you can't have that. . >> this will be a bill of love. it truly should be a bill of love. >> bush, immigration is an act of love. they come for love. i said excuse me. >> two-and-a-half years ago, i never was thinking in terms of politics. now i'm a politician. >> okay. as one nbc news report describes it last night, president trump seemingly took every contradictory position he has ever had on immigration yesterday, i actually wonder if his staff did this on purpose to expose, i'm not sure. it's wednesday, january 10th. with us we have the editor for the daily beast dan stein and white house reporter jonathan lemire and jeremy peters, nbc host of casey d.c. on msnbc casey hunt and there you go. so, gentleman, i actually think

people have given up and said show the world. the washington post robert costa connected our top stories on twitter like this nearly a year after talk of national imand revolution at the inauguration, it was reported today that president trump will head to davos, moved closer to a daca deal, and bannon is out at breitbar breitbart. ened i'm not sure what your anythingsome on this, at some point people give up, say, go for it. show yourself to the world. what do you think? >> well, there is no angle. it's that donald trump is broken, is in the process of breaking every sing him promise that he and steve bannon made in the final stretch of the campaign and, yes, it was steve bannon who put out that commercial that said they were going to fight against international conglomerates, international organizations, globalists, the very people making the rich richer and the poor poorer and i mean, well

lip, how rich is it? i can't. there are few words to, that could adequately describe how hilarious it is that donald trump is going to davos. it is the biggest slap in the face to every single person that voted for him thinking that he was going to fight for the little man and fight against the international organizations and the accumulation. he's going to davos, fired steve bannon. now he thinks that he needs to act out of love just like jeb bush a year-and-a-half later. >> well, first of all, joe, i wasn't here yesterday sork roll tide. >> there you go. get that out of the way. >> roll tide. >> davos is the very symbol of globalism that steve bannon and breitbart and the president last

year was railing against and fighting again it was the genesis of his campaign. the ethose of his campaign. we will be inward looking. it goes against everything he stood for 45 minutes which were broadcast on national television as someone in the press, i'll take it. i like that transparency, c-span with a presidential meeting. what he said was what he thought people in the room wanted to hear, which he does. we will have a pathway to citizenship. forgive everything i have been saying for the last two years. it's who's in front of them whoorks they want to hear, that itself what he does. >> mika the reason he did this was obvious. he wanted to disprove michael wolff's book. he wanted to prove that he was in complete control of his

mental facilities and actually what he did was show that he wasn't he couldn't keep up with where he was. he would amble over and say what democrats wanted to hear, yes, i'm with you. we should do this out of love. kevin mccarthy would grab him by the shoulder and say grandpa, come over here, papa, sit down here, don't hurt yourself. this is what you really believe. then papa would say, okay this is what i really believe. but grandpa kept kind of wandering back and forth and he had to be remind time and time again what he believed. so the very thing he was trying to prove, he disproves. he has no idea about the issues and has no positions on the issues that actually drive his base the most.

>> and they let him do. that they didn't try to stop him. so good. reporters were in the room as the president promised to sign a bill to extend the daca program is congress is able reach an agreement. both democrats and republicans tested the president on what has been his core issues and trump said he would accept their recommendations. >> what about a clean daca bill now? >> i have no problem. i think that is what dig is saying, we will come one daca, then we can start immediately on phase ii, which would be comprehensive. i would like it. i think we need to do daca first. >> you have to be clear, what senator feinstein is asking here, when we talk about daca, we don't want to be back here two years ago, you have to have secretary which the secretary will tell you. >> i think that's what she's saying. >> i think she is saying something different. i am thinking you are saying

daca without security. >> is there any agreement without the wall? >> no you can never fix the situation without additional wall and we have to fix existing wall that we already have. . >> no, i think a clean daca bill is a daca bill when we take care of the 800,000 people. to me a clean bill is a bill of daca, we take care of them and we also take care of security. that's very important. >> you know, i would vote for a path to citizenship, which isn't very easy for me, but i would do it just as an effort. but there are certain things that we got to guarantee we're going to do. >> but that will be brought up. i believe that will be brought up as part of what we are talking about. it's incentive for people to do a good job. that whole path is an incentive for people. it would be an incentive for people to work hard and do a

good job. so you know that could very well be brought up. can we do the properly, daca, you are not so far away from comprehensive immigration reform. few want to take it that further step, i'll take the heat, i don't care. i'll take all the heat you want to give me. i'll take the heat off the democrats and the republicans. my whole life has been heat. i like heat in a certain way. . >> no, i think it's changed. my positions will be what the people in this room come up with. i am very much reliant on the people in this room. i know most of the people on both sides. i have a lot of respect for the people on both sides and my, what i approve is going to be very much reliant on what the people in this room come to me with. i have great confidence and if they come to me with things that i'm not in love with, i'm going to do it because i respect them. >> whoa. my gosh. >> so, casey, casey hunt, you

are on capitol hill. first of all, i am going to ask you a second about how many republicans brains exploded spontaneous le yesterday after hearing this? so the president now supports and i would say if this ends up being his position will go along with him and be glad he is moderating and actually listening to other people other than the voices in his head and steve bannon, but he supports a clean daca bill, a path to citizenship and comprehensive immigration reform and said, quote, i will take the heat for that. now, you never know what will happen with donald trump. tomorrow he'll maybe he goes back into the and the same republicans he misled him on health care will mislead him on immigration, they'll say no you have to be this hard right. you have to listen to your

basech trump said last night made clear today our country needs the security wall, southern border, which must be a part of any daca approval some he goes back to the border wall, but if he's willing to trade daca and if he's willing to trade comprehensive immigration reform and even a pathway to citizenship for that wall, that would be a pretty massive immigration bill. that by the way would offend an awful lot of people a. lot of conservatives on the right. >> reporter: it would, joe. but i just don't from watch tag meetb and ten reading that tweet, i don't see how we have any more clarity this morning than we did yesterday morning about where the president stands on immigration or any of those issues or even whether he understands the contours of the debate at hand. i mean, after that meeting was sort of air income this very unusual public way, i ran into mark meadows from north carolina

that runs the freedom caucus in the hallways of the capitol, we asked him about this two-step process do daca now then comprehensive reform. i'll take the heat. meadows was under no circumstances is that an acceptable thing for us to do. the display that i think the president was trying to make, you alluded to it at the top of the show to show he is in control and that he understands and is pulling the strings and making things happen, but i think what you saw a display that showed a lack of understanding for the political pressure points for both parties, for his own party but for democrats in trying to give everybody what he thought they wanted. he just really confused the issue and made eight lot harder i think. >> you know, mika, so let's back up, let's say the president knew exactly what he was doing yesterday. let's say this is a part of the grand plan he never had before but he has now, if what the

president was saying was he was going to work with everybody in the room on comprehensive immigration reform, would be the guy that a lot of people voted for t. guy that said and promised. i will bring everybody into a big room and we're going to strike a deem. so i just, so we're not overly negative since i've already called him grandpa twice. >> papa. >> overly negative -- papa. since we're not overly negative about so we won't be, if he did this -- >> yeah. >> if he sat there and worked with everybody from kevin mccarthy to diane feinstein on comprehensive immigration reform that actually would be a fulfillment of how he promised to govern, working with people, getting deals done, so let's not all be too cynical. i'm sure he will blow it up later this afternoon remember

but i just, we felt the need to say that. >> i disagree. >> yeah, i'm sorry, you have to do some mental gymnastics to really get there sam stein from the reporting of many, i'll leave my own opinions out of this, from the reporting of many on this president's personality, it just appears he was trying to prove he was fit to lead and he proftd exactly the opposite. >> i don't is right. i agree we joe in theory, trump pitched himself as a person that can bring all sides towing, a deal maker, so on, except on one topic. that was immigration from the beginning. >> from the beginning, it was a fine topic where he was and his base were adamantly against anything that remotely resembled a daca compromise. i think it's important to stepping ba.

what they did they put on a show. >> the president set up a show to show he was fit. >> there was no. >> mentally. >> what type of security measures you would have and what your what year daca would come in ahead of times, those are the nitty-gritty na allow a bill to become a law. what we saw yesterday was a display, a lovely display. i enjoyed it as much as willie did to show they were having a conversation and to a certain degree to show the president was there and was competent. but what was most remarkable. i'll leave it here, when he said, my position is what the people in this room come up with. >> that to me is just a remarkable admission from a president to say, i don't actually have a position on one of the post-important domestic legislative items in front of me. you tell me what i should sign. >> not even a conviction.

>> jonathan, this isn't the first time the president showed switchiness on daca. he said we got to do something with heart, that was almost a year ago if february. he said. that as you watched the congressmen and the senators in that room. you saw kevin mccarthy to jump in to sort of correct the president, if there were a thought bubble over dick durbin's head sitting next to president trump, i would have loved to have seen it. he said when i came out of the meetings, my head was spinning. i don't know where the president stands, where this stands. i go those joe's point the question is, what is the follow-on today, what does president trump believe? does he hear this press coverage that was confusing and say, no, i'm a hard-liner again on daca, on immigration. >> i think we saw a lot last night, hey force deal is happening without a wall him he sort of went bab to that last night. i think it's important to take a half step back and real use how unusual this is. a white house meeting like this, usually the press pool comes in the 15, 20 journalists, we see a

spray, a few pleasantries and we're out the door. to be in there for all 55 many wants is striking. i think there is no question part of that was a pushback from the cater from the book about his mental capacity to lead. also even the story from the day before about the checktive time t. idea that trump needed these unstructured times to focus on twig and television and therefore wasn't engaged with the actual policy making. yet what we saw there was, in particular, when he had to be as you said sort of steered back to what his previous position was he agiven sortf demonstrated sort of a lack of firm understanding of any sort of policy details and in this case his own position and i agree, though, certainly trump has waffled on a few things, post-believe his base would stay with him. immigration may be the one word, zivenlt you heard about mark meadows and others fiercely if trump's corner, like anne coulter tweeted if he makes a deal here, one-term president.

this is the one thing i think his base, his base won't compromise on. i think the president who is so usually in tune with what he thinks his base wants won't end up going there. >> joe, i can't think of any other reason he held this meeting but to put on a show and try and respond to the visceral attacks he was experiencing over the past 24 hours. nothing more. >> well, that could be a part of it. he also is feeling the pressure from bob mueller. he will have to sit down with bob mueller. he had steve bannon running around before even when he was in the white house concerned about the 25th amendment. he's got to be concerned about impeachment, if democrats take over. he's got to be concerned about his low approval ratings about the republican party's low approval ratings and i'm not suggesting that donald trump has changed. i am only saying if again as my

massive size of the empire state building caveat, if he were to follow through on what appear to be his instinct, opening it up, having democrats and republicans sort through the nuances of immigration and bringing them toke on a big immigration bill, that would be a reset and when it comes to immigration, really quickly, anne coulter says president trump would be a one-term president. no, actually, he would fought. i don't think this bill or any bill is going to determine that. it's much bigger than that. steve ban is a great example a. guy two months agree go three months ago, one of the most feared in washington, d.c. steve bannon and donald trump sort of squared off. now steve bannon has been driven from breitbart. i'm not saying bannon won't come back.

