the men and women who protect our country, the intel community. from the very beginning donald trump has playsed more trust in vladimir putin than our intel committee. now you have lackeys for donald trump running around saying the fbi istu turning echt another k. you have a column about this talking about the russian facts are right there hiding in front of us. >> i did write the morning, joe, about how you look at the evidence that's emerged, mostly uncontradicted, the tweets, events that are acknowledged.

and it does tell you a story from the beginning of this campaign, trump and his aides wanted russia to help and in particular encouraged russia to do what it could to make available e-mails from a clinton company at a time we know the russians were hacking democratic servers, where those e-mails were kept. so i said, it's known in the law, if you've got the facts, argue the facts. if you don't have the facts, pound the table. we're seeing some pounding of the table in this agitation against special counsel robert mueller and other comments from trump. on the trump-putin relationship, it is remarkable now that for two years the one issue on which trump really hasn't changed is his desire to have better relations with putin at a time of great tension between the

u.s. and russia, nobody should dismiss the idea of there being more talks. it's just strange, this consistent -- we sometimes call it a bromance between the two, the idea that putin was crediting donald trump for helping the stock market and trump was thanking him, it's a strange feature of our international scene. a final thing, we do need russian help on north korea. i think the fact they talked about that and emphasized that is probably -- i'd upped line that fact in yesterday's events. still ahead on "morning joe," the republican tax plan seemed to be going full speed ahead. that is until it hit a few bumps yesterday. we'll tell you where things stand right now. this week president trump became the only two-time winner of politifact's lie of the year, seeing how trump's lies stack up to those of president obama. bill kaerns has a check on the forecast. >> good friday morning. a little surprise on yei 95.

we'll have an inch of snow on the ground for the evening rush hour could make things dicy. 15 million people in wenter weather advisories. again, this is not a big huge beal. you can see how light the snow is here in the white. this is about win bench. it does go all along i 95. unfortunately, if you heard the tragic news yesterday of the firefighter from san diego that was up there fighting the thomas fire, perished in the blaze yesterday. the first firefighter fatality. that fire flared up overnight. new mandatory evacuations ordered. still red flag warnings. they can't catch a break. they need rain desperately in california. in some places it hasn't raenin in over 250 days. red flag conditions continue tod today.

sunday looks to be a dangerous, winds gusting 50 to 70 miles per hour. the weekend forecast, today, light snow and rain in new orleans. tampa possibly a shower. seattle, damp weather for you. a little lake-effect snow on saturday. we'll watch this rain storm in texas on saturday, spreading saturday night. by sunday, heavier downpours in new orleans. raen any, gloomy weather. we're in the 50s and 40s. no ice on the map. travel or holiday shopping plans or holiday weekend plans, it will be a little wet. this is the glaring thing on sunday. watching southern california in that fire threat. new york city is one of the spots that will see about an inch of snow later today. doesn't look like it now. not even a cloud in the sky. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. ♪ to do whatever it takes, use every possible resource. to fight cancer. and never lose sight of the patients we're fighting for.

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this morning the republican plan for tax reform is facing new uncertainty. party leaders are scrambling to

lock down enough votes to pass the legislation before christmas, but key senators are withholding their support. nbc's casey hunt has details. >> reporter: senator marco rubio now threatening to vote no unless republican leaders agree to give american families a bigger tax credit. >> unless they can figure out a way to add to the $1,100 figure i won't support the bill. because they can only lose two votes, that means republican could be at risk of falling short. the president confident rubio will come around. >> he's been a great guy, very supportive, i think senator rubio will be there. >> reporter: vice president mike pence who has already had to cast six tie-breaking votes this year. >> the senate being equally divided, the vice president votes in the affirmative. >> reporter: delaying a critical

