comply sant about racism and bigotry. build an american where incidents of racial hadred do not happen because racism has been banned not just from the law books but from the hearts of the people. >> that was 31 years ago to the day. as president ronald reagan marked the life and legacy of dr. martin luther king jr. now it's president trump being asked a different set of questions about race. >> mr. president, are you a racist? >> people think you're a racist. >> no, no i'm not a racist. i am the least racist person you have ever interviewed. that i can tell you. >> so there you have it. two presidents, two republicans, two men claiming to be conservatives and yet a great

divide between race even among two conservative republican presidents, but after all these decades of progress, here we find ourselves with the reactionary and, yes, some would say a racist president. good morning, it's monday, january 15th and it is martin luther king jr. day. with us, we have msnbc contributor mike barnacle. the chair of african-american studies at princeton university eddy gloud jr. >> cady kay. >> david ignatius and pull zer price winning historian john meechum. let me begin with you, john. history does not always go in straight lines. i do think, though, historians 30 years from now will be

shocked that america has moved as much as we've moved since the life and death of martin luther king jr. we elected barack obama, who won two majority victories. i guess the last president to do that, my god, maybe it was eisenhower? and yet it's followed with a president who is reactionary and radical and i would say judging by his words and deeds racist. how do historians handle this 30 years from now? >> well, we have a recurrent and tragic tendency in the american soul to fear rather than to hope. to point at people instead of looking ahead. it was said years and years ago that the american dilemma is race. the problem of the 20th century

in america is the problem of the color line. question is and the tragedy of the current moment that you're describing is we thought that was the problem of the 20th century. evidently it continues to be a problem into this our fourth century as a country if you count is colonial experience. you're right about history being long. dr. king used to quote paraphrase theodore parker from the mid 19th century who said the arc of a moral universe is long but it bends towards justice. and that's the hope we have to dedicate ourselves to on days like this. >> and i do believe it does. that arc, eddy, does bend towards justice. it certainly has over the past 30, 40 years. of course, it was ronald reagan who won the last two landslides. now, i loved reagan.

and reagan was an optimist. but barack obama also an optimist. eddy, that's why when you have presidents like reagan and you have presidents like obama, that is america bending -- choosing hope rather than fear. but right now we have a president who again every chance he gets seems to burrow down, be reactionary and seek approval from a third of the electorate. >> yeah. he's constantly appealing to his base. i think instead of appealing to our better angels as abraham lincoln had us do, he appeals to our darkest fears. i think it's important we need to remember, joe, especially on this day the kind of racial ana mist attended the eight years

that barack obama was in office. the racial tensions that emerged, the energy and some ways the dark undertow of the tea party. the unleashing of voter suppression efforts during the eight years. we need to remember how incredibly polarized the country was when ronald reagan was elected. you think of jessie helms when they were trying to pass the legislation for the dr. king holiday. you can think about that kind of energy and reaction to president reagan announcing his presidential run in philadelphia, mississippi, and claiming states rights as his orientation. there was a lot of racial tension then. there was a lot of racial tension during barack obama's tenure and we have racial tension now. and part of -- i was thinking just earlier to this morning about a quote from ralph ellison, the great american novelest. he said americans are

notoriously selective in our exercise of historical memory and it's our on going forgotfulness the original sin of racism continues to haunt the country that keeps us on this hamster wheel. here we are now dealing with the latest consequence and that's donald trump. >> well, but eddy, let's also look at the entire portrait that's laid before us. let's not try to glaze over the bad but let's not forget the good at the same time. barack obama elected president of the united states twice. record turnout among black voters when barack obama was running. we see what happened in the state of alabama as a reaction to many things, but it was black voters that helped elect the first democrat in that state in

25 years. unemployment for black americans in 2017 much lower after eight years of barack obama. and, yes, one year of donald trump, than it was say ten years ago. and wouldn't you say on many levels things have gotten much much better than they were say 20, 30 years ago. >> absolutely. absolutely. i think it's important for us to understand that each turn, at each moment of crisis there has been extraordinary progress. we can -- from the moment of the american revolution when we gave voice to the principles of freedom. we reconciled those principles of liberty and freedom with the institution of slavery, but we worked our way through it. when you think of the civil war and think about reconstruction and what happened in reconstruction, america was different. it was a second founding. but then of course we had jim cr crowe. you think of the mid 20th

century, you had everyday ordinary people fighting for first class citizenship. we get the response to the tax revolt and law and order. each moment represents a moment of progress, joe. the election of barack obama represents a moment of progress. then there's always a reassertion, a reassertion of this darker element of who we are. but i think what's interesting of donald trump in this moment now is that we actually have an opportunity not to revert back. we have an opportunity to give voice to a vision of who we really want to be, who we really want to be as a in addition and not fault -- the jeannie is out of the bottle. so the question for us, do we want to put it back in the bottle or do we finally want to banish it from view all together. >> right. and you look at the results again in virginia and look at the results in alabama and across the country. you look at the marches, you look at the people getting engaged, you look at the turnout

among young voters, among black voters, among women voters in northern virginia and alabama, it's very clear. yes, you have a president who is reactionary and who is playing to the racist tendencies of third of americans. hopefully fewer than that. and yet you have the overwhelming majority of americans right now rejecting that. there's a reason why donald trump had the lowest approval ratings of any president in the history of polling for a first-year president. but david ignatius, as we move past domestic issues for a moment and look back and look at the chaos that followed donald trump's comments about countries in the caribbean and central america and across africa, talk about the diplomatic damage not just to america's relationships with those countries but also

america's relationship to the world. >> joe, our reputation around the world is our nation's capital, it's what we spend to get things done. it's the trust that people have that america is a decent country, represents important ideas. and you can spend that capital down. you can waist it. and diminish what you were given as steward, as president. and we've watched that. it's only one year, but the draw down in our nation's reputation around the world as i talk to leaders, as i travel, is really stunning to me. when you have the mayor of london cheering that donald trump won't be visiting his city, traditionally the closest alliance the united states has is with britain when you have the leader of germany just basically scratching her head, not understanding u.s. policy, a

telling remark was made by the new undersecretary of state who said a couple days ago, ambassadors have been instructed to tell countries like haiti, like african countries who are wondering what this vulgar, hideous description of their countries, what does that mean? and it was the state department saying ambassadors were told it doesn't really mean anything. it's just the president speaking out. and i think on martin luther king day the question i would ask for all of us is -- it's really about the country, it's about what americans decide to do, what values they have, how they express themselves in polls, when they go to the ballot box on election day. it's not just about trump. trump makes these remarks and then tells everybody he's the least racist guy you ever met. it's about us. it's about what we do in response to that.

>> and, mike, there are -- and this is an on going debate between mika and myself, i look at donald trump and i look at the horrors of donald trump's presidency, the violence that he does to constitutional norms, the contempt he has for the rule of law, the stalinest phrases he trots out when he speaks about the free press that our founders saw as really the corner stone of the bill of rights, and yet i look at how so many of those institutions have responded to this. and i am hopeful from what i've seen so far about how americans are responding to this great challenge. we seem to be responding, i think, so far with passing grades as a country for a man

who understands america and understands american values even less than he understands what's going on around the world and america's place in the world. >> yeah, joe, this is a sobering and necessary discussion that we're having right now because i would submit that we as a country, collectively as americans have never been here before where we are today. we've never been in this position. this is a country, this is a republic, created and born with the scab of racism on it due to slavery, due to people being brought to this country in chains as slaves. and every president that we have had, even many whom people disagreed with politically, including richard nixon, by the way, have always reverted to the principle focus of a presidency and that is to bring a country together in times of strife and times of trouble or conflict,

real or potential, with the exception of one president, this president, the incumbent president, who goes out of his way to provoke and tear at that scab of race, to tear at that scab that creates divisions in this country rather than bringing the country together. and so as david ignatius just said, it is up to us as individuals, as americans, to stand for the character, the morality and the reputation of who we are as a country and who we are as individuals. but we have never, ever been here before. >> call me an optimist, but i look at the fact that we're at a place we've never been before, certainly not in our life times, as again another great opportunity. ronald reagan -- i brought ronald reagan up earlier. ronald reagan was not seen as somebody that had progressive views on race. in fact, if i -- if my memory

serves me well, he was even opposed to the martin luther king holiday. i'm sure i'm going to get 1,000 e-mails from conservative in two seconds telling me that's not true, but i remember ronald reagan saying i think -- i think the kindest way i can say this about a guy that i liked in many aspects is if i don't -- if i remember it correctly, he had some pretty back ward thinking views about martin luther king and at times race and at times ending a apartheid in south africa, and yet america moved forward during reagan's era and reagan never as mike barnacle just said, presidents didn't usually pick at that scab of race the way donald trump does.

i just wonder, the fact that he's talking this way openly about race in such an insensitive way, does that not allow us as a nation to have these conversations out in the open, to confront these challenges head on and to drive a stake through the heart of racism once and for all in america? >> maybe and that is an optimistic interpretation of what is going on. i think it's that push and pull, action and reaction that eddy was talking about earlier. and you know, people take their cue from what america is doing and maybe this conversation will solicit conversations about issues surrounding immigration from other countries that need to be had. one of the things that has been interesting since the president's comments is the degree to which far right groups in europe and far right politicians in europe have taken

sucker from what the president said and said, look, the president has just given voice to something that is acceptable to say and to feel and that's american not standing for progress and integration and for inclusiveness but america standing for shutting up its borders and putting up barriers and putting up walls. to the extent that america can appeal to the better angels or darker angels in this world, that's what this country does. that's what this president has the capacity to do. any president of the united states can solicit and harness moods around the world, not just in this country. and this president is allowing people who agree with him on issues of immigration and on issues of race to say, look, you see. the president of the united states is saying this. it's okay for us to say it, too and okay for us to feel it too. so whether the country can then swing back and other countries can have that conversation in a way that's more honest, perhaps that's what the country needs. >> eddy, i'll ask you -- we'll

end with you. i'll ask you the same question. does this afford us the opportunity to confront racism head on in i think even more meaningful way, a more aggressive way? >> absolutely. >> pushing people -- pushing people to the polls, getting them off their couch, getting them out, knocking on doors, making phone calls, getting their friends in church to make sure that they go vote. i'm not just saying for democrats, for republicans that reject. and there are very few unfortunately on capitol hill that reject this racism, that independents running that reject this racism. doesn't this afford us a wonderful opportunity to make a statement not just to our members of congress, not just to our senators, not just to our president, but to the world that we are not like this? >> yeah, absolutely, joe. it does afford us an opportunity. we've had these sorts of opportunities over the course of our history.