i'm saying, though, it's all ab donald trump in washington, d.c. with conservatives. it's all about donald trump from the people who voted for him, so, yeah, he could strike a deal and they, of course, will figure out, jeremy peters how to make it sound like he got the best of democrats and how stupid the democrats were for falling into donald trump's trap. he got the wall. so, it was a fascinating display and trump's instinct has been in the past to strike deals on immigration. he's quietly talked about it. he's wanted to do the daca bill before. that's again, we're getting back to the donald trump from manhattan and not the donald trump that turned into a racist bigoted xenophobic populist. i don't know, it was an

interesting display yesterday. he showed a peak yesterday of what he promised people he would be outside of the immigration issue, with i is bring them in, i'll make a el doochl we'll get the country working again. >> and i think, joe, you have to separate out a daca fix from the broader immigration debate and the wall and border security and visas and legal immigration in reducing that, and i think that's -- if there is something the base can see that looks like a even just a digital wall, more border security enhancement with troops or border patrol agents down there, that's probably sufficient. daca aside so many want to fix that, i think probably trump doesn't have as big of a problem with the basement but he said something really remarkable yesterday in that conversation and that was, i don't think that this is going to be that complicated. i mean, really?

tell that to the republican party, which has tried time and time again to come one some type of comprehensive immigration reform fix and failed and especially tell that to the republicans who are around in 2006 when they tried to tackle this issue and then because of immigration and a combination of other factors, lost the house, the senate, and democrats to claim a majority of the governorships. i mean, this has always been a third rail for the republican party and i don't see how a president who was elected on this issue in large part because it was so galvanizing for his supporters can think this is not complicated. >> yeah, it is complicated. he said the same thing about health care reform and jeremy is exactly right. george w. bush and the democratic leadership were all towing on this, they were moving towards a comprehensive immigration bill t. people rows up, stopped it dead in its tracks. but if there is a daca deal in exchange for a wall and if they

move towards a gre hencive immigration reform that combines tough border security with a path to say legalization and not citizenship, because citizenship is a non-starter for most republicans. >> exactly right. >> then there could be a deal, but, you know, again, yesterday was one day. we'll see. we'll see how he does in davos. excuse me. >> we'll see what today brings. still ahead on "morning joe," how steve bannon's epic implosion plays into all of this. plus, we are joined by four leading senators involved in all the leading parts from democratic leadership, senator warren, vice chair of the intellicommittee. senator mark warner, senator chris coons on the daca debate and shenld whitehouse, first

bill kierans with the devastating seen in california. >> yesterday i was fearful of what the mud and the debris would, do it was even worse than i even could have imagined. 13 fatalities yesterday, three homes were swept off their foundations completely. numerous cars and vehicles were swallowed up. they moved boulders, trees. this is a picture of afterwards and after the mud and the water had gone down a little bit. just you know so sad for these people. they had to go through those fires, now these 13 fatalities following this incredible mud and debris flow t. storm, itself, moved out of arizona, let me explain y. this was the burn score. here's l.a. here. this is the area where the thomas fire was. the worst of it. most of the fatalities were near montecito here. this is the rain where it rained

and poured and flowed down towards the town, itself. the 101 was closed off yesterday for a while. there is no vegetation to hold it together. we had snow in the northern plains, a couple inches. what will be a bigger deal thursday into friday. this ice storm, we could see power outages, tennessee, kentucky, through indianapolis and our friends in western pennsylvania. east coast, we're looking just fine. be careful with your travels with the warm temperatures. we do have a lot of foggy conditions from chicago all the way through the deep south. washington, d.c., enjoy the warm warmth, unfortunately, carry that umbrella with you. it will pour friday morning. you are watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. ...it starts a chain reaction... ...that's heard throughout the connected business world. at&t network security helps protect business, from the largest financial markets to the smallest transactions, by sensing cyber-attacks in near real time and automatically deploying countermeasures.

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let's turn now to steve bannon out at breitbart. breitbart news added bannon would step down as chairman him his department cure comes after controversial comments he made about president trump and his family in a new book that

sparked backlash from the president. jeremy peters reported bannon's ouster was pushed by a former financial backer and breitbart news investor rebecca mercer, with one source telling the "time's" bannon's position grew untenable as associates and friends described him as unavailability grasp the severe yet of his falling out with the white house and its potential impact on breitbart. though bannon is leaving breitbart, he's fought expected to disappear from politics. the washington post reports according to a person close to him, bannon told associates he plans on creating a 2018 political operation. a source close to bannon tells nbc news bannon believes president trump is transactional and they will have a relationship again. jeremy, this is a lot of your reporting in the "new york times," what was the last straw here for bright boort, the last straw for rebecca mercer, who people should know is a close allie and patron of steve

bannon? rof >> reporter: really what it was, was the issue of breitbart being too politically involved in campaigns. you saw this in alabama where there were reporters on the ground who in some ways were indistinguishable from roy moore campaign operatives and rebecca mercer grew increasingly concerned, i am told that she as a minority owner in breitbart could face legal exposure. if you are a corporate entity, are you not allowed to get involved in political campaigns that directly. so it was a legal question for her and this is what led to the rupture between bannon and the mercers. >> so the president said that steve bannon has lost his mind, jonathan. he said calls him sloppy sleeve e steve. he has this whole thing going. if steve bannon is starting a political operation for 2013, is there an appetite given the candidates he has chosen and sided with, like roy moore in alabama? is he an effective leader that

way? >> first of all, he forgot where his money would be coming from. the white house says the publication of the wolff book sent a clear signal to republicans and conservative figures, basically, make a choice, trump or bannon. basically everyone went with trump. you don't stand up to the president on something like this and bannon from the wolff exerts has been telling people he does believe he will work back into the president's good graces knowing in the trump world you are never out. he talks to advisers he fired in the past. i think even he acknowledges there will be a cooling off period. for president, it wasn't the xerps that bashed himself and his family the excerpts, it was the idea that you know bannon was held responsible by a lot of people in the white house for the infighting that paralyzed the operations of west wing for months and he committed the cardinal sin which is outshining the president at types, getting too much credit for the

electoral victory. >> for criticizing the family. >> and sort of people think this is a bannon movement rather than a trump movement. i will certainly say as we reported on this and others, the trump allies both inside and outside the white house, very few are shedding any tears for steve bannon right now. coming up, it wasn't just immigration that had president trump's attention yesterday. he also had sought thoughts about a potential 2020 challenger. we will talk about that and hear live from senator elizabeth warren straight ahead. . >> oprah would be a lot of fun. i know her very well. you know i did one of her last shows, donald trump, before politics, her last week and she had donald trump and my family. it was very nice. no, i like oprah, i don't think she's going to run.

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i'm not going to the white house. there won't be anybody there that shares amnesty. it's not the view he had during the campaign, if he grants daca amnesty, that's off the table. maybe the same mistake ronald

reagan made signing the amnestying a of 1986. reagan regretted that decision. >> so. >> so, there's steve king obviously congressman -- no, congressman western iowa, which is obviously sort of like northwest florida where i'm from. that's sort of the epicenter in iowa at least of trump's space. >> right. >> i'm just curious, mika, we have been talking about this for about 30 minutes or so so, what, though, what is your take on the meeting and what would your take be if a comprehensive immigration bill came you out of these discussion, that included, yes, included the wall, included tougher border enforcement but at the same time included a fix on daca and also included comprehensive immigration reform

that would lead to legalized status for a lot of these immigrants that wouldn't be living in the shadows anymore? >> well, i just don't think that's going to happen. i don't think -- >> i know, but i'm asking what if it did happen? what would be your thing? >> it would be fascinating. this is a fascinating discussion. it's a real discussion. it could be had but i don't think that was the intention of yesterday's meeting. there is absolutely nothing this president has done to prove that he's serious about anything or has any depth or capacity on any issue. and that this was nothing more than a dog and pony show, where he was using democrats and republicans to try and show that he was fit when, in truth, he actually showed he had very little command of the issue so it's very hard to hypothesize about a potential deal on something like this that could come out of this. i, maybe i'm the, you know,

snarkiest person out there, but at this point, who would think anything would come out of this? he doesn't even -- he's not consistent over the course of an hour. >> so what you are saying is then, is that if there were an immigration fix out of this meeting, you would be zooit delighted and see it as a turning point? >> sure. >> being a little sarcastic. >> joining us now, we bought the the president of the progressive policy group heather mcgee. i'll put the same question to you, haeteather, am i being too tough on president trump? >> no, are you not being too tough on president trump t. the other announcement alongside this the reskrindzing of the protective status for a whole bunch of different groups of people coming to this country fleeing war and disaster and who generations ago would have been the ancestors of many of the people in this conversation, he's really shown very much that

when he has the power to do something unilaterally against the immigrant community and various immigrant communities in this country. i think what he said what he's going to do is what the people in the room are going to dork he punted it right back to congress and we know that congress even though the american people are quite united outside of trump's narrow base the american people are quite united in wanting safety and citizenship for d.r.e.a.m.ers, wanting a path to citizenship, wanting our country to be fair and inclusive and humane. >> that congress is not there. >> no no. >> so, heather, let's be exact because mika did not ask you the question i asked mika, i didn't ask whether she thought it was going to happen. i asked her if it did happen against all odds, would this be a positive development for a daca fix, a comprehensive immigration reform that led to citizenship in exchange for what

republicans would demand out of this, which i this i is reasonable, which is tougher border security, despite the fact as we all know illegal immigration is at its lowers point in years and was going down precipitously under president obama as well, if a comprehensive immigration bill that fixed daca and led to illegalization in exchange for tough border walls, tough border security, if that could come out of this in congress, would that be a positive step forward? >> it would definitely be a step forward for our economy. it would be a positive step forward for the millions of families that right now are living with a kind of uncertainty that so many of us born with the privilege of citizenship in this country really can't imagine. it would be a positive stechlt it would show congress was representing the will of the people. it would show this president could be a deal-maker. but i share the cynicism.