trip to the mieft. also in concern, 80-year-old thad cochran who missed votes for health reasons. senator john mccain fighting brain cancer. >> doing just fine. >> reporter: now hospitalized and absent from the senate. >> it's all about timing and managing absences in the senate. >> reporter: with time running out for the president and his party to make good on any major campaign promise before the year is out. >> heidi, it's obviously very tight. most people consider right now what marco rubio is doing, using leverage which he has the right to do and personally i think he should do it, using the leverage to get what he wants. but corker is still a no. what happens if john mccain can't show up to vote because of his health? does that derail it? >> it very well could. you've got not only john mccain

but thad cochran who missed votes this week because of his health. the bottom line is you can only lose two votes. might have to delay it. a delay, of course, means who comes to the senate? doug jones. i think what's happening here with rubio is just a manifestation of the fact that so many of these senators, more moderate republican senators who jumped on board with the promise -- they were given certain promises felt like they got kind of bad deals. look at susan collins. now they're throwing the individual mandate repeal back in there and not necessarily taking care of some of the extra funding that she wanted put back in. i just think rubio is actually making a very savvy political decision here to put himself out there. i do think in the end they'll find some way to cut a deal for him. but the politics of the moment are look at the polling on this bill. it does not have widespread support. as a matter of fact, it has widespread opposition.

if you see the way democrats are going to use this going into 2018, it's playing into their broad values argument that they're making, not just about everything that happened in alabama with roy moore, but about the economics of how average families in this country are being affected. if i could just for a moment, joe, this country was founded on a rebellion against monarchy. what's monarchy? it's inherited wealth. what's happening with this bill is that it's so tilted towards the upper income elements in this society, not just the estate tax repeal. it's the pass-throughs, the fact that like marco rubio said, they found extra money to lower the top bracket and they're throwing $100 of chump change his way on the child tax credit. this is a political moment for him and possibly other republicans to speak out and say, hey, at a time when the top problem in this country is not

jobs, it's income inequality, how can we not find the extra money here to help working families? >> and donny deutsch, i think that's why if you just look at this from branding, and you have to look at it from branding, because certainly if you're a republican leader who sees how badly things are going for the gop, you have to wonder how do you pass this bill after an attempt to repeal obamacare care that's unpopular across america without getting hammered in the midterms? it will be one more thing thrown on top of the pile. that's the first thing i want you to talk about. secondly, though, as a businessman and a entrepreneur, you and your friends and a lot of people that drive the stock market have to just love what they hear on the macro level, that the top rate goes down to

37% and corporate taxes go down to 21%. talk about both of those things. >> as far as the latter, if you're in a blue state, not even necessarily our fancy wealthy friends, because they'll jump by five or six points. from a macro point of view and to heidi's point, yes, this is exacerbating the number one problem in this country which is wealth distribution. we're redistributing it to the rich guys. it's insanity. also, the bizarre thing is, the one thing that's working right now in this country overall is the economy. a lot of economists are going to say it's going to have a negative effect and we'll walk into inflation. your first point, joe, as a branding guy, i'd like to give my number to any democrat running in '18. i could cut 20 commercials today basically saying the republicans have screwed you, the very thing

that brought trump into office, the middle class white vote. guess what? you're getting screwed on taxes, on health care. sign me up. it's easy money. they're walking echt a buzz saw. it's fundamentally so flawed because of a well their point of view but strategic branding view for the republican party, just to get the w, the w will actually be an l. "the new york times" has tried the impossible, to count every time president trump has told a lie. that's next on "morning joe." [ keyboard clacking ] [ click ] [ keyboard clacking ]

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we fight for what we want. even for the things that were once a given. going to college... buying a home... and not being in debt for it for the rest of our lives. but we're only as strong as our community. who inspires and pushes us to go further than we could ever go alone. sofi. get there sooner. welcome back to "morning joe." senate republicans set a new record confirming the 12th circuit court judge, giving trump the record for the most circuit court judges confirmed in a president's first year, outpacing john f. kennedy and richard nixon who previously shared that record. there are still 143 judicial vacancies left to be filled. a no, ma'am know had trouble answering a series of basic questions. in an exchange with john kennedy

it became apparent that matthew s. peterson nominated for the district of columbia doesn't have a lot of the experience typically expected of a federal judge. >> have any of you not tried a case to verdict in a courtroom? have you ever tried a jury trial? >> i have not. >> civil? >> no. >> criminal? >> no. >> bench? >> no. >> state or federal court 1234. >> i have not. >> have you ever argued a motion in state court? >> i have not. >> have you argued a motion in federal court? >> no. >> just for the record, do you know what a motion in limine is? >> i would probably not be able to give you a good definition right here at the table. >> do you know what the younger abstention doctrine is? >> i've heard of it. but again -- >> how about the pullman abstention doctrine?