we have in many instances failed to live up to them. but i think we have an interesting moment here, a moment that is combined with the demographic shifts, a moment that's combined with the fact that many of our young people are growing up in a much more diverse world even though we're as segregated as we probably have ever been, but they're growing up with diverse images and the like. since this is dr. king's holiday, he wrote where do we go from here, chaos in our community in 1967, he said that for too long white americans believed that racial equality is just a loose expression for improvement, a loose expression for improvement. that racial equality is in some ways viewed as a charitable enterprise, something that white people give to others. we have an opportunity to begin to think about america as a much more just place, racial inequality in a much more robust sense. we're changing.

we've changed. and the question is will we allow donald trump in his ilk to yolk us to this dark past, to tether us to these darker aspects of our society, to exploit our fears? and the question is will we rise to the occasion? will americans rise to the occasion? >> i can just say generationally, i've got older boys in their 20s and i've got obviously two younger children. and you can see it even with my older boys and their friends, there is such embarrassment and such contempt even among conservative friends for donald trump's -- how close minded donald trump is. and you see it even going into high school friends and -- there is such a change generationally

that i have seen over the past 10, 15 years of younger americans and political party just doesn't matter, rejecting racism, rejecting xenophobia, rejecting the close mindedness, the sort of close mindedness that this president unfortunately brings to his job and send out to the american people everyday. a hard rain is going to fall on donald trump and the republicans who enable this sort of racism. and it's coming. still ahead on "morning joe," much of the nation was already anxious over north korea's missile threat, of course, and that was before that false alarm sent thousands of americans running for their lives this weekend. we'll have more on that terrifying scene in hawaii and what it says about the consciousness of our country. plus, president trump was reportedly field testing his

racist mark. a set of senators denied he ever said it. it's unbelievable and trump was calling around bragging this weekend about his racist remarks that you have two u.s. senators claiming he never made and he was calling around. it's unbelievable. we've got insight from vanity fair's gabe sherman on his first-hand reporting on that. we've got eric ericson, a statement from him on trump bragging about his racist comments that these two senators have the gal to deny he ever made while calling lindsey graham and dick durbin liars. lots of luck with that. we'll be back on "morning joe."

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thursday we had a meeting and coming out of that meeting we had a gross misrepresentation of what happened in that meeting, but it's not the first time we had a gross misrepresentation by that individual. >> are you saying the president

did not use the word that has been so widely reported? >> i'm telling you he did not use that word, george. it's a gross misrepresentation is what i'm telling you. >> i didn't hear that word either. i haven't heard what senator durbin said repeatedly. he has a history of misrepresenting what is said. we shouldn't be surprised. >> you are saying it didn't happen? >> i didn't hear it. >> i think if you watch the show, you will know that i am rarely speechless. and well, to tell you the truth that's just an expression. i'll be the opposite of speechless here because both of those united states senators at first came out on friday and they said, oh, i don't remember. i didn't hear it. this is what they said on friday, we do not recall the president saying these comments specifically, but he did talk about the imbalance in our

current immigration system. and they went from saying they didn't hear it on friday to coming out with the same talking points. i don't know if the white house handed it to them or they just shared it among themselves, saying that lindsey graham was a liar and saying that dick durbin was a liar and that we're going to have cady get you some background information and bring in a guest, that shows how explicitly these two united states senators are lying, but cady, lindsey actually in that meeting actually called the president out on making his racist comments, about the people from these countries. and had to explain to them what america was really about. again, i still a year in i find it hard to believe that people are so willing to lie for donald

trump when they know there is no second act in american politics when they do that. >> yeah. and senator graham called the president out in realtime. it took, though, the president 15 hours after the original story was published to deny that he used vulgar and racially charged language in speaking about immigration, yet a source close to the president told nbc news that trump frequently uses that kind of language and that those around him frequently tell him he should not. two sources close to the administration also told nbc news that trump worked the phones on thursday night before his denial, calling his friends and allies outside the white house to gauge reaction to fallout from the comments. conservative commentator eric ericson tweeted said it's weird that people don't remember him using that word when trump himself was calling friends to brag about it afterwards. i spoke to one of those friends. the president thought it would play well with the base. the reporter who broke that story tweets sunday white house official told me tonight there

is debate internally on whether that trump said shithole or shithouse. per due and cotton seem to have heard latter, this person said, and are using to deny. reports that a source close to the president told gabe that the president was boasting this weekend that it will help him politically. >> yeah. so, let's bring in gabe sherman right now. vanity fair. gabe, this is fascinating. you have people -- you have these two senators i will say at a very -- the kindest interpretation would be that they are being legalistic about whether it's hole or house, which of course that's semantics argument, a distinction without a difference, but donald trump as nbc news was reporting calling around thursday night and people in washington know this saying, hey, i'm going to

say this on friday. what do you think? on friday, he said that trump was calling around bragging about using the language and you have an update on what he did this weekend at mar-a-lago. tell us about it. >> a source close to the president told me that the president was in high spirits and thought that all of this uproar would actually play well for him politically. you know, this is a president, joe, as distasteful and offensive as it is who believes he has a deep understanding what the american electorate. we have to remember, he launched his presidential campaign announcing that mexico sends rapists into the united states of america. so it's not surprising that the president would actually think that this would play well politically and be an advantage to him going forward in the immigration debate. >> yeah. and so, give us -- tell us about the president.

mar-a-lago, he was bragging about what happened and he said this would help him with his base? >> yeah. as the uproar engulfed the white house, the president, according to my reporting, was in high spirits this weekend. was not phased by it. you know, i think the most charitable explanation for the senator's comments could be whether it was s-hole or s-house. that does not change the tenor nor the meaning of the comment. and i think the president, you know, this isn't an issue that he believes and i disagree with but he believes is a winning issue for him. and so as the entire united states mediacom plex descended on the white house, the president did not seem phased. >> these two united states senators that accused lindsey graham of being a liar and dick durbin of being a liar on national television whether it was house or hole at the end

when it's the same. i don't mean to be personal about this. and bring somebody up who is no longer in the white house. but have they not seen the example of sean spicer. this is not something you bounce back from. this is not -- you cannot lie to the american people. you certainly can't go in and lie about fellow united states senators and have a smooth second act. they are calling lindsey graham and dick durbin liars, two men that corrected the president in realtime. and this president that they are defending about lying about two senators, is going around bragging about this. >> well, joe, it could be that again as gabe just pointed out, it could be se mant kal definition here, house or hole, you know. what word did the president

actually use? again, this is a president that plays to divisions in this country, rather than the country as a whole. now the divisions are so wide that they extend well beyond the president of the united states. you've got a sitting senator, david perdue, referring to dick durbin f we play that clip, as an individual. not using his name as most senators do. not saying dick durbin didn't hear what he thought he heard but he's saying that individual, that individual. further polarization in our politi politics. gabe, the essence of this presidency is to play to 25, 30% of what he considers to be his base in this country. >> without question. you know, mike, there's been so much made of steve ban non's falling out with donald trump and, you know, i think fundamentally, yes, that makes a great political story but does not change the fact that this is donald trump. i mean, we should not focus so much time on steve bannon

because donald trump's politics have been cleared long before steve bannon got involved with donald trump and this further illustrates this weekend that donald trump has very fixed and retro grade ideas when it comes to race in america. and that is, i think, kind of a shocking thing to say for the sitting president of the united states. >> david ignatius, i am surprised at tom cotton, man with a stellar resume, who many have seen as possible replacement for some of donald trump's cabinet secretaries. i'm surprised it waded into these waters and say what -- deny that donald trump said what donald trump bragged about. >> i was surprised also, joe. tom cotton is a smart man. he's certainly an ambitious man. i think looking at tom cotton and looking at senator perdue,

people need to remember that the history books are going to write about what people said and did in this period forever. people really are writing how their history narratives will read in this period when america was stressed, when a president played on divisions so sharply. what did people do? how did they react to that? as we've said, did they try to find their better angels. did they act in the spirit of our national heroes like martin luther king or did they play the politics of division. every number i see shows that president trumps efforts to win using this kind of racial language, this kind of division isn't working. the american people are tiring of it. the election results in virginia and then alabama, a lot of other elections along the way, the poll numbers all tell us the same thing which is the american people are getting tired of this. somebody like tom cotton may think he's doing the politically

smart thing for his party. i don't see it anymore. >> no. not the smart thing for his party. not the smart thing for himself. not the smart thing for his country. again, you have senators cotton and perdue burning bridges with fellow senators who know that they're lying. they just know that they're lying. and they have the president's own words that call them out. again, i just -- you have the president of the united states calling people on thursday night saying this is what i'm saying about on friday. what do you think of it? then you have the president of the united states calling conservatives on friday bragging about using that language, bragging after the meeting about using that language. and then this weekend as reported you also have the president going around mar-a-lago bragging about it.

it's unbelievable. gabe sherman, thank you so much. appreciate greatly appreciate it. coming up, the president sends european allies a message act the iran nuclear deal that included the line no one should doubt my word. we're going to talk to former lead u.s. negotiator on iran's nuclear program, nicholas burns. plus the reverend al sharpton joins us. "morning joe" coming right back.