>> so, heather, it's willie, do you believe the president when he said he had the jeb bush-like comment coming from a place of love. it's got to be an act of love. he said in the past, this is difficult for him, this daca issue it has to be done with a lot of part. as you watch the moves he makes, dual like he is actually torn, he sides with daca but also in his head, believes that he has to stick with his hard line right wing conservative guys like steve king and live up to the promises he made during his campaign? >> you know, it's been very tempting from the moment that trump walked onto the national political stage to try to square the circle, of all the different places that he's been, all the different comments he's made, trump the reality show star, trump the leader of trump university, that defrauded students of and was settled for $25 million. trump the person that bankrupted atlantic city, you know, is he a

good businessman? does he really care? is he a new york liberal who is actually pro choice or is he someone who is the hard line that steve king can get behind. ultimately it's not about donald trump it's about the american people. and the american people want comprehensive immigration reform. there is a very loud megaphone that comes from the right wing, from places like breitbart that is actual of vitriol and hate. it has no empathy for the fact that most people in this country can trace their lineage back to people who came to the united states exactly under similar circumstance than the people here today without papers and yet our immigration rules were different and we really need to understand that it is not -- that it is in the best interest of this country to have clear and sort of well understood and fared and equitable immigration

laws. that's not what we have food. >> sam stein here, i want to change topics. we're in this moment of voter suppression an voter rights debates in this country. we have the disbandiment of the trump counsel, last night they ruled the districts in north carolina were unconstitutional, we have a supreme court case on wisconsin, your organization has a specific case it is attached to that involves voter registration in ohio. i have a two-part question, one is can you walk us through the dynamicings of what's going on in that case specifically but in a broader political sense, is the democratic party waking up to this as a important electoral issue and how big an issue should it be for the party heading into re-districting in 2020? >> thanks for that question, sam, i'm actually not on the set with you all if new york but here in d.c., because today by organization is in partnership

with the aclu of ohio arguing in a few hours in front of the supreme court in a case called houston versus apri. and it's commonly known as the voter purge case. and we're representing clients like larry harmon who is a navy war veteran who has lived in ohio all of his life except when he was overseas defending this country. he voted for the last time and usually only voted in presidential elections, he voted in 2008 him his life got in the way. his mother passed away. he became disill lugsd with life. when he went to the polls in the primary of 2015, he found that he was no longer registered and that's because of process that ohio has that other states have, ohio's is the most aggressive, it basically says, if you have voted infrequently, failure to vote is a reason why we should start a process to purge you from the rolls. and we believe and the lower

court agreed with us that the national voter registration act the motor voter law makes it very clear voting is not a use it or lose it right. we won in the lower court. we think we will win today. >> heather mcgee, thank you very much. i look forward to hearing more about today. coming up, he promised to drain the swamp. now the president is floating the idea of bringing back the pork. we'll play more from that remarkable 55 minutes inside the white house himself "morning joe" is coming right back.

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system. >> let's not. >> well, you should do it. i'm there with you. because this system really lends itself to fought getting along. it lends itself to hostility and anger and they hate the republicans and they hate the democrats and, you know, in the old days of earparks, you can say what you want about certain presidents and others where they all talk about they went out at dinner at night. they all got along. they passed bills. that was an earmark system. maybe we should think about it and we have to put better controls because it got a little out of hand, but maybe that brings people together. >> you know, casey hunt, and mika, let's start with you, mika, sten y hoyer is sitting there thinking i agree with every single syllable this man is saying when it comes to earmarks. you know, people, reformers wanted to get rid of earmarks for good reasons, but if you

needed to get something done, you could use an earmark and get certain members to come over to your side on a vote and move legislation. >> yeah. and casey hunt, just remember any conversation that you ever have with donald trump, if you got him in a room and you sort of tried to nail him down on issues, you would ask discover that he's a democrat. >> on this earmark issue, the president is right. it was easier to get things done when earmarks were around. you can see the business guy who wants to be able to shut the door behind two people and offer things. you want this, you want that? i'll make that happen. the two of you figure it out. i think you're seeing him express and you saw him express in public a frustration that he has, you know, learned about this reality in washington that there's no longer this horsetrading that goes on behind

the scene. >> that's fair. >> and i think there is some momentum to put this system back. he's right. the partisanship on capitol hill is at its absolute -- the worst it's ever been. will earmarks solve it all? i can't see that that happens but maybe it would make it a little bit better. >> it probably would. and, joe, if it was any other president saying that, it would be such welcomed news. unfortunately this president has brought vulgar bullying into the debate and any type of negotiating that's happened with people on capitol hill. so, it's sort of hard to balance it. it's hard to take him seriously. >> again, i'm -- it's hard to take him seriously for good reason. >> it's a struggle. >> he will be tweeting things in an hour or two that, of course, will disprove everything that was said yesterday. >> yep. >> willie, i do want to step back, though, and say, again, if -- the huge if here.

if this president was moved by something that happened, if general kelly came to him or if his lawyers came to him and said, buddy, you can do what you want to do, but if you want to survive and you want your family to survive, you better start figuring out how to make some friends on capitol hill because who knows, democrats could take over and impeachment could come. i don't know. i'm just saying if you just look at the words of the meeting, especially when he's talking about earmarks, that is music to democrats and a lot of democratic chairmen and women's ear. >> that was an interesting one. it sort of came out of nowhere. he started to talk about earmarks. it sounded like, as you say, maybe someone planted that seed and put a bug in his ear. obviously, paul ryan had the opposite reaction. he doesn't want to hear about that. david mcintosh at the club for

growth came out and said no, no, no. here is his statement. republicans, if they bring back earmarks then it virtually guarantees they'll lose the house. bring back earmarks is the antithesis of draining the swamp. it goes against everything that his supporters have stood for. perhaps he is floating something out to democrats. >> sam stein, it seems, though -- i'll make friends with my former colleagues. if he wants to step out of the steve bannon box, he has to start ignoring everything that the republican leadership says. nothing that had will get him to the comprehensive immigration reform that will make americans stop and say, wait a second. that's washington working. if he wants to figure out how to

make the hill start working more effectively. first of all, he has to stop insulting people every five to ten seconds but, secondly, talking about earmarks and other things would at least get him and people on the hill on the same page. but, again, it must be -- we must remind people it was the house republicans that insisted, when we all said it was a disaster, that the president needed to start with health care. they were insistent and they shoved him into the corner and, stupidly, he listened to them. and i'm just wondering, if he's going to listen to them again when they say no, no, you can't do that, mr. president. you can't pass a comprehensive infrastructure reform. that will blow a hole in the deficit, after they put a $1.5 trillion hole in the deficit with tax cuts. if trump can get immigration reform and a big infrastructure bill before 2018, have three

huge bills to go to the voters with in 2018 but republican also fight him on the last two. >> i totally agree. i love your generic republican congressman accent. >> you cannot do that. it is wrong. do not do that. but, please, let's blow $1.5 trillion hole in the deficit. >> i knew i was derailing my own time by saying that. i will say the problem that trump faces is not that he's willing to just allow congre congressional republicans to pull him in one direction. it's two-fold. it's that and the fact that his understanding of policy remains fairly superficial. if he had a definitive immigration policy that he wanted to push, that would certainly help matters and allow him to break a little bit from congressional republicans. you could put out a plan and you could tell the party, i'm not going to you on this. you're coming to me on this. and he would sell them on that. problem is that he doesn't have a plan. and i think that's sort of indicative with this whole

earmarks thing, too. it came up out of nowhere. if he was interested in earmarks, he should have told other people, including his own staff members, who were caught off guard by -- my own reporting here, completely caught off guard that he was going to embrace earmarks and frantically had to walk it back because it doesn't go with this conservative ethos they're trying to push. if trump wanted to make that move in the direction of moderation, if he wanted to build these post partisan coalitions on infrastructure and immigration, it would help tremendously if he planted a flag instead of allowing everyone else to write the bill. >> yeah. spreading out grass seed and seeing what grows. coming up, chief white house correspondent for "the new york times," peter baker, joins us with his new reporting. and president trump's personal lawyer sues buzz feed for publishing that controversial trump dossier. editor in chief joins us on set

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i think we have a great group of people to sit down and get this done. in fact, when the media leaves, which i think should be probably pretty soon -- but i will tell you, i liked opening it up to the media. i think they see more than anything else that we're all very much on a similar page. not the same page but i think we

can really get something done. >> okay. welcome back to "morning joe." it is wednesday, january 10th. with us, we have politics editor for the daily beast, sam stein. white house reporter for the associated press, jonathan lemeier, and capital correspondent and host of kasie dc, kasie hunt. that went well. jeremy peters. and joining the conversation, peter baker from "the new york times" and editor in chief of buzz feed, ben smith. you guys are in the news this morning. good to have you on. >> thank you. >> joe, we bumped in with more of that meeting. i find it -- it's the most transfixing 55 minutes i've ever seen and i think it says so much. >> donald trump is very glad to hear that you said that, mika because, you know -- hey, last week when stephen miller was on

and yelling at jake tapper -- >> right. >> wait a second. i saw this in the first season of trump, the american president. the reality president. are they showing reruns? so yesterday, i think yesterday, we've got season two of the crown, which i finished that. >> you love that, yeah. >> incredible. i think this was the debut episode of season two, trump the american president, the reality show president. and maybe he's doing a sort of -- maybe jr goes from bad to good and bobby goes from good to bad like they did in "dallas." >> i think it's more of a game show. is he fit and every week someone is voted off if they don't think he's fit. >> well, that was interesting, though. we need to congratulate ben smith. when he walked on the set i heard everybody congratulating ben smith for being sued by the president of the united states.

good on you, son. that's good stuff. >> by his personal lawyer but thank you. >> still, it's okay. you're a winner, too. my lord. >> exactly. peter baker, i want to bring you in here and i want to ask your opinion, obviously. i'll ask you of the people you talked to on capitol hill, members of the senate, members of the administration, as you were trying to sort through exactly what was happening yesterday, what -- bottom line it for us. what was the consensus in washington about the donald trump we saw yesterday, which was the donald trump that he told people he would be, the deal maker that could bring both sides together. sn what was going on? >> the context was pretty clear. for days everybody has been talking about whether he was fit for office, in fact, whether he should be removed from office under the 25th amendment. a clear demonstration, attempt to demonstrate he could handle the job. 55 minutes with the leading

members of congress, discussing a substantive issue. he didn't berate anybody, call anybody derogatory nicknames, issue new conspiracy theories or what have you. he also didn't master the substance of it. one point he gets sort of led into a deal that he obviously didn't want to make by dianne feinstein and kevin mccarthy, nudging him back, mr. president that's not really what you're talking about here. the point was to kind of demonstrate that he can handle the job. you know, as you say, you know, 55 minutes, mika, it's extraordinary to watch the sauce being made a little bit. the camera is usually tossed out after two to three minutes of platitudes. it was interesting to hear people actually talk without going through the talking points. >> peter, do you really think the sausage was being made? >> well, yeah, to an extent. everybody laying their cards on the table to some extent. obviously not the way it will be