you'll see that a lot in federal court. >> i think that was unfair. >> 57 of president trump's nominees have been reviewed by the american bar association. four of them deemed not qualified. one of those nominees was confirmed to the eighth circuit earlier this week. joining us, commentary editor for "the washington examiner" tim carney and opinion ed for. >> off the clip we saw of peterson, on the fec, federal election commission, hasn't tried a case. you heard the litany of things he hasn't done. does that trouble you hearing that exchange? >> yeah. i think the drain the swamp mentality has a lot of virtues to it that washington, d.c. has a lot of baked-in kind of crust where you've got libbyists and lawmakers enter tangled and a bureaucracy that is not responsive. there's a lot of good things,

but it goes too far in the trump administration where they take people who don't have qualifications for the relevant job. so i think that's what it is. this distrust of expertise that can come if you take drain the swamp too far. >> we've seen in other places, too, look at ben carson at hud or epa or fda, all these people that are not particularly familiar with the areas where they have the most significant and prominent job. >> i would distinguish from one liberal critique of trump which is that he's nominating people that oppose the purpose of the agency. i actually think we need people like that in the agency, not if they're going to sabotage it, but to say when i was a lawmaker i didn't think there should be a department of energy. >> talking about scott pruitt. >> the export-import nominees. having somebody like that as a kep tick, i think as a conservative that's good. having somebody that doesn't have the skill set and experience like we sae see in some of these nominations,

that's upsetting. >> peggy, what do you make watching that ex-change? >> i think senator kennedy is a new person on the national scene, a smart guy. every time i see him showing up on tv or radio, he's saying something smart. he was the questioner there. i agree with tim, it is good when you have fresh and skeptical eyes come into an agency and say why do we do it this way and find out the answer is not really so good. and better ways of doing things could be dreamed up. outsiders have their place. >> david, in watching that clip, it's one thing as tim pointed out, not necessarily the unhealthy thing to get people into agencies who are a bit sen cal, perhaps, and take a fresh look at the agency. yet, it's quite another to put forward nominees who are like

six eggs short of a dozen which often happens. in the case when it does happen, the president, more often than not, has gone on to defend his appointments with a series of -- well, we have to label it, untruths about their credentials. you have been charged with the incredible task of cataloguing the number of untruths this president has trotted out thus far only in 11 months of his presidency. how's it going, david? >> we actually need a whole team of people to do it. it's not just me and it takes a lot of time. as you know, all these fact checkers out there and totaled up and said trump has said a thousand untrue things. we said it needs to be demonstrably and blatantly untrue. we didn't count his general story about general pershing or when he gets commission statistics off a little bit. we've counted 103 distinct

untruths, falsehoods, lies he's told in his first ten month in office. there are a lot of them. >> give us an example of your criteria, your top three that fall into the category pants on fire lie versus all the other subtle untruths or misappropriations of the truth. >> a lot of these we know. a blatant lie about the inauguration size crowd, the more substantive stuff. the stuff saying we have the highest taxes in the world which we clearly do not. we try to take the most favorable interpretation. we say is there any way we can justify this and say it's a matter of political debate. if the answer is no, we count it. what we just did is we compared it at the request of trump supporters, compared it to obama's pace of telling falsehoods. >> ted, you sat down and wrote a rebuttal to "the new york times" piece. >> i did. i did not question the premise of the piece. donald trump is an exceptional, extraordinary liar even among politicians and certainly