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today we celebrate dr. king for standing up for the self-evident truth americans hold so dear that no matter what the color of our skin or the place of our birth we are all created equal by god. >> that was president trump on friday. that was, of course, before signing a proclamation in honor of martin luther king jr. let's bring in from capitol hill, the host of msnbc politics nation, reverend al sharpton. al, it's kind of hard to listen to donald trump talk about martin luther king's legacy the same day that as erick ericson said he was calling around bragging about making racist

comments about people coming from countries that he didn't like. >> no doubt about it. and when you look at the fact, joe, that not only did he say the words that has been confirmed by others, the policy. when you look at the fact that he backs it up by saying why are we bringing in more people from norway. well, look at the trade we do with norway and look at the trade we do with sub-sahara africa. it's not even in america's interest to insult african countries aside from the fact that it's blatantly racist. if you look at the fact that the united states has intelligence operations all over africa because they need to combat isis and al qaeda, do you imagine what the isis operatives are doing today, going around telling people don't cooperate with american intelligence against us, they think you all live in s-houses or s-holes.

this is against american interests whether you're republican or democrat. what this president has done is not only racist, it's a national security risk. and on king day, for him to sit up and stand up and sign a proclamation when he has over and over and over again demonstrated racism is really something that this country ought to really say we're not going to tolerate. >> well, and what he said on friday was calculated. nbc news reporting that he called around the night before and was asking people what they thought about him possibly using language like that the next day. he goes in. he's then lectured by lindsey graham and called out by dick durbin. then again that afternoon he's calling people around bragging about the language that he's using. this is a calculated, political -- i mean, we have come so far in so many ways, but

donald trump appears, does he not, determined to drag us back, not 30 years ago, but 100 years ago. >> no. he seems very determined. and he's determined with his policies to do that and his language. you and i have met with donald trump down through the years. i've known him 35 years. and marched on him, protested him and have met with him. all of my meetings with donald trump has been far more profane than profound. so i know that he used this kind of language. it is what he does. and no doubt he's calculated it. the irony is 36 years ago today, january 15th, '82, i was in my 20s. james brown brought know the white house. he was lobbying president reagan. he want med to go because i was youth director in new york of dr. king's northern operation bread basket and he was lobbying

to support mrs. king, making this a federal holiday. and i said, mr. brown, they're never going to do this. ronald reagan called dr. king a communist. he does not believe in what dr. king stood for, but we went. and years later reagan did sign that proclamation. i'm sure there was a lot more to do with the meeting with james brown, but it was a movement. but reagan accepted it, saluted it, reagan had his own agenda with black america i didn't agrow with it, but he had it. donald trump doesn't even have a black agenda. he has no urban agenda. he has no agenda for civil rights. he is a gender is to race bait and bring us backwards. and americans today on martin luther king's birthday, i'm in washington with his son going to harlem. we're doing all things today. we need to say we can have a debate between conservatives and progressives over how to deal with civil rights, but neither of us should tolerate people that race bait with no plan and just want to play us against

each other, which is personified by this president. >> and david ignatius, let me bring you in here because reverend sharpton brought up a very interesting and possibly disturbing point. i talked about the diplomatic impact of his statement on friday. and yet as al sharpton said just a minute ago there could possibly be a national security a military component where donald trump's words against everybody on an entire con innocent could be used by whether it's isis or other extremists to turn people against this country. >> these are words that burn and that stay in people's memories. and young people growing up now who hear or read, see on social media that an american president speaks this way about their countries, their homes don't

forget that. again, we're trying to build american power outwards and it's always been an exercise based in the first instance on our values. what kind of country the united states is, then overlaid with military power, with our alliances, with our network of intelligence institutions, but the truth is, as reverend sharpton says, we've got thousands of people deployed in africa trying to conduct missions. if they're not operating with a base of public support where people say the united states is the kind of country i want to be negotiated with, all of that power basically begins to back up. it goes for nothing. so i think in truth today, martin luther king day, president trump really needs to speak to the world and the country and make clear that our country is not about this kind of racist comment. otherwise we all lose. >> oh, yeah.

john meechum, let's go to you for question to al sharpton. >> reverend, i'm just wondering on this holiday, 50 years after the death of dr. king, 56, 55, i guess, after the march on washington. give us a quick portrait, if you would, where do you think dr. king's dream stands today. >> i think a lot of what he fought for and articulated in his dream is at risk. we see the moves around voting rights in north carolina and texas. we see the moves around civil rights, which would include criminal justice reform and other police reform and other that he wrote about in his last book, dr. king's book "where do we go from here" being shut down by the attorney general sessions. but at the same time, as i join his son here with national action and in harlem later today, i have the hope because

dr. king said we would always have step forward and then a backlash to move us backwards. and that's really what democracy is about, moving forward and fighting those that would try tu back. what i've never seen is such blatant words of interposition and nullification, words he described, the governor of alabama in his "i have a dream" speech now coming out of the oval office. if there ever was a time that americans need to unite on a holiday and say today that we will not tolerate going back to pre-1950 days, this is the time. dr. king fought without any things we have available to us now and brought us a certain distance. we had a black president and he was reelected and he did a lot of good even though he was criticized by blacks and whites. we cannot afford how to go back, we can debate how to go forward but we cannot go back. >> you look at those words again

you're talking about, making all the matters worse, the president on thursday night, according to news reports, calling around friends and allies and trying those racist words out on them and asking whether he should say it the next day and then afterwards bragging about the fact that he did use racially insensitive or i would say racist language in a meeting with senators which he is now denying. makes it all the more worse because it was calculated. he knew exactly what he was doing and in so doing he's hurt america not only at home but our national interests abroad. reverend al sharpton, thank you so much. greatly appreciate it. >> happy king day, joe. >> happy king day, reverend. coming up, president trump has a lot to say about north korea but he was radio silent as hawaii came under a false alarm missile threat. we'll talk about the mood of the country amid a nuclear standoff and a scary moment this weekend. "morning joe" coming right back.

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i'm sure you've noticed i've had my timeline off a little bit. the president made the statements on thursday, he called around thursday night after the statements and then friday -- so nbc's basically saying what erick erickson was saying. friday, of course, it continued and gave the reporting as this weekend he was talking about it and in high spirits and bragging about what he said so this, of course, as you know, happened on thursday and not friday. coming up, we'll have more on that, also donald trump's golfing while hawaii erupts in panic over a missile alert that turned out, of course, to be false. the president's rehabilitated response, that was a state thing. plus, the one-year-old administration. this is the cover of the new issue of the "economist." we're going to be talking about

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my lineage was the vecchios and zuccolis. through ancestry, through dna i found out that i was only 16% italian. he was 34% eastern european. so i went onto ancestry, soon learned that one of our ancestors we thought was italian was eastern european. this is my ancestor who i didn't know about. he looks a little bit like me, yes. ancestry has many paths to discovering your story. get started for free at ancestry.com >> i'm not a crook. >> i'm not a racist. >> i'm not a witch. great moments or not-so-great moments in political denials, from "i'm not a witch" to "i'm not a crook" to this weekend "i am not a racist"

from the president of the united states. welcome back to "morning joe," it's monday, january 15, mika will be back tomorrow. today we have with us msnbc contributor mike barnicle, the chair of the department of african-american studies at princeton university, eddie glaude, jr., katty kay, columnist and associate editor for the "washington post," david ignatius, pulitzer prize winning historian jon meacham and former aide to the george w. bush white house elise jordan and political reporter for the "washington post" robert costa. mike barnicle, last hour david ignatius was talking about how history will judge us, will judge the senators, will judge elected leaders, will judge people that work for donald trump's white house for how they respond in this time of crisis. talk about what you've seen this week and what concerns you the most. >> what concerns me the most, joe, is we were talking in the

past hour about the scab of race that has always been adhered to this country from its origins, from the origins of slavery to today and the only difference we have is with presidents leading the discussion trying to bring the country together. not only over race but anything of conflict. but now everything is different. the most concerning thing is in this big sprawling hugely diverse country we have a president for the first time in our history who not only ignores talking about the scab of race and the history of race, he pokes and prods and rips the scab off and when you rip a scab off, what do you do? you scratch a sore. people scratch a sore. he has a specific percentage of the population that he is encouraging to scratch the sore of race. his base. he does it nearly everyday.

>> does it nearly everyday and unfortunately he does it with enablers, he does it with united states senators who hear him when he says racist comments and then when members of their own party and members of the other party call out the president of the united states in realtime for unfortunately race baiting, using racially insensitive racist terms then senators -- these republican senators first deny he said it and then, katty kay, they change their tune on sunday and go on the air on the sunday shows and actually accuse their fellow senators who called the president of the united states out in realtime, they accuse them of being liars, despite the fact that erick erickson and nbc news -- i've got the time frame right now -- and so many others were reporting that the president on thursday night and friday and

reporting this weekend was actually bragging about using those words saying it was good for him and his base. >> quite a few different accounts coming from those senators and the white house as well. it did initially take the president 15 hours after the original story was published to deny he used vulgar and racially charged language in speaking about immigration but a source close to the president told nbc news that trump frequently uses that kind of language and that those around him frequently tell him he should not. two sources close to the administration also told nbc news that trump worked the phones on thursday night -- before his denial -- calling friends and allies outside the white house to gauge reaction to fallout from the bleep-hole comments. erick erickson tweeted "it's weird people in the room don't remember trump using that word when trump himself was calling friends to brag about it afterwards." i spoke to one of those friends. the president thought it would play well with the base.