behind closed doors but we got past the mr. president, we are glad to be here and this is a wonderful occasion kind of nonsense. the stuff that doesn't mean anything. at least we heard what the democrats were saying. let's do a longer term plan but first let's get daca fixed, do it clean. republicans are saying yes, clean but to us that means it has to have money for border security. we're not clear how much the wall plays into that. the bar was low, you know. he didn't exactly, i think, impress everybody in there. democrats came out saying look, we obviously realized we were being used for props for his reality show. on the other hand they were willing to be cautiously optimistic. >> yeah. they look absolutely miserable but okay. >> it seems that you could look, ben smith, in there and draw two or three conclusions from it, even if nothing goes from here, by watching, as everybody says, the sausage being made. one, you heard the president

saying he wanted a deal to be done, telling democrats that he thought that they were closer on a deal than other people thought, that he does want a daca fix and that he is going to be pulled back by house republicans, especially, through the entire process from dealing with the democrats. which is actually happened time and time again. this is not a one-off in this case. the president will say things that will suggest a deal can be done with democrats and 15 minutes later, the house republican leadership will freak out, call him and say, you have to take some steps back. and they did that yesterday. they keep -- any time the white house tries to strike deals with democrats, it's the house republican leadership that freaks out and stops it. >> but i think the presence of the cameras are important. donald trump's most important moments of his professional life played out on television. there's the reversal of the usual white house reality in

that in this white house the real things are things that do happen on television and the things that happen behind the scenes are meaningless and often false. this was the realist things are the performances here. and i think that was, in some sense -- you could imagine that this is season two and i think that was, i think -- i'm sure donald trump came out of that thinks it was a success. also, you have hundreds of thousands of americans who thinks he spends 17 hours a day watching gorillas fight on television. so it is a very low bar. >> joe i have to ask you, like, he comes out of that meeting and he talks to john kelly. who would be the people -- what would they say about how that went? what would you say if you were in there? >> the white house -- >> i want to know. >> i would say if i were john kelly, i would say good job, mr. president. if you keep acting this way, you're going to actually kill the steve bannon stories, the

michael wolffbook. if you want to stop republicans from being slaughtered in 2018, you will work with democrats and get comprehensive immigration reform done and say i did something nobody else could do and then mr. president you could start fixing america like you said you were going to do and pass a massive infrastructure bill. don't worry about the debt. republicans have proven they don't care about the debt and go into 2018, mr. president, with tax reform, comprehensive immigration reform, transportation infrastructure reform that everybody loves and you can say i did what nobody else did. but, mr. president, if you're going to jump like a lackey for house republicans every time they call you and tell you what you cannot do, then you're not going to get anything done and it will be a disaster just like when you listened to them when they told you that you had to start with health care reform when everybody else in washington knew that was stupid to do politically. so, mr. president, if you keep going on this line, you may save

the republicans in the house for themselves. they don't want to be saved. they want to take it straight over a cliff and by the way, give me your phone. stop tweeting. you'll be in the mid 40s if you do this and may save yourself from being impeached. that's what i would say if i were john ankle. >> i jonathan lemier? >> it's a circular thing that feeds upon itself, performing for the television cameras and later we'll see how it's received on television. >> and then we'll self literally ruin everything, destroy, self destruct. >> he largely received positive marks for the transparent of the event, unusual to have accuracy in there so long, that he was willing to talk deal. for the most part he sent out mixed messages, that it seemed like he was running the show. i think we saw, as previous bipartisan ship with the chuck and nancy meetings, he told

people around him he liked how he was perceived, that he looked like the deal maker. that didn't last. we'll have to see if it does this time. >> jeremy, you said two different languages were being spoken in this room. explain. >> yeah. they're so far apart, it's hard to see them come together. there's a reason comprehensive immigration reform is so elusive. they can't even agree on what the word comprehensive means. so i think looking forward here, trump is not the impediment. his party is the impediment. that's what you have to wonder. if in the context of everything else that has been happening over the last week, the president announcing he's going to davos, would embrace a daca fix much to the chagrin of the hard right of his party, jettisoning steve bannon, is this a moment in which the president starts to break with

the hard right? i don't know the answer to that question. the president always seems to drift back to them. he knows that's where his base is. he knows that's how he's going to get re-elected. he can't get re-elected without them. but maybe we're starting to see something a little different here, a different type of leadership style from the president. >> possibly. okay. >> i don't see it because he basically said, at one point, i will sign whatever you guys give me. >> right. >> that is not like a break of -- >> please sign this, sir. >> yeah. another big story playing out on capitol hill. senator dianne feinstein, the top democrat on the judiciary committee, defied republicans yesterday, or many of them, when she decided to release the august congressional testimony of fusion gps co-founder glenn simpson without the approval of the committee chairman chuck grassley. the firm hired former british spy christopher steele to do opposition research on donald trump, which later became the

infamous steele dossier. among the most significant takeaways, simpson said he was interested in finding out about trump's russian business activities, testifying that trump had, quote, made a number of trips to russia and talked about doing a number of business deals but never did one, and that struck me as a little bit odd and calling for an explanation. so in june or may of 2016, simpson said he hired steele, whom he described as a, quote, lead russianist for the british secret service. according to simpson's testimony in september 2016, steele told an fbi contact that he believed donald trump was enthralled with russian intelligence and that he believed russian intelligence was cooperating with the trump campaign. steele passed the information on to the fbi more than a year ago. and, according to simpson, the bureau said it had already heard something along those lines.

we now know the information the fbi heard about came from an australian diplomat who, according to "the new york times" -- stay with us here -- told the fbi that he had drinks with trump campaign aide george papadopoulos and that he had information that would embarrass hillary clinton. he found it totally confounding that ranking member feinstein would release the information, that it will jeopardize the committee to secure voluntary testimony. here is senator feinstein, defending her actions. >> why did you decide to do that? >> well, because i think people are entitled to know what was said, and the lawyers also wanted it released.

i see no problem with releasing it. >> senator feinstein, senator grassley said you jeopardized their ability to get certain witnesses like kushner. your reaction? >> oh, i don't think so. that's been difficult in any event. >> why do you think they referred steele to the justice department for potential criminal investigation? >> my own view, because, to my knowledge, there have not been a single fact in that report that has been proven to be incorrect, that it's really to muddy the waters and create a problem. you know, steele brought this information in to the fbi and it's quite amazing that you get punished for providing information. >> wow! >> yeah. you know, she did the right thing.

chairman grassley has no room to criticize anybody after his actions over the past several weeks. he has shown absolutely no independence and, in fact, has proven that his only interest is muddying the waters by -- you read through these documents. the republicans have selectively been leaking them to make them -- to mislead voters, to mislead journalists. so, transparency was called for here because you had chairman of the committee and members, unfortunately, of conservative media that wanted to twist and distort the true facts and peter baker, i thought one of the most fascinating things here that we learned from this was that they actually got the information to the fbi because they had concerns early on and then

stopped talking to the fbi later on because they felt like the fbi wasn't taking it seriously enough. of course, the fbi was quietly moving forward with papadopolous and moving forward. but just showing their intent, they actually knew -- they felt like they had a responsibility because they had this information that nobody else seemed to have. and when it seemed like the fbi wasn't serious about it, they said, okay, we've done our job, and they walked away. >> yeah. one of the most important things we've learned from this also is that the merging narrative from president trump supporters that this document was used as the basis for the fbi investigation is not the case. you know, that this was not the genesis of this investigation, it was not as a result of the democrat-funded opposition research report, which is the way some of the people on capitol hill would like to present this.

in fact, as glenn simpson notes, the fbi was already on to the issue and, in fact, didn't seem to take it as seriously as glenn simpson thought they ought to take it. we learn more about the origins of the investigation. we learn more about this firm, fusion gps and its role, at least the role that glenn simpson is portraying. for journalists and for people who have been following this case it's a useful window into an important chapter in the story. >> and, last night, trump's personal lawyer said they're going to file a lawsuit against buzz feed, ben smith, for publishing the dossier. you have a piece in "the new york times" that's entitled i'm proud we published the trump/russia dossier and in one sentence you say i haven't had a person who approached me to say i wish i hadn't read the dossier and i wish i didn't have more insight. do you feel that way, does

anyone? any concerns about the lawsuit? >> you know, first of all, what you've seen, particularly this week, you have the senate intelligence committee spending hours and hours and days and days intensely focused on debating this document. the notion that this document ought to be secret, that we ought not to know what they're debating, that broadly the public should have no insight into this high-stakes fight on capitol hill, both republicans and democrats for different reasons are making the case that this dossier is central to what's happened the past couple of years is ridiculous. in terms of the lawsuit, michael cohen -- if you read the lawsuit it's very much about defending donald trump. micha michael cohen and a couple of russian figures have sued us. you know, cohen, in particular, has a long history of harassing, occasionally suing journalists. what's more broadly interesting is that you see the cohen lawsuit and these two other lawsuits are coming at a moment when last year you saw

particularly the russians take the open american electoral system and try to turn it against other american institutions. i think you're seeing to some degree that with the legal system right now. being turned against the press. >> kasie hunt? >> yeah, ben, i have a quick question for you. one of the more interesting things buried in this transport that feinstein put out is a lawyer for fusion gps kind of asserted -- or did assert straightforwardly that someone has already been killed as a result of the publication of this dossier. do you know anything about that? does that rays raise any concerns on your end? >> thank you for asking that, kasie. i'm glad you did. he didn't give details but it's been broadly reported that a kgb general was allegedly a source for the dossier and he was found dead. he was found dead december 26th, two weeks before we published

the dossier. if that's what he was referring to, he was mistaken. but it's not totally clear what he was referring to. >> what you're saying, ben, is that the russian intelligence services are unusually adept and actually killed him two weeks before you even released the dossier. this is an intelligence service to be fearful of. it's sort of like straight up -- >> if that's why he died. there are a lot of dots being connected here. >> no, i was being sarcastic. the guy died two weeks before you released t mika, the republic republicans have been so spun up, mika, about the do ssier fo a year now. they know -- they know that a large percentage of it is actually accurate. and yet they're spinning one lie after another lie after another lie around it.

and even, unfortunately, i think it's dreadful that a senate chairman would actually try to muddy the waters, as dianne feinstein said, as much as he has, to try to keep the truth from the people of iowa and the american people. but that's exactly what he has been doing. and it's all in the record. and you can look at the actual information and the testimony and see clearly that the republicans were lying to their voters. >> yeah. so, at every turn, it appears this president is putting his own party in a horrible position. even if you look at yesterday's meeting. i'm not sure what the compliance for this president is in the republican party. i don't know what they think they're getting out of t i don't know what they think they're getting in return. i really don't. >> you know, orrin hatch says that he may be the greatest

president ever. i mean, what a great honor to be working for a guy that orrin hatch thinks may be even a greater president than abraham lincoln. >> that must be some regulatory reform. jeremy peters, thank you. we'll get reaction from senate democrats, elizabeth warren and mark warner. first, senator chris coons joins the conversation.

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what about a clean daca bill?