compared to barack obama, but i don't think it's a proper use of data journalism to say we're going to count up the lies. >> why? >> because i don't think they're actually counting the lies. i looked at "the new york times" list, the short list of obama lies and searched for my favorite. he said we have excluded lobbyists from policy making jobs which is one of his campaign promises. there were 36 including a goldman sachs lobbyist as a chief of stof at treasury. that was a lie, a blatant falsehood that didn't make "the new york times" list. you look at this, if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor counted as one lie even though he said it at least 30 times as president. in my rebuttal blog post i found the first three that came to my mind, only one of those, if you like your plan, you can keep it, showed up in those. i think counting lies and charting them and doing this is

a silly thing because you're not going to catch it. you did not have "the new york times," david lean hart and your team of journalists didn't go through every statement the president made and you missed a bunch of obama's lies. i agree trump is a much bigger liar, much more falsehoods, accidental and intentional, than obama. but why didn't you have in there, we have excluded lobbyists from policy making jobs. wasn't that a significantly clearly false statement? >> you want us to apply a different standard to obama and trump. we applied the same standard. that's a great example of what we didn't include. we said under the most generous interpretation, we took all those out for trump and said we're not going to give obama a different standard than trump. when you do it, you end up seeing obama definitely said untrue things. the fact he said if you like your health insurance plan, you can keep it. that's false. he said falls things about the high school dropout rate.

when you compare the same standards for the two, you end up seeing they're not close at all. >> i think you don't have a standard. >> trump tells many, many more untruths than obama does. >> i agree with that, but i don't think you have a standard for obama if when he says we have excluded lobbyists, that counts as true because there were some lobbyists who didn't get hired. that's the persing that the obama white house gave me when i asked them about it eight years ago, seven years ago. >> if you could find ones we excluded from trump that were similar than that or included, i would agree that would be fair. there are dozens of them just like the lobbyist one for trump, the crazy story like general pershing, we didn't include it. we did the same standard for obama and trump. you can see these ten things about trump you should have included and the ten about obama you should have included. but when you do it, you see there's no comparison.

>> tim, to underline, you can see donald trump examining rates more than president obama. >> more than any other president i've seen in my life. >> off the top of my head, i can't think -- number of trump lies versus alabama, i bet trump wins. but has strum trump had an impact in terms of policy impact and implications, if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. if you like your plan, you can keep your plan. that strikes me as the biggest political lie of the past ten years or so. >> how about the tax bill. >> it has president passed yet. >> peggy brings up an obvious point. obviously trump wins the volume battle. if you say lies that cause harm, a major piece of legislation that was his defining piece of legislation was built on -- she brings up a good point. >> the central critique, one of the central critiques of romney

in the 2012 campaign, remember the motto from the baem campaign, osama bin laden is dead and general motors is alive. he said in one of the debates -- i want to get the exact quote to prove it was a lie by any standard, he said -- obama said the federal government -- romney said the federal government should provide guarantees for post bankruptcy financing and assure car buyers that their warrantees are not at risk. obama then said you're very clear you would not provide government assistance to the u.s. auto companies even if they underwent bankruptcy. put those two statements side by side, it's clear romney said we should have government guarantees. obama said you said there won't be government guarantees. that was at the heart of obama's criticism along with, if you like your plan, you can keep it, was the single biggest defense

of the central piece of legislation. i can make the argument that the heart of obama's campaign was built on standard political lies. >> trump is still a much bigger lie. >> we said that. >> obama told falsehoods, bush told falsehoods. trump tells falsehoods about everything. he lies about the crime rate, about immigration, about where barack obama was born, lies about how taxed we are as a nation, lies about what his health care bill would do. i don't think trump's lies are the off-the-cuff funny stuff. they are very much about policy and central to his strategy. when george w. bush was made aware of thing he said wasn't true, he stopped saying it. when barack obama was made aware, he stopped saying it. blatant untruths, they stopped. what trump does, he tries to discredit the people pointing out the falsehoods, whether they're fbi agents, cia agents, federal judges, scientists, you name it. that's dangerous to our

democratic culture. >> undermining the behavior of truth in general. >> his administration started out with a fight over the crowd size. david lean hart, thank you very much. tim carney, a good back and forth. you guys should go out to lunch, keep the fight going. president trump was big on symbolism, cutting red tape to represent his administration's slash on regulations. "morning joe" is coming right back.