special contributor to nbc news gabe sherman reports a source close to the president told gabe trump was boasting this weekend that bleep hole will help him politically. and the "washington post" josh dorsey, the reporter who broke the story tweeted on sunday "white house official told me tonight there is debate internally on whether that trump said s-hole or s-house. senators purdue and cotton seem to have heard the latter and are using to deny. last night the president took cover behind those two republican senators when asked if reported comments would have an impact on negotiating an immigration deal. >> reporter: do you think your comments would make it harder? >> do you see what various senators said about my comments? they weren't made. >> reporter: what do you think about people saying you are a racist? >> i am the least racist person you have interviewed, that i can

tell you. >> well, as we might say in the field of law, mr. president, you opened the door so you say you're the least racist person that they've ever interviewed. this won't take long, but let's go quickly. the president started his campaign bragging about -- not bragging about but accusing mexicans of being rapists and being the worst of the worst. the president then a few months later said he was going to ban 1.5 the billion muslims from entering the united states of america because of the god they worshipped. a few months later the president said a judge could not be trusted because he was a hispanic. the fact was he was actually a hoosier and not a hispanic. the president then basically denigrated the memory of an american hero and attacked a gold star and ifly and a gold

star mother because the man, the young man who fought and died in service of this country was a muslim and we could go on and on. the president of course in charlottesville perhaps the low point of his presidency claiming that there was a moral equivalency between those that were arguing against nazis and fascists and while supremacists and the nazis and fashionists a -- fascists and white supremacists himself. this president, who claims he's the least racist person, the president claiming there were some good people among the neo-nazis, the fascists and the white supremacists. jon meacham, i don't know where to start but a good place to start would be just to say that what do we do? have we found ourselves in a position where you have a

president who actually is calling around after making racist comments gauging the political fallout and then bragging about making those racist comments? >> yes, we are. seems to me one way to think about this is if you're a president of the united states when it comes to the eternal question of race and justice and equality of opportunity in america there's a spectrum. there's andrew johnson on one side who succeeded lincoln and then decided to return the south, as much as he could, to an antebellum footing. he opposed the 14th amendment, he opposed the 15th amendment, he vetoed civil rights acts. he was someone who said that we are essentially a white man's government. there's andrew johnson over here and then there's lyndon johnson over here. and lyndon johnson exactly 100 years after appomattox, a southerner, a texan who had a very mixed record on civil rights in the 1950s becomes

president in a moment of tragedy and of fear and decides that night -- >> can i stop you right there. i'm so glad you brought up lyndon johnson. lyndon johnson is a great example for all of us even in 2017. here is a man who is racially insensitive for much of his career. in 1957 he opposed the civil rights act. he mocked and ridiculed richard nixon for playing to black voters during that time. he was a retrograde in many ways by today's standards when it came to race yet when called upon by history in 1964 and 1965 you could say he did for race in america in 1964 and 1965 what churchill did for our war effort in 1940. >> churchill, another flawed man

through time who when given his moment in history made all the difference in the world. >> and what he did was -- reinhold niebuhr once talked about our politics being shaped by a biographical pinnacle at the top of the pyramid. and in this sense it's the president but that at the bottom of the pyramid has to be our social and culture reality and what dr. king embodied, what rosa parks embodies, what john lewis embodies was a shift in our thinking after the second world war that we had to finish the work, the unfinished work, of reconstruction and the civil war and do you want to be -- here's the question for those senators and the president. do you want to be andrew johnson or do you want to be lyndon johnson? do you want people to be sitting around in five years, ten years, 100 years and saying as johnson once said to george wallace do

you want your tombstone to say you hated or you built? >> it sounds from reporting that gabe sherman was giving us earlier on the program that the president is quite happy with the results of what he said. that he's been in mar-a-lago this weekend celebrating the impact of those comments. >> inside of the white house there's a sense now that it's about the specificity of the word uttered in that conversation. the "washington post" stands by its reporting and the white house has also gotten into arguments over the weekend with the "wall street journal" of their own interview about different words used, was it "i" or "i'd" when it came to discussing north korea. this shows that the broader part of the republican party stays with the president. the most telling image from the white house was house majority leader kevin mccarthy standing alongside the president in florida showcasing to the world that the republican party at this moment of tumult remains by this president.

>> we've had myriad reports of the president calling people thursday and friday saying "hey, what i said is going to play really well with the base. i'm getting flak now but it will play really well with the base." which leads some people -- including me to whether he really understands the base of people who voted for him. most of them, i would submit, are not racist. they are people who having ignored and left behind by government, who have been cut out of the economic expansion this country has experienced over a couple decades, they've been left behind by that. you have a piece in "time" magazine this week "i'm a republican," that's the title of it. "what is wrong with my party?" what is wrong with your party? >> i think right now president trump has been encouraged to just be cool all the time and there's no check on this cruelty and it's a huge problem. this is bigger than any kind of partisan issue.

this is about fundamental decency and how we believe as americans that other people should be treated, within our own country and around the world. and this is a fundamental tenet of democracy that everyone is equal under the law and that has been how we go about projecting our business in the world, too. donald trump, however seems to think that pitting everyone against each other is the way for him to have political success. >> but how do you explain the fact with that in the wake of this comment last thursday and other comments prior to last thursday you don't find -- with the exception of lindsey graham last week, you don't find republicans standing up and saying no, no, no, mr. president, that's wrong, or stop it. you don't find the republican doing that. where are they? >> they've hitched their wagon with him and they think this will blow over just when there's the next scandal because there's always another scandal. you look at last week and

everything that happened and the news was so dizzying, the pace of his constant outrages and they hope it will just blow over. that's a very short-term solution for what is a long-term problem that is going into the soul -- chipping into the soul of american values we hold dear. >> i think it's also constantly chipping into the support of donald trump himself as the new year started there were some that thought that he had a little wind behind his back for the first time with the passage of tax reform, with good economic news out, with low unemployment, with a high stock market, with high consumer confidence. but he can't get out of his way, he can never get out of his way, i'm hearing for the first time -- i talked to you about my friends in florida and across the country for the first time -- i've just had enough of this guy. i'm not so sure that friday

wasn't an important moment even for his base to say enough's enough because i heard from several people this weekend, enough is enough. i wish i could just wave a magic and with and mike pence would be president of the united states right now. that's something certainly that i haven't heard before and, eddie, part of that is, at least from what i've heard from my friends and my family members, mike barnicle is right, everybody that voted for donald trump -- in fact the majority of people that voted for donald trump -- didn't vote for him because he was a racist. as we know there were quite a few people in wisconsin, ohio, pennsylvania, and michigan that made the difference for donald trump that also voted for barack obama. but a lot of people felt left behind, abandoned by their government, they don't like the republican party, they don't like the democratic party, they didn't trust the clintons, that i didn't trust the bushes, they

wanted to move in a new direction because they believed their government let them down just like people who voted for barack obama eight years earlier had done that. yet here's a president that is now forcing people if they say they are supporting donald trump to at least quietly be bt supporting racist comments he make and that is a losing proposition for donald trump, obviously a losing proposition for the american people but they're not going stand by him at the polls and he's going to so energize his base that people are like kevin mccarthy are not going to be majority leaders next year so why are they standing next to him? >> i have no idea about what's informing the political calculus of some republicans enabling donald trump, who are normalizing racism. on the one hand you see them trying to marginalize and

dismiss bannonism and the alt-right but on the other hand you see them engaging in this culture war kind of rhetoric that in some ways reflects bannonism and the alt-right. this is important, joe, in terms of the 2016 election, remember some of the exit poll data said it wasn't just simply economic questions motivating the donald trump voter, there were cultural questions motivating the trump voter. the sense that the country wasn't familiar, that it was changing too quickly and donald trump is most comfortable as a cultural warrior. we understand him in the tradition not of george w. bush or george h.w. bush or rag rona reagan but a pat buchanan and george wallace. he's comfortable in that pocket. so part of what i've been trying to grapple with and think about that we have so many folk in this country for some reason willing to throw the principles and norms of democracy into the trash bin for some vision of america that donald trump represents and our unwillingness to interrogate what that means,

for who we take ourselves to be for that 38% is a large number of americans. what does it mean people are willing -- cotton, purdue, ryan, many k car think, others, some folks that we think are principled, willing to throw the principles and norms of american democracy into the trash bin for a culture war that donald trump is waging as if she was sherman marching to the south. >> you know, i want to get to katty in a second to move on to the next story but i feel like to have go to elise jordan right now. you're from mississippi, i'm born in georgia, went to school in alabama, lived in florida, lived in mississippi and it's just -- again, i'm saying this so people that watch this show understand that so many people that voted for donald trump didn't do so bauecause they wer racist. that i did so because -- and it's something that i always

felt, there was such a cultural condescending nature from the mainstream media, from hollywood, from academics. i could go down the list, these are not imagined slights. these are -- it seems -- and in many ways donald trump is is making the reaction to donald trump could become so extreme from cultural elites that it plays right into his base and it was just a gut feeling i had when he -- i thought the low point of the national championship game for me, the alabama/georgia game, was when donald trump walked on to the field but i saw everybody standing up and cheering for him and i certainly remember what it's like living in georgia and alabama and it had nothing to do with racism, it had a lot to do with what i said the first time

i campaigned for congress. every door you knocked on somebody was either on the side of john wayne or jane fonda. that was in 1994. in 2017 that split is even more dramatic. >> but, joe, you're talking about georgia and i just saw a poll of president trump's approval rating in georgia that it was in the mid-30s, i believe. >> 37%. >> exactly. which is incredible considering it is georgia. there should be no question that a republican president one year in is pretty popular in georgia. and i think that although trump has been very successful waging this cultural war, i think there is going to be a lot of blowback. and you look at my family in mississippi who voted for donald trump and they don't want to talk about him anymore. they want to ignore the antics, they're sick of it, they're sick of the foul language, it's embarrassing, they don't approve

of it at all. he was the lesser of two evils and we have to remember that this was a really close election that it wasn't necessarily that donald trump managed to sweep the entire country unlike what he likes to tell you. so he did not come in and decide to approach his first year in a conciliatory manner and reach across the aisle like president bush did, pursuing legislation like no child left behind, education reform so he went in all -- everything on fire and that's what's happening right now and he is going to pay the consequences in november of 2018. >> he most certainly is and that -- the georgia poll is one of the data points that i was thinking about this weekend as i was talking to my friends, i was proving the point that they voted for him for one reason but even though i was saying a