>> i would be agreeable to that. >> you have to be clear, when we're talking about daca, we don't want to be back here two years later. you have to have security, as the secretary would tell you. >> i think that's what she's saying. >> i think she's saying something different. >> what do you think i'm saying? >> daca without security. >> joining us now, a member of judiciary and foreign relations committees, senator chris coons of delaware. hi, chris. >> hi, mika. thank you for having me on. >> what happened in that meeting? are you hopeful that something positive could develop out of it? >> mika, my new year's resolution is to be hopeful. >> okay. help me. >> to bes positive. i think there are millions of americans who voted for president trump, thinking they were getting a businessman who knew how to bring people together, to cut big deals and to sort of get through some of the divisions of washington. that's not the president we've seen last year. but for a variety of reasons, he has realized that that's the

president he needs to be in order to be successful as president and in order for the republican party to survive the 2018 elections. so, what i thought we saw yesterday in that meeting, both in the visuals and in the conversation was a president really trying to be and sound reasonable on a compromise around the dreamers, on daca. but we're coming up against a very difficult deadline that i'll remind you he created. and we've got nearly 800,000 young americans who are really at risk of losing their place in our society. and there is a big gap between the right in the republican party and the majority of the country on immigration. we passed a broad bipartisan immigration bill in the last congress in the senate by an overwhelming bipartisan vote. never got taken up in the house. the politics of immigration are very hard. but if the president chooses to make this not just a one-day photo-op but to show real leadership here, he could actually move us forward by

getting a resolution to the status of d.r.e.a.m.ers and new investment border security. >> joe? >> so, senator, joe scarborough here. you're saying if the president works with the senate and then works in a bipartisan way in the house and doesn't allow himself to be led around politically by the nose by house republicans that you actually could have a sweeping immigration reform bill that could bring full-time -- permanent relief to d.r.e.a.m.ers, pass an immigration reform bill that would lead to perhaps legalized status and also donald trump could get part of his wall and toughened border security. is that a possibility? >> i think it is a possibility. if you think about it, it was nixon, hard-line anti-communist who opened to china to have someone who ran on a hard-line

anti-immigrant campaign platform to be willing to genuinely embrace a bipartisan solution, to finally get us over this hurdle. president obama, president bush, both parties over many congresses have tried very hard. the politics in the republican party of allowing a pathway to citizenship for folks who came here, even through no fault of their own, as children, is very difficult. but this is the president. president trump is the president who could get that done and i'll remind you that comprehensive immigration reform bill taken up and passed by the senate scored as adding hundreds of billions of dollars to our gdp. it would help deal with some of the deficit problems that the tax bill he just signed into law may well create. it could really be a win for every sector of our society and economy. >> sam? >> senator, sam stein here. daca has this march 5th deadline that requires or compels some kind of resolution. with respect to what comes out

of that, you're talking about comprehensive immigration reform bill. it's ambitious. and i want you to be candid about this. because it's not just republicans who could be an impedestrii impediment about this. be candid. there is a toxicity of trump that doesn't want democrats to give him a victory. that's true of 2018 mid terms where your own base would find it problematic if you are seen as working with this president. to what degree does that influence or impact? >> there's partisan politics in both parties and for every el t electoral cycle. the challenge of those of us sent here by our states to do what our system requires is to find ways to compromise. i'm willing to work with our president if that would move forward the legal status of 800,000 young people currently in limbo. i'm willing to work with our president if that will get a real infrastructure bill done in

a constructive way. i'm not willing to work with our president if he puts to risk the rule of law. i'm working diligently hard on the judicial committee to protect robert mueller and make sure he's able to advance his investigation. i also extend an open hand to work with the administration on advancing manufacturing. i was just with the sba administrator from the trump administration in delaware, welcoming her to tour a great small business in delaware. it's one of the committees i serve on. i have no problem working with the trump administration where they're doing good things that will help create jobs or make our country safer or more just. but i do think, to your point, sam, that the trump administration, that president trump has done things and continues to do things that requires democrats to stand up. >> senator, jonathan lemier. the president has, at times, flirted with bipartisanship and whether by congressional republicans or cowing to his

base, has pulled back. do you think this one will be any different? he already tweeted the insistence he would require a wall as part of any deal and, of course, that's inflammatory for a lot of democrats. secondly, there's been a lot of discussion did this meeting happen at all as a way for the president to push back against criticism that he may not be up to the job? i want to get your sense that have from what you saw yesterday. >> well, the proof will be in the pudding. we'll see in a matter of days whether what happened yesterday was simply a publicity stunt that allowed the president to once again change the narrative so that today everything we're talking about on television this morning is about this promising start to bipartisan conversation around daca and immigration reform rather than the president's fitness for office. is he just trying to change the conversation for a day or is he trying to demonstrate real leadership? it would require real political sacrifice for him to sign into law something that overcame the opposition of a hard core group of house republicans to any

pathway to citizenship for d.r.e.a.m.ers. that sort of leadership could produce bipartisan progress and i have to remain hopeful it's possible or it's not worth getting on the train every morning from wilmington, delaware, down to washington to do this job. this system doesn't work without compromise. i was struck that the president threw out casually into the mix yesterday that he thinks we should bring back earmarks, that congress should have some role in directing appropriations. that's one of many ways in which our budget or appropriations process is broken. we don't have an opportunity to identify specific projects in our home states that get vetted, that benefit a public purpose and that is one of the reasons that we haven't had a full and productive appropriations process in the seven years that i've been here. but that was a stunning change in position for many in his party and many in his base. will he follow through on that and continue to support the idea of some sort of new but transparent earmark? will he follow through on

yesterday's meeting and take substantive actions that might inflame his base? we'll see. that's the challenge of leadership. >> senator chris coons, thank you very much. up next, senator shelden whitehouse was pushing for the fusion gps testimony to be released. we'll get his take on where the russia investigation goes from here now that the testimony has been made public. we'll be right back. ♪ it's a lot easier to make decisions when you know what comes next. if you move your old 401(k) to a fidelity ira, we make sure you're in the loop at every step from the moment you decide to move your money to the instant your new retirement account is funded. ♪ oh and at fidelity, you'll see how all your investments are working together.

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joining us now, a member of the judiciary committee, democratic senator shelden whitehouse of rhode island. very good to have you on the show this morning. joe? >> yeah. senator, earlier today, we were talking about how the republicans had treated this document, how i had accused them of trying to muddy the water to distract from what's actually in the document and what's actually been going on. can you first, for our viewers, talk about what senator grassley and other republicans have been doing and then tell us why you think it's a good idea, that all americans have had a chance to see the testimony? >> well, many years ago, during the watergate hearings, the legendary senator sam irvin said

when you're going on a bear hunt, you shouldn't be distracted chasing rabbits. and what the republicans have been doing throughout this effort, the white house, republicans in congress, the right-wing media, is launching all sorts of rabbits to try to distract us from looking at the collusion between trump and russia, if any, looking at the obstruction of justice, if any, and designing legislation to protect the 2018 elections. so, way back when, when mike flynn got in trouble, what was the rabbit then? it was all about were there leaks? then we went through -- do you remember the unmasking rabbit? that turned out to be nothing. and with this, what they've tried to do is create this sense that there's some collusion between the russians and christopher steele, the guy who wrote the dossier that glenn simpson and fusion gps published. and when you look at glenn simpson's testimony, it's clear that that could not be farther from the truth. and rather than just argue the

point, i think senator feinstein did the smart thing, throw the whole transcript out there and let people see it. >> kasie? >> senator whitehouse, a slightly different topic that we spent talking about on the show, revolving association around daca. i'm wondering, do you think that democrats should draw a line in the sand and refuse to support the spending bill if there's no deal to help these daca kids? >> the problem with that is that if you make too strong of an ultimatum, president trump can use that against us. and i think the best thing for us to do is recognize that we have a strong negotiating position, we have a number of priorities, including funding the children's health insurance program and keeping community health centers funded and making sure that flood insurance and disaster relief get out. so, there's a lot that we have to get into this. i think if we draw an absolute

ultimatum line, that gives the republicans the opportunity to force a government shutdown, move the blame to us and to the daca kids and in many respects it's counterproductive. it is an absolute democratic priority. the d.r.e.a.m.ers wouldn't be d.r.e.a.m.ers if it weren't for the democratic party. we do have to get this done but i think it's wise to see it as a strong priority and negotiate from the position of strength we now enjoy rather than revert to a very simple ultimatum that can be used against us. >> sam? >> senator, hi, sam stein. >> i think dana millbank had it pretty well in his article today, just for the record. >> you should promote our material. >> sorry. >> it's okay. i'm tempted to ask on daca. but i want to go back to the dossier and what happened yesterday. chairman grassley's point in refuting senator feinstein's decision to release the

transcript was that this will make it harder to compel people to come in and give testimony, that they will say, well, if i give you a private testimony, there is not an insignificant chance that a member of this committee will just unilaterally leak what i said at their whim. and my question is, why is he wrong? >> well, because of the circumstances in this case, you had the testimony and the circumstan circumstances around fusion gps being basically selectively used by a number of republican interests. and you had the actual subject of the interview, a guy whose transcript it was -- glenn simpson himself writing op-ed pieces saying here is what i said in my transcript. i wish they would release my

transcript, what's being said about me would be blown up if people saw the transcript. so you had a very willing witness, whose transcript was being released. and if that's the precedent here, that a willing witness, who wants this transcript released faces the risk that the transcript might get released, that's a very different thing than somebody with whom an understanding has been reached that their testimony won't be kept private. but people who come in and testify in committees, they don't have any right to have the committee never release their testimony. we're not a grand jury under rule 6e. for tactical reasons and reasons of coordination with law enforcement, we may want to hold things private. but no witness has a right to -- >> certainly that's true. >> -- keep it private. >> grassley's point is also -- i may be reading too much into it. you are making it easier for potential witnesses to recognize the paths that the committee is taking. and the question -- >> that would overlook the fact

that this is a witness who wanted the transcript released. >> true. i'll give you that. >> we work by precedence. and the precedence this sets is that a witness who asks his testimony to be released can have it released. i don't think that affects kushners or young trumps or anybody else who might be in the testimony. >> young trumps. >> because, again, it's a voluntary release. and also it takes a certain amount of, let's just say, audacity, senator, for chuck grassley to express shock that this information was getting out when it was chuck grassley and lindsey graham that made a criminal referral to the justice department while republicans and other people on the right were selectively leaking testimony in a way that, of course, violated the very protections that chuck

grassley now claims to want to embrace. >> it's actually, in some respects, even a little bit worse because the criminal referral referred to a bunch of stuff that was classified. so, the assertions that they've made are hard to rebutt and hard for the subject of the criminal referral to rebut. at least senator feinstein took the record, put it out there so that everybody could make their own decision rather than selectively quoting from or referring to classified material that the person who is the subject of the criminal referral doesn't have a fair shot to respond with. >> chuck grassley is angry, mika, because he wasn't able to twist and distort the record and, after suggesting that these people committed a crime and

also revealing information, the senator says possibly classified information, he's angry actually now that dianne feinstein released everything so americans could find out that, in fact, what he was doing was wretching their words from the proper context. >> it's truly disturbing. and i don't know what it's worth. why? >> one thing that i would throw in at this point, i think it would be -- this makes a really good moment for the judiciary committee to get back to working in a bipartisan fashion and paying attention to things that i mentioned at the opening. >> yeah. >> was there collusion, obstruction of justice and what are we doing to protect the 2018 elections? this whole business of chairman grassley saying we're going to go our way as republicans and you go your way as democrats, i thi think, has led to a lot of this. i think it was a significant part of why senator feinstein felt she was totally within her rights to release this transcript. >> okay. >> all right.