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the fcc voted to roll back net neutrality rolls in a party line vote yesterday eliminating regulations that required internet providers to treat all site traffic and speeds equally. we have cnbc's dominic chu with

us. dom, i've read online this means everything from free at last to locusts descending from the heavens and tearing the flesh from our bones. tell me, is it somewhere in the middle or are we all really doomed? >> it's probably at least for right now somewhere in the middle. there are other steps that will be taken at some point possibly to talk about what the future of these regulations are. in essence what it means, joe, is companies that provide broadband internet service are going to have that ability to control the economics. that's going to be the big deal here. what they could do is charge more for some companies to use their en from structure like the pipes, the highway that we all use over the internet or maybe control the speeds like you said. the argument for nut neutrality right now is no one person or group or company or otherwise should be denied any kind of equal access to the internet, the most profound commune cases and commerce tool of our modern era. but there are a lot of points on the other side of the debate.

one of the key issues right now is how the internet infrastructure in the future is going to be funded and paid for. broadband companies say it takes a lot of money to build, to maintain, to improve internet technology and it needs to be looked at from that economic perspective. that's the reason why it's such a big deal right now and the reason why a lot of people are curious about how it's going to proceed. we could see a congressional review act coming up. that's the next step possibly. that's what the american civil liberties union is asking for. we'll see how that goes. the other major story here is that mega merger between disney and pretty much buying up all of 21st century fox, $52.5 billion of disney stock to get everything in that fox empire. the things they're not going to get are the fox broadcast network, fox news networks, the fox tv stations and the sports networks like fox sports 1 and 2. but what disney does get is

pretty much everything else, nat geo, the movie studios and everything else. by the way, guys, at the end of this deal, fox shareholders will own about 25% of disney. a big deal in the media space. back to you. >> that is a big deal. cnbc's dominic chu. thank you very much. up next, democrat congressman john delaney is making an early push for the 2020 presidential bid. he's already all in in iowa. he'll be on our political roundtable coming up next on "morning joe." we come into this world needing others. then we are told it's braver to go it alone. ♪ that independence is the way to accomplish. ♪

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with us now, we've got a member of the house committee on financial services, democratic congressman from maryland, and the first person to declare their candidacy for the 2020 presidential election john delaney. congressman, thank you so much for being with us. first question, your take on what happened this past week in alabama? >> well, you know, obviously it was a big victory for the citizens of alabama and in many ways for the citizens of the country. and, you know, to me it wasn't expected. i thought they would come up with these results. but listen, people clearly came up, spoke in alabama. roy moore is one of the worst candidates in modern political

history. really a big win for the state of alabama. >> what's the democratic message for america, not for the coasts the democrats dominate but for middle america, for places like alabama, oklahoma, nebraska? what's that message? >> so i think the message should be jobs, pay and opportunity for their kids. i also think what the democratic party should stand for is civility, confidence and restoring respect for the profession of public service. i think that's what the american people are desperately looking for. right. they want the fighting to end. they want us to move into some kind of a post hyper partisanship world. we're always going to be a partisan country. that kind of partisan debate is ultimately healthy. but they'd like us to move to a world where we can actually start getting things done. the way you do that, is you have to have some measure of civility. and i think, you know, the american people want to see their faith that they've always had in their government restored to some level.