couple minutes ago they won't stand by and defend him when standing by and defending him, katty kay, requires that they stand by and at least quietly defend racially insensitive racist remarks which is why my friends this weekend said enough. why can't mike pence be president? i didn't vote for this. i was trying to explain why some people did vote for him who aren't racially insensitive. i think the "atlanta journal-constitution" poll, trump has a 37% approval rating in the state of georgia. in the deep, deep south. >> and part of the president for the president is this foul language is that this doesn't exist in a vacuum. remember that whole thing started because the meeting the president held was all around immigration and what to do about dreamers and that now because of the bad blood that's been caused

by these comments and by republicans accusing democrats of not speaking the truth about those comments, that could mean this is all over. here's the president speaking last night about what's going to happen with daca. >> honestly, i don't think the democrats want to make a deal, i think they talk about daca but they don't want to help the daca people. >> reporter: what's your sticking point? >> we used to say the daca children, but the children aren't children. >> reporter: do you have a responsibility to make a deal on daca? is it your responsibility, mr. president? >> we're ready, willing and able to make a deal on daca but i don't think the democrats want to make a deal and the folks from daca should know the democrats are the ones that aren't going to make the deal. >> so bob, in light of everything that's happened over the last three days, where does daca stand now and how much of the rancor caused by that meeting has an impact on it? >> the meeting has caused a lot of these relationships to fall apart. if you're publicly warring with

senator durbin of illinois, the key democrat on this issue, that doesn't bode well for a deal being cut in the coming days or weeks. i was in atlanta over the weekend reporting and this daca discussion matters in places like georgia because when you think about that poll, georgia isn't just full of white republicans, there's a rising latino population and white progressives as we saw in the special election for the house last year in the atlanta suburbs, they are energized and speaking to senator booker of new jersey who was down in atlanta going to predominantly african-american churches on sunday, he was telling me he senses that energy. so you see some of these core democratic groups in the south. it's not just the white republican moderate in the suburbs who are skittish, it's the energy among the democrats that could be a problem for republicans if something like a daca deal isn't cut. >> all right, bob costa, thank you so much, always great to have you on. still ahead on "morning joe,"

the economist asks "is it really this bad?" the magazine's new issue devils into the first year of the trump presidency and we'll bring in former ambassador nicholas burns on the global impact of all this. we'll talk to nick burns along with david ignatius and this week senator jeff flake is set to speak from the senate floor taking direct aim at president trump's attack on the media comparing them to, obviously, the stall inninist terminology stalin used back in the '30s and '40s. we're joined live by the outgoing senator here on "morning joe." we'll be right back. i did what you said, doc... ...changed everything. you switched to the capital one quicksilver card. and how do you feel? [sighs] like a burden's been lifted. those other cards made you sign up for bonus cash back. then they change categories on you every few months. then you had to keep signing up! you...deserve...better.

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♪ there was a turtle by the name of burt ♪ ♪ and burt the turtle was very alert ♪ ♪ when danger threatened him he

never got hurt ♪ ♪ he knew just what to do, he'd duck and cover ♪ ♪ duck and cover, he did what we all must learn to do ♪ ♪ you and you and you and you, duck and cover ♪ >> i'd like to say from simpler times but there was nothing simple about children practicing drills at the height, jon meacham, of the cold war. that was a psa from 1952 and it spoke to the anxiety -- people talked about it, a generation growing up under the shadow of the possibility of nuclear annihilation. the height of that concern was during the cuban missile crisis but you have been been sensing that anxiety and now it was in the forefront of a false

emergency alert about inbound missiles heading towards hawaii. >> the alert is just terrifying. you're right. 1952 was three years after we realized the soviets had their own bomb. it was the middle of the mccarthy era that ran from '50 to '54. arthur schlesinger said the most dangerous autumn in history was autumn, 1952. the last time like this was '82/'83, remember that movie of the week, the abc movie "the day after." >> the guy had -- yeah, "the day after" where the guy saved himself from nuclear annihilation by ducking behind i think it was his datsun dashboard on his car. yeah, i remember that movie very

well, thank you. he ducked and covered. >> any port in a storm. and so i think the -- this is -- i think what's happening is in a post-september 11 world we have realized we are vulnerable and then you then take the fact that we have a state actor in north korea who is nuclearized and has spent the last x number of months/years, threatening us and so it's not an irrational fear and i think that's what makes this arguably the most complicated diplomatic task in our memory certainly is how do you try to take care of this regime that does not seem to act according to the usual rational terms of national behavior. >> and it bears repeating this is a threat that has been coming at us for a very long time and there were warnings from our

intel community in the late '90s that north korea within the next ten, 15, 20 years will have the ability to strike the u.s. mainland. well, that time is rapidly coming. let's bring in right now professor of international politics at the fletcher school of law and diplomacy at tufts university daniel drezner, also former u.s. ambassador to nato and former state department spokesman nicholas burns, professor of diplomacy and international relations at the harvard kennedy school of government. also with us, washington correspondent for the "economist," john fassman. the edition marks the one year anniversary -- if you want to call it that -- of the trump presidency and asks the question whether it's really this bad. dan drezner, let's start with you. obviously this weekend was just horrific for people that were in hawaii. it does, though, serve as a

reminder of what our allies and friends in south korea, what our allies and friends in japan, what immediate threat they live under everyday and when people in the united states senate are suggesting that we go to war with north korea it basically gives us a glimpse into what their world would look like immediately after that happens. >> it's not just members of the u.s. senate, it's the national security adviser hr mcmaster who has repeatedly over the last few months talked about the idea of kim jong-un not being deterrable which i see no evidence that that's actually the case but if you start saying from the executive branch that you don't think north korea can be deterred, the signal you're sending to kim jong-un is that there's no point in negotiations because the united states is intending to launch a preemptive strike at some point or what's been talked about adds a bloody nose strike and that obviously risks a larger conflict breaking

out very very quickly. and the secretary .e.c -- northa missile to launch an attack against north korsouth korea an for quite some time. when i was in japan over the summer, many people were surprised by the degree to which the united states is freaking out about this, mostly because for the japanese this has been a fact of life for at least five, six years. >> ambassador nick burns, this is david ignatius, i have a question i want to put to you. we're now in a period of pause in preparation for the winter olympics in which north korea and south korea are talking, the u.s. has agreed to defer the military exercise that was scheduled for this time period so there's a question whether we're intering a period of real diplomacy in which the fundamentals of this crisis, this confrontation, can be addressed.

is it just temporary? will it go back to the crisis after the olympics end or do we have something real here? >> let's hope there's an opportunity for diplomacy. we have to look at this coldly. kim jong-un is trying to divide south korea and the united states by this peace initiative. i think there's every reason that following the winter olympics he's go back to being kim jong-un, making wild threats and threatening the south korea and japan and the united states but it's important before we talk about war with north korea to have some kind of diplomatic space to see if there's an ability to work with kim jong-un. i think that's where jim mattis and secretary rex tillerson have been trying to head without a lot of help from donald trump. if you look at the public statements of the two secretaries, they clearly want to have some kind of negotiations with kim jong-un, president trump doesn't appear that interested. but at least we have this period and so i hope that we can take

advantage of it as the south koreans and north koreans meet. i hope that's going to evolve into a situation where we sit down with north korean diplomats, fwbecause to go to w, a preventative war, to choose that with fwhanorth korea would unconscionable. >> you wrote the cover story in this week's the "economist" magazine and the head on the piece is "the one-year-old trump presidency. is it really this bad?" you don't write the heads but do you think internally there was a pushback, the one-year-old trump presidency, how bad is it? >> no, that was the question we wanted to ask. the answer is, it's not good. the best you can say so far is the economic policies haven't been as catastrophically self-wounding as we feared. he hasn't pushed through massive tariff, he hasn't withdrawn from nafta but i think the effects he is having on norms and on the country's social cohesion can't

be overstated? >> can we repair the damage done thus far to those norms? >> we have to try. i don't know. globally people are moving on, it will be very hard to recover our standing globally but we have to try. >> in the piece you talk about president trump's temperament and what a negative that has been over the course of the first year of the presidency. president trump seems pretty unwilling to change and to attempt to exert basic self-control that we expect of individuals behaving decently in society. so what is the outlook for his continued presidency if his. the -- his temperament -- if he continues to behave in the manner he has been. >> his temperament was baked in. we've written he doesn't have the judgment to lead a great country, that is our view and i think that's the true of a majority of americans, by the

rules that were set up, he was voted into office. the best thing to do is to vote in 2018 and 2020. >> john fasman, thank you so much. dan drezner, stay with us, nicholas burns, stay with us as well. coming up next, president trump says he's giving european allies "a last chance" to fix what he considers flaws in the iran nuclear deal. what it means for the protest movement bubbling up against the regime when "morning joe" returns. [ click, keyboard clacking ]

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before we went to break we pushed the wrong button so you weren't seeing -- sort of like the hawaii person. we pressed the wrong button so the protests you saw were not from iran but rather from the philippines. thank good we didn't push the third button which we always keep on stand by which was "south park the movie."