senator shellden whitehouse, as always, thank you so much for being with us. we really do appreciate it. you know, mika -- >> good to be with you. >> if republicans -- i want to pick up on something that the senator said. if republicans don't want to look back at, let's say, what people connected to donald trump may or may not have done during the 2016 election, could they at least work in a bipartisan manner to make sure that our elect oral process is more protected in 2018 and again in 2020? it just -- lead, follow or get out of the way, as ted turner said. >> yeah. >> if you're going to try to obstruct the investigation, help obstruct the investigation and what happened in the past, at least help us all out by making sure that you're taking steps to see that this doesn't happen again in the future. >> try to remember what this is all about. it's about our country.

try. still ahead, vice president mike pence took his last trip to south korea very seriously. the white house just announced he's heading back. this time to lead the u.s. delegation to the winter olympics. "morning joe" is coming right back. (burke) at farmers, we've seen almost everything so we know how to cover almost anything. even a swing set standoff.

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you'll always be up to date. you can easily add premium channels, so you don't miss your favorite show. and with just a single word, find all the answers you're looking for - because getting what you need should be simple, fast, and easy. download the xfinity my account app or go online today. vice president mike pence and second lady karen pence lead the u.s. delegation to the 2018 winter olympics in south korea next month. the white house says his attendance will send a clear signal to the north korean regime that the u.s. will not seed any power on the world stage. pence's trip stops in alaska and in japan. meanwhile, south korean president says he is open to

meeting with north korean leader kim jong-un in person if certain conditions are met. however, moon stresses that holding talks for the sake of holding talks cannot be the goal and that his country will never accept a nuclear north korea. president moon says that president trump deserves great credit for instigating those discussions. jonathan, let me hear your thoughts. >> this does seem pence's trip for the olympics seems to come at a moment there's perhaps been a slight thaw in relations here, openness to have some sort of discussions between the north and the south, but we know what an unpredictable actor kim jong-un is in north korea and know what an unpredictable actor the president of the united states can be with his rhetoric. >> his twitter feed. >> declarations of "fire and fury," pronouncements, calling the dictator rocket man. i was part of the president's

trip to asia when he delivered a thunderous address in the south korean congress. wanting to send a reassuring message to allies in terms that we would have their back if north korea were to start anything. but at the same time, some rhetoric from the president about the situation has unnerved those in seoul and tokyo and beijing and other places. >> they're not alone. kasie hunt. >> i think one thing here is this is the kind of situation that could lead to unexpected diplomatic encounters. this is a delicate thing, worth asking the vice president's office do they have plans for were he to bump into north korean athletes or something along those lines. this is a kind of situation has an element of unpredictability. >> much more on the fascinating 55 televised minutes inside the white house. the american public watched

president trump thinking through his immigration position in real time yesterday. but did he provide any clarity? we'll talk about that. and senators elizabeth warren and mark warner join us from capitol hill. "morning joe" is coming right back. and you have the determination to keep going. humira has a proven track record of being prescribed for nearly 10 years. humira works inside the body to target and help block a specific source of inflammation that contributes to symptoms. in clinical trials, most adults taking humira were clear or almost clear and many saw 75% and even 90% clearance in just four months. humira can lower your ability to fight infections, including tuberculosis. serious, sometimes fatal, infections and cancers, including lymphoma have happened as have blood, liver, and nervous system problems, serious allergic reactions, and new or worsening heart failure. before treatment, get tested for tb. tell your doctor if you've been to areas where certain fungal infections are common,

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this, weak on the border. remember, people come in as an act of love. you can't have that. should be a bill of love, truly, should be a bill of love. bush, immigration is an act of love. they come for love. i said excuse me? two-and-a-half years ago i was never thinking in terms of politics. now i am a politician. >> as one nbc news report described it last night, president trump seemingly took nearly every contradictory position he has ever had on immigration yesterday. i actually wonder if his staff did this on purpose to expose. i'm not sure, joe. good morning. it is wednesday, january 10th. with us, sam stein and white house reporter for associated press john glue mere, and "new york times" reporter jeremy peters, and capitol hill correspondent on msnbc, kasie

hunt. there you go. i actually think at this point people have given up, said show the world. "the washington post" connected the top stories on twitter. nearly a year after talk of nationalism and revolution at the inauguration, it was reported today that president trump will head to davos, moved closer to a daca deal, and bannon is out at breitbart. i'm not sure what your angle is on this, at some point people give up, say here you go, go for it. show yourself to the world. what do you think? >> well, there's no angle, it is that donald trump has broken, in the process of breaking every single promise that he and steve bannon made in the final stretch of the campaign, and yes, it was steve bannon that put out the commercial that said they were going to fight against international conglomerates, international organizations,

globalists, the very people that were making the rich richer and the poor poorer. really, how rich is it? there are few words that could adequately describe how hilarious it is that donald trump is going to davos. it is the biggest slap in the face to every single person that voted for him thinking that he was going to fight for the little man and fight against these international organizations and fight against the accumulation of wealth. he is going to davos, he's fired steve bannon, now he thinks that he needs to act out of love, just like jeb bush a year and a half later. >> first of all, joe, i wasn't here yesterday, so roll tide. get that going.

i mean, davos is the symbol of globalism that steve bannon and breitbart and the president last year was railing against and fighting against. it was the genesis of his campaign, we're going to be inward looking, so obviously a trip to davos is against anything he stood for. that's more symbolic than what he said in the open meeting, 45 minutes of which were broadcast on national television, and someone in the press, i'll take it, i like the transparency. but he said he thought some people in the room wanted to hear, pathway to citizenship, we have a big, beautiful deal, we'll make it all happen. forget everything i have been saying for the last two years. it is who's in front of him, who's in the room, what they want to hear. that's what he does. >> mika, the reason he did it was obvious, he wanted to

disprove michael wolff's book, wanted to prove he was in complete control of his mental facilities, and actually what he did was show that he wasn't. he couldn't keep up with where he was. he would a.m. bell over and say what democrats wanted to hear, yes, i'm with you. you know, i'm with you, we should do this out of love, and kevin mccarthy sort of figuratively grab him by the shoulder and say grandpa, come over here, come on, papa, sit down here, don't hurt yourself, this is what you really believe. then papa would say okay. this is what i really believe. grandpa kept wandering back and forth and had to be reminded time and time again by republicans what he believed. so the very thing he was trying to prove he disproves. he has no idea about the issues and has no positions on the

issues that actually drive his base the most. >> and they let him do that. and they didn't try and stop him. so good. okay. reporters were in the room as the president promised to sign a bill to extend the daca program. if congress is able to reach an agreement, both democrats and republicans tested the president on what has been his core issues and trump said he would accept their recommendations. >> what about a clean daca bill now? >> i have no problem. i think that's what he said, we're going to come up with daca, we're going to do daca and then start immediately on phase two which would be comprehensive. i would like to. but we have to do daca first. >> we need to be clear what senator feinstein is asking, when we talk about daca, we don't want to be back here two years later. you have to have security as the secretary would tell you. >> i think that's what she's

saying. >> what do you think i am saying? >> i think you say daca without security. >> you can never fix the situation without additional wall. and we have to fix existing wall that we already have. >> so you would not support a clean daca bill? >> a clean daca bill is a daca bill where we take care of the 800,000 people. to me, a clean bill is a bill of daca, take care of them and also take care of security. that's very important. >> you know, i would vote for a path to citizenship which isn't very easy for me, but i would do it just as an effort. but there are certain things that we have to guarantee that we're going to do. >> that's going to be brought up. i believe that will be brought up as part of what we're talking about at some point. it is incentive for people to do a good job. you want to know the truth, that

path is incentive for people. it would be incentive for people to work hard, do a good job. that could very well be brought up. if we do this properly, daca, you're not so far away from comprehensive immigration reform. and if you want to take it that further step, i'll take the heat, i don't care. i don't care. i'll take all the heat you want to give me and take the heat off both the democrats and republicans. my whole life has been heat. i like heat in a certain way. >> how much is actually changed here in terms of your positions? >> i think it has changed. i think my positions are going to be what the people in this room come up with. i am very much reliant on the people in this room. i know most of the people on both sides, i have a lot of respect for people on both sides, and my, what i approve is going to be very much reliant on what the people in this room come to me with. i have great confidence. if they come to me with things i'm not in love with, i'm going to do it because i respect them.

>> whoa. oh my gosh. >> kasie hunt, you're on capitol hill. first of all, i'm going to ask you in a second about how many republicans' brains exploded spontaneously yesterday after hearing this. so the president now supports and i would say the majority of americans if this ends up being his position will go along with him, be glad he is moderating and listening to other people other than the voices in his head and steve bannon, but he supports a clean daca bill, a path to citizenship, and comprehensive immigration reform and said, quote, i will take the heat for that. you never know what's going to happen with donald trump. tomorrow, maybe he goes back into the rabbit hole and the same republicans that mislead him on health care will mislead him again on immigration and say

no, you have to be this hard right -- you have to listen to your base. trump said last night, our country needs the security wall, southern border which must be part of any daca approval. he goes back to the border wall. but if he's willing to trade daca and if he's willing to trade comprehensive immigration reform and pathway to citizenship for that wall, that would be a pretty massive immigration bill. that, by the way, would offend a lot of people, a lot of conservatives on the right. >> it would, joe, but i just don't from watching that meeting and reading that tweet, i don't see how we have any more clarity this morning than we did yesterday morning about where the president stands on immigration or any of those issues or even whether he understands the contours of the debate at hand. after that meeting was sort of

airing in this very unusual public way, i ran into mark meadows from north carolina that runs freedom caucus in the hallways of the capitol and we asked about the two step process the president seemed to be proposing, do daca reform and then i'll take the heat. s is that an acceptable thing to do? the display i think the president was trying to make is, you alluded to it, to show he is in control, that he understands and is pulling strings, making things happen. i think what you saw was in many ways showing a lack of understanding of political points for his own party and for democrats, trying to give everybody what he thought they wanted. he confused the issue, made it harder i think. >> mika, let's back up. say the president knew exactly what he was doing yesterday.

let's say this is part of a grand plan that he's never had before but he has now. if what the president was saying is he was going to work with everybody in the room on comprehensive immigration reform, that would be the guy that a lot of people voted for, the guy that said and promised, bring everybody in the room and we're going to strike a deal. so we're not overly negative, since we called him grandpa twice. >> papa. >> papa. since we are not overly negative about it, so we won't be, if he did this, if he sat there and worked with everybody from kevin mccarthy to dianne feinstein on comprehensive immigration reform, that would be a fulfillment of how he promised to govern. working with people, getting deals done.

let's not all be too cynical. i'm sure he will blow it up later this afternoon, but felt the need to say that. up next, senators elizabeth warren and mark warner are standing by, we talk more about the immigration debate. and how they're teaming up on an issue that impacts just about everybody. if you've got a credit card or driver's license, you want to hear this. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. at ally, we created a savings account with a great rate. but if that's not enough, our app helps monitor your spending too. and if that's not enough to help you save, we could start a carpool. look at this traffic. don't worry. ok, if that's not enough we'll start a trainpool. oh i have a meeting in five minutes. and if that's still not enough... i got it. we'll just create a shortcut. we'll do anything, seriously anything to help you save. ally. do it right. talking 4th quarter? yes. if you have moderate to severe plaque psoriasis,...