we have an unusual connection with our government here. when it's failing, we're kind of failing. i think they'd like to see some restoration of the faith and the pride they used to have in their government. and that's what the democrat -- >> let me get your -- yeah, let me get your take on the debate that's been roiling since the 2016 election and red state america, is there a place for congressional candidates who, let's say, are pro second amendment and also support, like, for instance, a ban on abortion after 20 weeks? pro-life candidates that want some limits to abortion? >> so look, i think the second amendment we question i think is easy. most democrats including myself believe in the second amendment and support the second amendment. we don't ness say lir interpret that to mean there can't be some commonsense limitations. but as relates to the women's reproductive freedom, i think clearly the democratic party platform should embrace and

support women's reproductive freedom. i also think we need to be a big-time party. if there's candidates that overwhelmingly align with our values on some big economic issues, some of the kind of priorities we're debating in the tax bill, if they align with our value and fundamentally look at this issue differently, probably from their own religious perspective, i think we should be embracing of those candidates. >> so following up on what joe was just getting to and what you were getting to in your answer i think, i think you'd have to admit that the two leading candidates right now potentially for democrat candidate for president would be elizabeth warren and bernie sanders. their view of american life is to pull the democratic priority more to the left. you've been out there. you've been in iowa and new hampshire. what sort of sense do you have of the electorate out there? they want to go left? where are they according to your eyes? >> i think they want us to get something done. to understand that the cost of doing nothing is not nothing.

and for decades hyper partisan politics has prevented us from getting some of the basic things we needed to do in this country to both prepare our country for the changes of the last several decades based on globalization and then importantly to prepare ourselves for the future which is going to change as profoundly for different reasons. technology, innovation, automation. i think what the american people understand deeply is their government has failed them. it stopped doing things. and that they're paying the price. right? so i think that's actually what they care about more than some of these kind of rallying party battle cries if you will. >> so do you think of yourself as a political figure, as someone more comfortable on the left than say on the middle and how do you feel personally? i know you want a big tent, lots of different opinions on some very difficult issues but where are you on late term abortion? >> personally, my wife and i

would follow the teachings of our church. we're active catholics. the decision i make personally is different than the decision i should be implying for citizens of this country, so that's kind of how i think about that issue. >> so you would not be for a ban against late term? >> it all depends how you define it, right, the science is moving. as relates to your first question, i do think of myself as a different kind of democrat, right, i think my policies, which i've laid out a broad policy agenda at this point, seek to accomplish goals the progressive movement has been fighting for for a long time. i do think market forces really work. i do think the private economy of the united states is an amazing innovation machine. what we should be doing is trying to find ways where the government and the private sector work together to achieve the goals that are really important for all americans. >> so that sounds a little like -- >> centrist and -- >> i want to return to your -- >> sure. >> because i'm a maryland catholic like yourself. >> yeah. >> but i think your answer of -- implies falsely that the catholic church just prescribes

how you ought to behave on abortion. the catholic church and the catechism and papal documents says clearly that abortion should be illegal and that this is a clear teaching of the catholic church. do you agree with that? how do you square the fact that you're saying abortion ought to be legal with the fact that the church says abortion is always an evil and that politicians may not allow it to be legal? >> so listen, you know, i love my church and i support my church which doesn't mean i agree with every specific doctrine of my church. my church has evolved across time just as all religions have. and, you know, i think i line up largely -- >> you rejecting the catholic church's teaching on the legality of abortion? >> i don't think -- listen, i respect the law of the land of the united states of america and support women's reproductive freedoms so that does conflict with some of the things my church advocates for as relates to the law of the land so yeah, i have a conflict with them on that. >> so congressman delaney, we're

out of time unfortunately. we always make sure we ask the existential questions with 15 seconds left. i also notice here as the only baptist on the panel that i've unwittingly surrounded you by three catholics and then donny deutsch who makes up his own faith -- >> i didn't think i was walking into vatican 3 here -- >> my lawyer's a jew. listen, we're going to invite you back and ask you questions that do not pertain to abortion. it's a big, big world out there. we thank you so much for being with us. all right. let's go now to stephanie ruhle. she picks up coverage right now. have a great weekend. >> thanks much, joe. good morning. i'm stephanie ruhle with a lot to cover today, starting with filing for an extension. the fate of the gop tax bill is uncertain. as a not so little republican says he's a no. >> unless they can figure out a way to add to the