that would have been embarrassing. dan, let me go back to you. dan, we first met when we were whispering sweet nothings to each other over twitter about the iran nuclear deal. they were arrows and barbs, i think. but there are a lot of people like myself that were opposed to the iran nuclear deal but here we are in 2018 and what would you say to people like myself who were opposed to the deal when it went through about the dangers, though, at this point walking away from the deal like the president is still threatening to do unless the europeans "fix the deal." which they're not going to do. >> the first thing is it's worth noting that to date iran has complied with the deal. the iaea and nuclear inspectors have confirmed that everything iran was obliged to do under the agreement, under the jcpoa iran has done so why walk away from

an agreement in which the other side has continued to honor its obligations? the second thing is this is not a deal between the united states and iran, this is a deal between the international community, the p 5 plur5+1 and iran and it's incredibly clear that russia, china, and the european members of the p5+1 have no intention of walking away from this deal. so if the u.s. walks away from it, you have given iran entree to restart their nuclear program with no benefits whatsoever. and the third thing i would say is that if you really care about the protests that have bubbled up and more recently died down in iran the last thing you want to do is trigger a rupture between the united states and its european allies in terms of trying to promote some sort of democratic uprising in iran. basically what trump did this week was guarantee that the europeans are not going to take the united states seriously in terms of trying to maintain the

jcpoa. so the likelihood that it will be any common foreign policy going forward is laughable. >> david ignatius, while you supported the iran deal, you did call it a cosmic gamble. it seems like it would be an even greater gamble now to walk away from a deal that the allies s.a.t. down with the united states, again, whether all of us loved the deal or not but to walk away from it at this point seems to leave us with the worst of all worlds, doesn't it? >> it's hard to see any benefits for the united states or israel from scuttling the deal and it seems as if president trump himself has realized that under pressure from secretary mattis and secretary tillerson and is not tearing up the deal as he said he would. >> i want to ask ambassador burns a question. the president said in certifying the deal once more that this is it, this is the last time and

that the europeans have to lobby congress for some new additional controls which presumably won't break the deal but will add more toughness. where is that going? is this deal going to survive this latest insistence on additional measures? >> david, i think that's not going to go anywhere. the europeans won't agree to renegotiate the deal as you know. britain, france, and germany have said that clearly, they won't lobby congress. i was on the hill last week, i don't think congress is going to take the responsibility to do it so i actually think president trump may have to blink again the next time when a certification decision comes to his desk because there's no other alternative for the united states but to stay with this deal and at the same time -- and david, you've reported on this -- here's the problem for the united states. iran is testing ballistic missiles in violation of the u.n. security council resolutions and iran's a major supporter of terrorism. so if president trump does have

an out, i think there's bipartisan support in congress for further sanctions against iran over the ballistic missiles, over the human rights violations and over what's happening inside the country but not to scuttle the deal with iran. so he can act tough on one hand by further sanctioning iran on the ballistic missile and terrorism front but he has to stick with this deal or else he'll produce a crisis with europe and embolden as dan drezner said the revolutionary guard in iran. >> david, to what extent do you hear from foreign diplomats something that i'm hearing around this iran story that the very lack of knowledge about what the president wants, the sense of insecurity about what he's about to do, unpredictability, the fact that we were so close to the way of a deadline before we knew the president was going to do, that that's making it hard for america's allies to know how to handle this presidency when it comes to specific policies because they don't know what his next move is going to be.

>> i katy you have it right, does the president intend to destroy the deal? does he want to continue it? i'd ask dan drezner who follow this is carefully. dan, a month from now or let's say another 120 days from now there's another certification, where is this going to be? >> i think as nick burns said, trump might have to blink. on the one hand, he doesn't want -- he's made it repeatedly clear he doesn't like having to constantly sign sanctions waivers for this deal. but on the other hand, he's not going to get anything he's asked for from this past week and the other thing you have to do is step back to tie this to the conversation we had about north korea the last block which is essentially if you're north korea and the trump administration claims you want to negotiate with it but at the same time the trump administration walks away from a

deal with iran where iran appeared to be primarily in compliance, what does that tell north korea about the likelihood of any deal with the united states sticking? >> yeah, and the timing of that, dan, you're exactly right. the timing of walking away of w a deal that the united states and their allies in the west made with iran cooperate be worse as we try to figure out a way out of a nuclear showdown with north korea. what country would enter into a deal with us if we walked away from ones that we made just a couple of years ago? dan, thank you for being with us. ambassador nicholas burns, thank you, as well. coming up next, what's even more tragic than trump's appalling comments? that's the title from the latest column from ruth marcus. ruth will join the round table ahead on "morning joe."

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the presidential run in 2020. can't we just have a rug one for a while, a regular old boring white dude president that smiles and shape shift into a lizard at night? i'm tired of all these had fun ideas for president. i miss boring politics. i miss when people would ask me, hey, did you hear what the president said? and i'd be like, no. >> oh, yeah, the good old days. stid still ahead on the eve of this martin luther king jr. day, president trump declares he is the, quote, most racist person. meanwhile, two republican senator deny president trump used the vulgar words, but can the truth be found in senator lindsey graham's response? we'll discuss that when "morning joe" comes right back. from the very beginning ... it was always our singular focus. to do whatever it takes, use every possible resource. to fight cancer.

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as recent unfortunate events demonstrated, we cannot be complacent about racism and bigotry. i would pledge all of you to build an america where incidents of racial hate does not happen because racism has not banned not just from the law books, but from the hearts of the people. >> that was 31 years ago to the day as president ronald reagan marked the life and the legacy of dr. martin luther king jr.

now is president trump being asked a different set of questions about race. >> mr. president, are you a racist? >> no, no, i'm not a racist. i am the least racist person you have ever interviewed. the that i can tell you. >> so there you have it. two presidents, two republicans, two men claiming to be conservatives, yet a great divide between race even among two conservative republican presidents. but after all these decades of progress, here we find ourselves with the reactionary and, yes, some would say a racist president. good morning. it's monday, january 15th, and it is martin luther king jr. day. with us, we have veteran columnist and msnbc contributor

mike barn kacle, eddie glow, jr and washington anchor for bbc world news america kattie kay, columnist and associate editor for "the washington post" david ignatius and pulitzer prize winning historian john meachum. john, let me begin with you. history does not always go in straight lines. i do think, though, historians 30 years from now will be shocked that america has moved as much as we've moved since the life and death of martin luther king jr. we elected barack obama, who won two majority victories. i guess the last -- the last president to do that, my god, maybe it was eisenhower. and yet it's followed with a

president who is reactionary and radical and i would say, judging by his words and his deeds racist. how do historians handle this 30 years from now? >> well, we have a recurrent and tragic tendency in the american soul to fear rather than to hope, to point at people instead of looking ahead. it was said years and years ago that the american dilemma is race. to voice the problem with the 20th century in america is the problem of the color line. the question is and the tragedy of the current moment that you're describing is we thought that that was the problem of the 20th century. self-evidently, it continues to be a problem into this, our fourth century as a country if you count the colonial experience. you're right about history being

long. dr. king used to paraphrase theodore parker who said the arc of a moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice and that's the hope we have to dedicate ourselves to on days like this. >> and i do believe it does, that arc, eddie, does bend towards justice. it certainly has over the past 30, 40 years. and, of course, it was ronald reagan who won the last two landslides. now, i loved reagan. and reagan was an optimist. but barack obama also an optimist. eddie, that's why when you have presidents like reagan and you have presidents like obama, that is america bending -- choosing hope rather than fear. but right now, we have a president who, again, every

chance he gets seems to burrow down, be reactionary and seek approval from a third of the electorate. >> yeah. he's constantly appealing to his base. i think he -- instead of appealing to our better angel webs as abraham lincoln would have us do, he appeals to our darkest fears. i think it's important, though, we need to remember, joe, especially on this day, the kind of racial animists that attended the eight years that barack obama was in office. the racial tensions that emerged, the energy and in some ways the dark tea party, the unleashing of the voter suppression issues during that eight years. we also need to remember how incredibly polarized the country was when ronald reagan was elected. think about jesse helms and what they were doing in the senate,

you can think about that kind of energy and reaction to president reagan announcing his presidential run in philadelphia, mississippi, and claiming states rights as his orientation. there was a lot of racial tension then. there was a lot of racial tension during barack obama's tenure. and we have racial tension now. and part of -- you know, i was thinking just earlier this morning about a quote from ralph elson, the great american novelist. he said americans are notoriously selective in our exercise of historical memory. and it's our ongoing forgetfulness of how john meachum said the original sin of racism continues to haunt the country that keeps us on this hamster wheel. here we are now dealing with the latest consequence and that's donald trump. >> well, but eddie, let's look at the entire portrait that's laid before us and pot be select

permissive in just one direction, also. let's not -- let's not try to glaze over the bad, but let's not forget the good at the same time. barack obama elected president of the united states twice, record turnout among black voters when barack obama was running. we see what happened in the state of alabama as a reaction to many things, but it was black voters that helped elect the first democrat in that state in 25 years. unemployment for black americans in 2017 much lower after eight years of barack obama. and yes, one year of donald trump. then it was, say, ten years ago. and wouldn't you say on many levels things have gotten much, much better than they were, say, 20, 30 years ago? >> absolutely, absolutely. i mean, i think it's important for us to understand that at

each turn, at each moment of crisis, there has been extraordinary progress. we can -- from the moment of the american revolution, we gave voice to the principals and freedom, we reconciled those principals of liberty and dree come with the institution of slavery, but we worked our way through it. when you think about the civil war and you think about reconstruction, and what happened in reconstruction, america was different. it's a second founding. but then, of course, we had jim crow and we have convict leasing. you think about the mid 20th century, you had everyday ordinary people arguing, fighting for first class citizenship. then we get the response to law and order and the the tax revolt on the west coast. each moment represents a moment offing progress, joe. the election of barack obama represents another era.

what we have now is an opportunity not to revert back. we have an opportunity to give voice to a vision of who we really want to be. who we really want to be as a nation. virginia is out of the bottle. the question for us is do we want to put it back in the bottle or do we finally want to banish it for view altogether. >> and you look at the results, again, in virginia, you look at the results in alabama, you look at the results across the country one look at the marches, you look at the people getting engaged, you look at turnout among young voters, plunge black voters, among women voters in alabama, it's very clear that, yes, you have a president who is reactionary and who is playing to the racist tendencies of a third of americans. hopefully fewer than that. yet you have the overwhelming majority of americans right now rejecting that.