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in just a moment, we're speaking with elizabeth warren and mark warner. first, we go to bill karins with the latest on the devastating mudslides. >> we started with 13 fatalities. and found out they added two more names. up to 15 people that died from mudslides and debris flows because of the thomas fire and heavy rain on top of it. these images, look at the

boulders, the size of them that came down the mountain and deposited in people's front yards. the size of some trees knocked over, houses that were blasted off their foundations. everyone is left with a coating of mud between a foot to two feet deep in many sections. look at the house in the background to the left. you can imagine if people did survive this what the cleanup effort is going to be like, coming from the huge mud slide, this is north of santa barbara, along the 101. that's where all of the mud and debris ended there. that's what the river looks like this morning. yesterday, it was a raging -- everything you could see. look at the car, vehicles, smack in the middle of it. it picked up anything in its path. they say that number of fatalities could go up. that storm is on the way out. it is clear in southern california. there are no other big rain storms headed this way. this is the first one of the season and this is what they're

left with. they're desperately wanting rain and too much at one time. five inches on top of that mud scar was incredible. light snow through the northern plains. this will be ice storm for areas of the ohio valley friday. for now, prayers and thoughts with the people of southern california. mika, joe? >> bill, thank you very much. joining us from capitol hill, senators elizabeth warren of massachusetts and mark warner of virginia. this morning both senators introduced legislation that aims to safeguard consumer data, like personal information stolen from millions of americans in the massive hack announced in september by credit reporting agency equifax. great to have you both on. elizabeth, this is in your wheel house, we will talk about the cfpb in a moment, consumer financial protection bureau that you created. first, we want both of your

reactions to the meeting on immigration reform that happened at the white house yesterday. are either of you hopeful? >> i am very hopeful and i'm hopeful because this is something we absolutely must do. america made a promise to more than 800,000 young people and we said if you come out of the shadows and get vetted, then you can go to school, you can get jobs, you can join the military, you can become a full part of america. then donald trump broke that promise, said nope, we're going to deport these young people. that threw the ball to congress. said the only way they can stay is if congress acts. now we've got a clean dream act we proposed to say these young people can stay here in america and that america honors its promises, so the closer and closer we get to that, the

better and better i feel. >> when you look at these young folks, 800,000, 97% of them are either working, in school or serving in the military. this is a program that has broad based support across the business community because they know what productive young americans and how important so many of these people are to their businesses, and circumstances that elizabeth mentioned, this is a crisis created that was unnecessary because president trump decided to end this program arbitrarily. good news is from a meeting yesterday, it appeared that he was leaning in on being open to solutions and suggestions. i think as long as he doesn't put preconditions around it, so you never know with this president whether yesterday's position will stay the same position for today, but at least

this morning we're both cautiously optimistic. >> joe? >> senator warren, let's move it beyond just the dreamers fix. is there the possibility as it sounded yesterday of possibly having a clean dreamers fix along with down the road comprehensive immigration reform that could at least lead to legalization, legalized status, and also what republicans have been asking for in return, stronger boarder enforcement in the future? >> i think it is a possibility. i would like to see it and i think mark would do. a lot of democrats and republicans, too, not just democrats, a lot of folks would like to see us do comprehensive immigration reform. we understand there has to be give and take on that. but the president has created a crisis for 800,000 young people, and it is absolutely critical that we get this problem fixed

first. every single day that goes by young people are losing status as it's called which means they're subject to being deported by i.c.e. it means some of them they cannot legally show up for work any more. so the whole notion that we put that off is wrong. we've got to take care of the dreamers now and try to build on that to do comprehensive immigration reform where we can deal with long term question about other people that are here and border security. do it all in one. >> and joe, i would simply point out, maybe we could bring it in and brush it off and the president might fully embrace it. we passed comprehensive immigration reform years back, 69 votes in the senate, included pathway to citizenship, included a great deal of targeted stronger border security, it dealt with issues like family

reunification of chain migration, dealt with immigration policies being geared towards bringing in talented people into the country the same way the uk and australia changed their systems, so there's a template that has 70 votes, nearly 70 votes in the senate, that if the president wants to move forward, turn that piece of legislation over to him. >> senators, i'm going to impress you both by threading issues that cross into your domains. i am setting this up for you in fact. the idea of the equifax breach going to a common issue that expands to politics, senator warren, you're on the russian investigation, dealing with cyber security among other things, russian meddling, consumer data breaches, crip tow

currency. these are about issue of cyber infrastructure and vulnerability to this. if you were to say on scale of one to ten, one being incredibly vulnerable, ten being incredibly secure, how would you rate our current cyber infrastructure and why? >> i would rate current cyber structure in two to three range. certain areas like financial institutions are stronger than what we had in terms of protection of critical information, personal information. one of the reasons we put strong penalties in place on the equifax or credit reporting agencies, these are companies that we have no personal customer relationship with, we don't invite them to monetize our information, in the case of equifax or other rating agencies, they've had breaches in the past, but equifax breach was particularly egregious. i was one of the victims.

143 million americans' personal information hacked into and stolen by cyber criminals. they knew there had been vulnerability. and when notified for months, didn't put the basic patch in place. then took weeks to notify the public. then when they set up a site that the public was supposed to go, it had a set of vulnerabilities in it. it was sloppiness on top of sloppiness. we want strict liability in place. i argue from a macro standpoint as i look from an intelligence standpoint, i say the greatest vulnerability may not be a particular nation state but it is broadly the ability to compete misinformation. i worry we continue to go out and build and invest the world's best 20th century military in terms of planes and tanks and ships when many of our

adversaries are not making investment in traditional military but making investments in cyber warfare tools whe. we are not fully protected. >> i want to ask about bipartisanship and working with the white house, whether it is an issue like immigration or cyber security, this is a president who at times has taken a half step or two towards reaching across the aisle to work with democrats and pulled back because of pressure from republicans in congress or his own base. from what you saw in the meeting yesterday, some messaging he put out, two questions. one is are you hopeful at this time he may be willing to strike some deal with democrats, and secondly, considering how unpopular he is among democrats, are you worried about any sort of backlash from your base if you do work with the white house? >> let me start by saying this is not about politics, this is about doing our job and things we need to get done.

what we need to get done right now, we need clean dream act passed that protects 800,000 young people. donald trump caused a crisis by breaking america's promise. now it is up to us, to congress, to say we're going to come back and honor that promise. working with the president, you bet. i am glad to see him say as he did yesterday that he was open to a clean dream act. let's just do it. let's do it. it is you aurgent. we need to get it done now. overall, things we need to get done, this is our job. you know, the idea that the republicans just lock the doors, say we'll redesign the entire tax system and give away $1.4 trillion to giant corporations and billionaires and we are ultimately going to make working families pay for this is fundamentally wrong. the way we do our jobs here in washington is we try to do them

together and we try to do things that aren't working for the richest, tiniest slice at the top. but are working for all of america. that's why we're here. >> and adding to what elizabeth said, let's do the dream act. that would be a great step. renew the children's health insurance program. >> community health. >> community health centers, don't use these as bargaining chips. let's get a budget that continues balance between defense spending and investment in people, infrastructure, education, health care. and one thing i spent time here trying to put together, bipartisan groups and better legislation comes that way, but i was bitterly disappointed on tax reform when my republican colleagues shut the door and said they're going to do tax reform, not the responsible way, not in fiscally appropriate way,

but without doing these kind of tax breaks which i think are closer to 2.2 trillion in terms of adding to debt when you add in additional debt service and fiscal cliffs that were created, and didn't miss any opportunity to encourage companies back in this country. >> exactly. mika has the next question. >> senator warren, what's going on with the consumer financial protection bureau at this point, is it functioning? >> yes. most of what it is doing is its job. this is the thing, mika. when we built the cfpb, we used every tool possible to insulate cfpb from politics. when i say insulate it from politics, i mean insulate it not just from republican politics but also from democratic politics. it is set up so that it does its work. it has civil servants, it has its mission is clear, it is running consumer complaint hot line, doing its investigations,

enforcing law out there for consumers. mick mulvaney is trying to politicize it, doing something that knocks me over, never thought of anyone trying to do this. you have all these people doing the jobs, i want political appointees on top of that. can you imagine that to decide people that do the work and think through the politics of this. let's face it, he's doing his best to politicize, but the people that are at the cfpb are there to do a job, they know what that is, that is to level the playing field so that when they go against giant financial institutions, pay day lenders, that consumers have somebody on their side. and the rules are fair for everyone. i think they're doing that job every single day. >> senators elizabeth warren and mark warner. thank you both for being on the show this morning. >> thank you. >> following the legislation

that you both introduce that aims to safeguard consumer data. up next, the president's personal lawyer sues over the trump russia dossier. ari melber joins us to discuss that. and the stable genius act. at least that's what it is being called. the congressman that introduced the legislation tells us what it's all about next on "morning joe." time to bask... in low prices!

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is donald trump an intellectual? trust me, i'm like a smart person. i went to the best colleges. i went to wharton. i strongly believe in academics. i was a nice student. i have a very good brain, i've said a lot of things. i understand things. i comprehend better than almost anybody. i am highly educated. i know words, i have the best words. i'm like a very smart person. like a smart person. i'm a very smart person. very smart person. very intelligent person. like a lot of us are really smart. i'm really smart. we're going to have smartness.