there is a reason why donald trump had the lowest approval ratings of any president in the history of polling for a first year president. but david ignatius, as we move past domestic issues for a moment and look back and look at the chaos that followed donald trump's comments about countries in the caribbean and central america and across africa, talk about the diplomatic damage not just to america's relationships with those countries, but also america's relationship to the world. >> joe, our reputation around the world is our nation's capital. it's what we spend to get things done. it's the trust that people have that america is a decent country, represents important ideas. and you can spend that capital down. you can waste it and diminish

what you were given as steward as president. we've watched that. it's only one year. but the draw down in our nation's reputation around the world as i talk to leaders, as i travel, is really stunning to me. when you have the mayor of london cheering that donald trump won't be visiting his city, traditionally the closest alliance the united states has is with britain. when you have the leader of germany basically scratching her head, not understanding u.s. policy. a telling remark was made by the new under secretary of state who said a couple days ago that ambassadors have been instructed to tell countries like haiti, like african countries who are wondering with this vulgar, hideous description of their countries what did that mean? and it was the state department saying ambassadors were told, it doesn't really mean anything. it's just the president speaking

out. and i think, you know, on martin luther ki luther king day, the question i'd ask for all of us, it's really about the country. it's about what americans decided to do, what values they had they have, how they express themselves in polls, when they go to the ballot box on election day. it's not just about trump. trump makes these remarks and tell us everybody he's the least racist guy you've ever met. it's but say, it's about what we do in response to that. >> and, mike, there are -- and this is an ongoing debate between mika and myself. i look at donald trump and i look at the horrors of donald trump's presidency, the violence that he does to constitutional norms, the contempt he has for the rule of law, the stalinist phrases that he trots out when he speaks about the free press

that our founders saw as, really, the cornerstone of the bill of rights. and, yet, i look at how so many of those institutions have responded to this. and i am hopeful, from what i've seen so far, about how americans are responding to this great challenge. we seem to be responding, i think, so far with passing grades as a country for a american who understands america and understands american values even less than he understands what's going on around the world in america's place in the world. >> yeah, joe, this is a -- a sobering and necessary discussion that we're having right mow because i would submit that we, as a country, collectively as americans, have never been here before where we are today. we've never been in this position.

this is a country, this is a remember created and born with the scab of racism on it due to slavery, due to people being brought to this country in chains as slaves. and every president that we have had, even many whom people disagreed with politically, including richard nixon, by the way, have always reverted to the principal focus of a presidency. and that is to bring a country together in times of strife, in times of trouble, conflict, real or potential. with the exception of one president. this president. the incumbent president who goes out of his way to tear at that scab and rather than bringing the country together.

so it is up to us as characters and individuals. but we have never, ever been here before. still ahead, the white house deny it, but now it's being suggested colleagues are lying about the president's vulgar language about immigrants. but first, here is bill karins with a check of the forecast. yet more frigid curse. >> more snow, too. temperatures have been bottoming out over the the last couple of days. we have a mini snowstorm and warm up near the end of the week. 81 million people. look, once again, we're including south tk, even. corpus christi under a winter weather advisory. when you talk about snow and ice in the south, it will be big impact. from jackson to shreveport,

that's only an inch. new england will get 3 to 6. some of the kids are looking at that and thinking maybe a delay or even a closing. we had about an a inch overnight in indianapolis. through the afternoon, light snow in ohio. still rain showers in texas. the texas sleet, freezing rain, then over to snow will be early tomorrow morning. so probably a lot of school cancellations and delays down here if we get all this snow down here through louisiana and mississippi. maybe a touch in atlanta as we go throughout 8:00 p.m. on tuesday and the east coast, again, it's mostly tuesday night into wednesday morning. and how about this? imagine waking up to in this morning in fargo, negative 36 wchd. just brutal stuff. by the way, we had all of those pictures. no rain in the forecast, but the end of the week will be the threat. negative windchills last night

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it's not the first time we've had a gross misrepresentation by that individual. >> are you saying the president did not use the word that is so widely reported? >> i'm telling you he did not use that word, george, and i'm telling you it was a gross misraegz. >> i didn't hear that word. senator durbin has a habit of misrepresenting what happens in white house meetings. >> you're saying it didn't happen? >> i didn't hear it and i was sitting no further away from

donald trump than dick durbin was. >> i think if you watch the show, you will know that i am rarely speechless. i'm going to be the opposite of speechless here. both of those united states senators that first came out on friday and they said, oh, i don't remember. i didn't hear it. i don't -- this is what they said on friday. we do not recall the president saying these comments specifically, but he did talk about the imbalance in our current immigration system. and they went from saying they didn't hear it on friday to coming out with the same talking points, i don't know if the white house handed it to them or she shared it among themselves saying lindsay graham was a liar and dick durbin was a layer. we're going to have kattie get you some intg information and bring in a guest that shows how explicitly these two united

states senators are lying. but lindsay actually, in that meeting, actually called the president out on making his racist comments about the people from these countries and had to explain to him what america was really about. so it just -- again, i still -- a year in, i find it hard to believe people are willing to lie for donald trump. >> and senator graham called the approximately out in realtime. it took, though, the president 15 hours after the original story was published to deny that he used vulgar and racially challenged language in speaking about immigration. yet a source close to the president told nbc news that trump frequently uses those kind of language and two sources

close to the administration told nbc news that trump worked the phones on thursday night before his denial calling his friends and allies outside the white house to gauge reaction to fallout from the comments. eric ericsson tweeted, it's weird that people in the room don't remember trump using that word when trump himself was calling friends to brag about it afterwards. i spoke to one of those friends. the president thought it would play well with the base. "the washington post" josh dorsey said there is debate internally on whether trump said [ bleep ] hole or [ bleep ] house. senators purdue and cotton seem to have heard latter. and special correspondent gabe sherman reports that had a source close to the president told gabe that trump was boasting this weekend that it will help him politically. >> yeah.

so let's bring in gabe sherman right now. ""vanity fair."" gabe, this is fascinating. you have these two senators who i will say at the very -- the kindest interpretation would be that they are being legalistic about whether it's hole or house, which, of course, that's a semantics argument, a distinction without a difference. on friday, eric ericsson, a friends of mine and the conservative commentator said trump was calling around blaging about using t bragging about using the language and you have an update on what he did this weekend. tell me about it. >> a source close to me said at mar-a-lago this weekend the president was in high spirits and thought all of this uproar would play well for him politically. this is a president who believes he has a deep understanding with the american electorate. we have to remember, he launched

his presidential campaign announcing that mexico sends rapists into the united states of america. so it's not surprising that the president would actually think that this would play well politically and be an advantage to him going forward in the immigration debate. >> yeah. and so give us -- tell us about the president, mar-a-lago, he was actually -- he was bragging about what happened and he said this would help him with his base? >> yeah. you know, as the uproar engulfed the white house, the president according to my reporting was in high spirits this the weekend, was not phased by it. i think the most charitable explanation for the senators' comments could be whether it was s-hole or s-house. but that does not change the tenor nor the meaning of that comment. and i think the president, you know, this isn't an issue that he believes and i disagree with, but he believes is a winning issue for him. and so, you know, as the entire

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today we celebrate dr. king for standing up for the self-evident truth americans hold so dear, that no matter what the color of our skin or the place of our birth, we are all created equally by god. >> that was president trump on friday. that was, of course, before signing a proclamation in honor of martin luther king jr. let's bring in the president of the national action network, the reverend al sharpton. al, it's kind of hard to listen to donald trump talk about martin luther king's legacy the same day that as eric ericsson said, he was calling around bragging about making racist comments about people coming from countries that he didn't like. >> no doubt about it. and when you look at the fact,

joe, that not only did he say the words that has been confirmed by otherwise, the policy. when you look at the fact that he backs it up by saying, why are we bringing more people in from norway, well, look at the trade we do with norway and look at the trade we do with sub-sahara africa. it's not even in america interest to insult countries except for the fact that it's racist. if you look at the fact that the united states has intelligence operations all over africa because they need to combat isis and al qaeda, do you imagine with the isis operatives are doing today, going around telling people don't cooperate with american intelligence against us, they think you all live in s-houses or s-holes. i mean, with this is against americans' interest, whether you're republican or democrat. so what this president has done is not only racist b, it is a

national security risk. and on king day, for him to sit up and stand up and sign a proclamation when he has over and over and over again demonstrated racism is really something that this country ought to really say we're not going to tolerate. >> well, and what he said on friday was calculated. this is a calculated political -- i mean, we have come so far in so many ways, but donald trump appears, does he not, determined to drag us back. not 30 years ago, but a hundred years ago. >> no, he seems very determined and he's determined what his policies to do that and his language. i mean, you and i have met with donald trump down through the years. i've known him 35 years. and marched on him, protested him, and have met with him. all of my meetings with donald trump has been far more profane than profound. so i know that he used this kind

of language. it is what he does. and i no doubt he's calculated it. 36 years ago today, january 15th, '82, i was in my 20s. james brown, the father of soul, brought me to the white house. he was lobbying president. he wanted me to go because i was in the new york operation bread basket. he was lobbying to support mrs. king and congressman conyers making this a federal holiday. and i said, mr. brown, they're never going to do this. ronald reagan called dr. king a communist. he does not believe in what dr. king stood for. but we went. and years later, reagan did sign that proclamation. i'm sure it's had a lot more to do with the meeting with james brown, but it was a movement. but reagan accepted it, saluted it, reagan had his own agenda with black america. i didn't agree with it, but he had it. donald trump doesn't even have a black agenda.

he has no urban agenda. he has no agenda for civil rights. his agenda is to race-bait and bring us backwards. and americans today on martin luther king's birthday, i'm in washington with his son, we're doing things all day. we need to say we can have a debate between conservatives and progressives over how to deal with civil rights, but neither of us should tolerate people that just race bait with no plan and just want to play us against each other, which is personified by this president. coming up on "morning joe," our next guest says it's hard to be truly angry at donald trump because he never made a secret o of what he really believed. the real problem, he says, is with republicans who are normalizing racism from the white house. after more than 20 years,