>> joining us now -- >> mika, donald trump, he knows words. >> i know. >> he knows the best words and he wants you and the rest of the american people to know that he knows words and that he knows the best words. he's a very smart person he also wants you to know. >> that's a little too defensive. joining us, alex told me to get into the intro, to say nothing. okay? >> okay. thanks, alex. >> joining us. >> this alabama gang. the last play, i'm struck how he looked right, did you see that, sam, he distracted, pulled a

safety. >> yep. >> boom. >> that's a smart person. >> that's what an nfl person -- the fact he had the foresight to go right, freeze the safety long enough to hit it in the pocket, win the national championship. >> who apologizes to the congressman. >> i will apologize to the congressman. i am the one that apologizes. >> i like college football. >> all right. joining us, democratic congressman brendan boyle of pennsylvania who introduced the standardizing testing and accountability before large elections giving electors necessary information for unobstructed selection. also, host of the beat on msnbc, ari melber.

congressman, welcome. i'm sorry. >> that freshman quarterback for alabama was stable and a genius with that final play, so i agree. >> he was. that is so true. amazing story on so many levels. stable genius act, go. >> well, hopefully i'll have the best words to describe this. we all know it is a play on president trump's tweet, there are many things about his behavior that raised serious questions and recently talk about invoking the 25th amendment. reality is if we take a step back a second, president trump has forced us as the american people to recognize there are gaping holes in the presidential election system. we thought it was frankly always a norm that presidential candidates release medical records. president trump with the exception of one letter from a crack pot doctor declaring himself the most physically fit human being to ever run for

president, that aside, we have no medical, physical, cognitive information on someone that's now sitting in the oval office and to be candid at an advanced age. this is a problem with president trump, but this is going to continue to be a problem unless we take legislative efforts to address it, so making sure that the presidential nominees would be examined by the navy doctors at bethesda, charged with medical care for any president, i think that's an appropriate measure. if we don't do it now, even when we get beyond the trump presidency, this is an issue we face again, unless we put a system in place to prevent it. >> this is one of those tough topics where in order to survive the discomfort that it produces, sort of like sexual harassment, you know, we laughed along the way for the past 15 years at behavior that was not acceptable, and we're now

laughing as release when it comes to this president's behavior. my worry is it has the same result, it is normalizing behavior that's not acceptable. while sometimes we find what happens to be humor ous, i thin there's something serious going wrong with this presidency, and it may be within the parameters of what you're talking about. >> well, and i do think whether it is with this president and his rather bizarre, eccentric behavior, even moving into the future, the reality is that in today's day and age we have many viable presidential candidates in their mid and late 70s. we know that whether it is anyone, but especially someone at an advanced age, making sure the voting public can make an informed selection, has that information released on someone's physical and cognitive fitness before making an

informed vote, that's very important. i would have liked to have had that information when it comes to the current objecting papres need a system. >> thank you very much for being on the show. roll tide. take care. >> thank you. >> let's go to ari melber. we'll move to the russian investigation. what do you think of senator dianne feinstein releasing information and senator grassley's anger over it. >> i think it shows where even part of the ones bipartisan senate approach to the russian probe is going. i think any attempt at what -- she is not known as being a partisan fighter, not known for having difficulties with a lot of intelligence agencies, she's seen throughout her career as

fair minded and working in bipartisan path whenever possible. it is her statement that this is not possible any more. i think it goes to what is a strategy to deal with the leaks, i say as regards to strategy. we don't know where the investigation ends. it could be an exoneration of trump. it is to make the issue information and leaking, why there's been so many attacks on people associated with the dossier, rather than dealing with the underlying question which is was there high level attempts to conspire to steal an election or not. if there weren't and donald trump wasn't involved in that in any way, it was only a few random apples, then that's a good thing for the white house. >> stay with us. we have to expand on that. up next, tale of the tape. what the official transcript left out from yesterday's bipartisan meeting. keep it here on "morning joe." ♪

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earlier this hour, we played some of the president's exchange with senator dianne feinstein about immigration. here's a portion of that again. >> i think that's basically what dick is saying, we're going to come up with daca, going to do daca, then we can start on phase two, comprehensive. i would like to do that. i think a lot of people would like to see that. but i think we have to do daca first. >> i'm looking at the reaction. the president seemed to say i would like that when asked if he would be agreeable to a clean daca bill first. but as politico michael crowley points out, the portion where the president said he would be agreeable was left out of the official white house transcript. is it possible that that was purposeful, they say it doesn't

exist, it doesn't exist? >> yes, and that does not happen in normal white houses. that's what may happen in the old soviet union where you would air brush people out of certain situations or you would sensor certain words or phrases that may not have lined up with the party apparatus and what they wanted, but it happened yesterday in the white house. they censored that. again, the stupidity, it is along the lines of colonel clink in "hogan's heroes." we all heard it and saw it. whose the idiot that said take that out of the transcript. who is the moron in the white house. i am asking you in the white house, who is stupid enough to take that line out, not thinking that it wouldn't be revealed?

stop being so dumb. that's all i have to say. >> jonathan. >> there are moments in informal conversation you can't quite make out what the president is saying, typical transcript would say cross talk or inaudible. >> that was pretty audible. i heard it. >> this was very audible. people were reacting to it in real time. credit white house for transparency of letting cameras in for the 55 minutes of the meeting, but it is inexcusable to have a moment everyone heard, everyone reacted to, and try to take it out of the transcript an act like, hope that no one would notice. >> go to the larger point we were talking about, to joe's point too, joe made this point that trump would benefit politically from an ideological move towards more moderate

stance. he is held back by certain actors. joe made the point it is house republicans but also people within the administration. by putting out that abridged transcript, they're underscoring there are elements in the administration that don't want to make that deal and who looked at trump as he talked to dianne feinstein with horror that he was giving away the story. wasn't just mccarthy but members of his own administration, they entered a massive cleanup operation immediately. >> the question is, well, it depends. the question is, is donald trump a captive of the house leadership that led him down the wrong path on health care? is he captive to people that work for him inside the white house? is he just a puppet? or is he going to do what is in the best interest of what most americans think, in the best

interest of this country, and also selfishly, what's in the best interest of him politically if he keeps listening to house republican leaders saying you can't do this, you can't do that, you must do health care first, he will end up care first, he'll end up at 33%, republicans will get wiped out and he'll pay the price. ari, i want to talk about the censoring of this line, this line which is actually expansive and hopeful for a lot of people in washington, d.c., and across the country. it does make you wonder if white house stooges are willing to censor a transcript when the cameras are turned on, what do white house stooges censor when there aren't cameras turned on. >> maya angelou said if someone shows you who they are, believe them. it somebody is debunking what is

literally right behind them and they keep lying to your face, then what do you do? they have not only showed you what they are, they also showed you what they think of you. it has in my view nothing to do with the press, it's about transparency and the american public. so take the press out of it and say this is the white house's message to the country. what you saw with your own eyes, even from your reality tv access inside this room and in this meeting is no longer true. we are going to insult you by trying to assert something else. i do think, as joe says, that is dangerous because that goes to the faith and fidelity that any white house has to have with the american public. >> mika, it also suggests that there are people in the white house who do not believe that the president is mentally fit to be president of the united states, that he says things that he believes that they have to censor after the meeting is

over. and so whoever was the white house stooge who was censoring this transcript and actually undercutting president trump's position is actually proving that they don't think he is competent to be president of the united states without guardrails. it's very troubling. they actually -- their actions, their censorship actions were disturbing on many levels and actually undercut donald trump. >> and i think that between now and the white house press briefing where sarah huckabee sanders will be asked about this, the only option is to put it back in, is to correct the record. there's no excuse for this, there's no lie on top of the lie that's going to make it better. i hope they learn. ari, thank you very much. >> thank you both. >> we'll be seeing you on "the beat" today at 6:00 eastern time on msnbc. up next, something you didn't hear on the trump campaign

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clinically shown to reduce snoring. i realize that ah, that $100k is notwell, a 103fortune. yeah, 103. well, let me ask you guys. how long did it take you two to save that? a long time. then it's a fortune. well, i'm sure you talk to people all the time who think $100k is just pocket change. right now we're just talking to you. i told you we had a fortune. yes, you did. getting closer to your investment goals starts with a conversation. schedule a complimentary goal planning session today. the white house has announced that president trump intends to attending the world economic forum later this month. let's bring in cnbc's brian

sullivan. this is interesting. >> it is interesting, mika and joe, because you do wonder, and i listened to your conversation a lot this morning and i loved joe's comments about the american president, season two. i wonder if season two, year two of this president is going to be sort of the pb, the post bannon era. yesterday maybe we had a glimpse in that 55-minute meeting/television event, but i wonder if this is trump going back to his original roots, because remember, the whole anti-elitist working man, every man theme was so much part of the bannonesque era in trump. now davos, you couldn't be further from sort of the working man. this is 350 global leaders. this is ceos, this is thought leaders, this is wannabe leaders, and trump going to this conference, which is in davos, switzerland, takes place in two weeks time, january 23rd to 26 is a good opportunity to meet with world leaders and business leaders. but i wonder if this is more of

a representation of trump going back to his original roots. guys, i think you'll finding it funny that the title of this year's world economic forum is creating a shared future in a fractured world. >> oh, fantastic. gosh, anyone here want to go to davos. joe, darling, should we go to davos? let's go. >> it does certainly seem like it is it isn't what he ran on last year. davos isn't his constituency but this is a president who strove for acceptance from the elites. we know his background as an outer borough developer who tried to break his way into manhattan. he spent a lot of his career trying to prove people wrong. i can see perhaps some appeal to go to a place like davos, rub shoulders with the best and the brightest the world has to offer, prove that you are part of that while also perhaps

delivering your own message. >> joe? >> yeah, just final thoughts. i want to go back to what brian said and what we've said this morning, that there are two options on the table after looking at the 55-minute meeting yesterday. one is that we are actually seeing trump, the reality president, season two, the premiere. maybe this is what he does over the next year to confound his critics. there is also, brian, though, the possibility that this is just a continuation of a scattershot presidency and yesterday was just a subplot, which he will blow to pieces. >> yeah, but it's a new year, joe, let's be optimistic. it's a good chance to meet with world leaders and maybe something actually gets done. so let's be optimistic about it, shall we? it's so early in 2018. >> yeah. all right, brian, thank you so much. brian sullivan with cnbc. mika, i will say in the one day

that steve bannon has -- news has broken of steve bannon leaving breitbart, this president has moved light years away from everything that steve bannon represents and what the president claimed to represent during the campaign. now things get interesting. >> what a difference a day makes. that does it for us this morning. stephanie ruhle picks up the coverage right now. >> thanks so much, mika, thanks, joe. hi there, i'm stephanie ruhle here in our nation's capital, washington, d.c., where we are two major stories developing now, starting with the russia investigation intensifying. senate democrats put out their own report on russian interference in the election just one day after senator dianne feinstein defies republican colleagues, releasing testimony about the infamous trump dossier. >> i think people are entitled to know what was said. i see no problem with releasing it. >> overnight the president's lawyer sues the firm behind the dossier d