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secretary, you were in that meeting at the oval office b, did the president say that? >> i don't recall him saying that exact phrase. >> i can understand you saying they were said or they were not said. it is pretty shocking language. to say i don't recall seems implausible. if the president of the united states used the word blank hole, talking about countries in the oval office or didn't say it, i would know. >> i -- i understand the question. it was an impassioned conversation. i don't recall that specific phrase being used. that's all i can say about that. >> so that's the secretary of homeland security with either a faulty memory, a lack of attention during an important meeting, or allegiance to the president over the truth or actually clinging desperately to a legalism that somehow house and hole, at the end of that vulgar word, would make any

difference whatsoever. listen to the nuanced language. and it's very clear that everybody that is a sycophant for donald trump over this are clinging to a distinction without any difference whatsoever. let's bring in right now columnist and deputy editorial page ed he tore at "the washington post" ruth marcus, other author and nbc news constrictor annon darety artist and max boot. kattie kay, max barnacle and lease jordan are back with us. you know, ruth marcus, here you have the president's allies, certainly two senators and the head of the department of homeland security claiming that the president didn't say something that eric ericsson and "vanity fair" now reporting that the president was bragging about

saying. and calculating that it would help him with his base. >> it's so disheartening and that's just too mild a word fors what's going on here. as you see cabinets, a cabinet secretary and senators denying what just logic would tell you is the truth, whether it's house or hole. and i've been a little bit frustrated by some of the questioning because what i would like to ask them is what exactly do you recall the president saying? what you get when you try to ask that question, and i know it's easy to filibuster on tv, what you get is a whole disposition about the need to not have a country with open boarders. but what exactly do you recall the president saying might be a good question for right now. we >> well, really, it is frustrating. you go back and you look, max boot, at what you had the two senators saying when they

actually were audacious enough to call lindsay graham a liar who called the president out in realtime and called dick durbin a liar and the department of homeland security, it's clear they're clinging to a small difference, whether it was house or hole. and pretending that the president didn't say something that he was bragging about all weekend. >> you know, joe, i'm really more mad at donald trump's enablers now.than i am at trump himself because we know what donald trump is, okay? he has been an invet ratracist for years now. that's who donald trump is. we all know that. we knew that when he was elected, you know, having announced his presidency, his run for the presidency by attacking mexicans as rapists and murderers. what disgusts me now is that

republicans are calling for him and refusing to condemn him on the terms ought to be condemned on. paul ryan said this was unfortunate and unhelp.ful. that's the kind of thing you might say if donald trump had broken wind in a meeting, okay. that is not what you say when he demonizes the entire continent of africa when he only says he wants while people essentially coming to the united states. it's just, i know, tragic, depressing and horrifying that republicans are normalizing the most racist utterances we have heard from any president in my lifetime. >> yeah. and annan wrote a couple of weeks ago in "the washington post" that our founders prepared for a tyrannical president. they never, ever let their imaginations be dark.ed by the possibility of a compliant congress in the face of a

tyrannical president. but that appears to be exactly what we have in 2018. >> that's exactly right. and today is martin luther king day. i think we should pay toengz to that extraordinary man's extraordinary words. and i want to call your viewers' attention to one particular piece that you wrote the letter from a birmingham jail in which he talked about his grave disappointment with what he called the white moderate. and the heart of his point was that good people, good, decent but silent people are the wind beneath evil's wings. so yes, i agree fully with max boot, we have a man child who is deranged and racist in this office. but it takes a lot of other silent people to go along with it. and we're seeing those silent people in congress, we're seeing ceos who want a slight corporate tax reduction and are, lfr, willing to stomach and say nothing about what in private

dinn dinner parties they will tell you what they deemployer. we have seeing all sorts of people that are willing to see their country turned into the real s-hole. >> let me ask you a question. when i'm looking at you, i'm looking at the face of this nation, this huge sprawling homogenous nation. we're looking at what came out of the oval office last week. yet there is an element here that would suggest we should not be so much worried about the language the president uses as the reality of what he's doing. from haiti back there. you're from el salvador, get out now. things like that, the behavior of this administration. >> that's exactly right. let's not argue over language and quibble. the president of the united states has a vision of this country shared by millions of people in which people like me

should not be at this table with you in which people like my parents who happen to be sitting over there on this set should not have been allowed into this country in which black people perhaps should never have been freed. there are people who work for donald trump who have said things like that. roy moore has said things like that. and we are right now at war as the heart of this country is reality. my parents came as immigrants. we moved to cleveland, ohio, had an extraordinary life. this was mott the america they came to and they didn't move to manhattan. they moved to cleveland, ohio, and were embraced and loved and taught how to make cheesecake and taught how to go to shopping malls and taught and embraced by people who never met anybody from the place they come from. they loved them and they had

american children. not that this one small man child is degrading our country like this. but that so many people who i know to be good are saying and doing nothing. >> max, clearly there is a strong moral case that the this kind of language is unacceptable by an american president. but there's also just a practical case to be made that this isn't helpful with our diplomacy and for our national security interests. especially in africa where we have a lot of counterterrorism activity right now. what do you have to say about the damage that this has potentially made on some of those alliances? >> i mean, donald trump is doing catastrophic damage to america's soft power, to our standing in the world, and that is one of the most important weapons that we have in our armory.

it's very effective in the philippines. can you imagine doing that today? it makes all of our diplomacy all that much harder and it's -- i don't know how representatives of the united states and africa can look people in the eye and, you know, claim that our country is not racist, that our country is not oppressive, that our country wants to help them. all of these assurances that people routinely made are hollow when you have a president who utters the most vial and racist language available. this undercuts everything that we're trying to do abroad. it's terribly damaging and that damage will not be undone anytime soon. >> and by the way, max, if somebody wants to understand it, see in real terms the tragedy, the tragic road that we are taking right now, they need to

read your book, they mead to watch kim burns vietnam documentary, and that is the lesson. and i couldn't help but go back to ken burns' documentary on vehement name in my mind and what i've read of your book so far. about the lessons of vietnam. there are many lessons, but the main lesson is this. we weren't going to win that war by burning down villages. we were going to only win that war by convincing people not to become members of the vietcong, not to be on the side of the communists. and you look in 2017 and 2018, and we're repeating those mistakes because donald trump is doing everything he can to take us out of these alliances and these coalitions that we built up over the past 50 or 60 years that would help us in

afghanistan. that would help us across the middle east, that would help us in africa, that would help us across the world. >> well, that's exactly right, joe. we have to win hearts and minds and how can we possibly, when hearts and minds when the president the united states is not even welcome in great britain, which is our oldest ally. how do we influence all these other countries. how do we convince people there not to strap on, you know, suicide vests and go out and attack american targets. we're trying to convince them we're the good guys. that we don't seek to oppress them. that we believe in equal rights, freedom, all these ideals contained in the declaration of independence. all these things that people fought for for some years. you just can't make that case because, you know, donald trump is repelling the entire world. i mean, his behavior is so abhorrent, he is being denounced by everyone around the world. and that just, you know, makes it almost impossible for us to

win this counterterrorism campaign, to win hearts and minds, to convince people that we are on their side. it just makes it very, very difficult for our troops. by the way, i just heard from a friend of mine who's deployed abroad with the special operations forces and, you know, he's saying i have to work with all these different countries. i have to convince them to cooperate with us. how do i do that when trump is making these terrible comments? i mean, it just adds -- it makes his rucksack very, very heavy. that's the reality our troops confront out there every day. >> ruth, i want to talk about the idea of normalization because you write about it in your piece and the reference paul ryan has been saying. that these are the -- president comments were unhelpful. is that a part of normalizing what the president is saying, it doesn't really matter anyway? >> there's two things going on at the same time.

one is this kind of downplaying. really showing the content of paul ryan's character, if you don't mind my using the phrase from martin luther king. that there's also just -- among good people, the threat of outrage overload. we've been talking appropriately about the racism. but this is also an un-americanist notion, this notion that america should not be a welcoming country. and the fact that we're talking about the "s"-hole countries makes us not talk about other things that happened last week, his asalt on the first amendment, his assault on the independent judiciary. his labeling career fbi agent as a traitor guilty of treason. this is just not acceptable. we have to keep fighting against it. >> we sure do, ruth, thank you so much. ruth marcus. and of course we'll be reading your column in "the washington post." max boot, thank you as well.

you're very important, very timely new book "the road not tak taken" is out and annan, thank you as well. we really want to mention the new addition to the family, your daughter zora was born thursday night and here she is along side her big brother. thank you so much. and congratulations. >> thank you. >> all right. coming up neck, it's likely president trump's not going to be going up against hillary clinton again in 2020 but will he face one of her top fund-raisers instead? new signs that former governor terry mcauliffe is testing the waters for 2020. as we go to a break, a live look at the martin luther king jr. memorial on the mall in washington, d.c.

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that could actually be. get the truth out there. let the facts speak for themselves. >> does terry mccaauliffe run? does he have a chance of winning the nomination if he does run? certainly got a big enough ego, right? >> well, i mean, i think everybody in the democratic side is going to run. who knows. anybody can win. donald trump's a perfect example. a guy everybody gave 1% chance of winning ended up winning. so you never know in american politics. certainly in this century. final thoughts. mike barnacle, to you. >> terry mcauliffe. anybody and everybody can and will run, given donald trump. we've been talking about race and martin luther king today, joe. we've come so far in this country. it's time to continue that journey. unfortunately, we're going to have to continue it apparently without the president of the united states leading the charge. >> elise, final thoughts. >> i just hope that president trump can summon the

self-control today to really avoid comments similar to what he spoke last week on martin luther king day and show some respect and some control. >> catty. >> donald trump seems to think that went down well for him. i think you're right, does the base really like that kind of remark being made. before we go, we want to leave you with some extraordinary video that's come in from overseas. dozens of people were injured in indonesia when a balcony collapsed at the stock exchange there. police are investigating the cause. they have promised to bring a criminal case if warranted. amazing. look at that. there were no reports of any faults. isn't that incredible? looks terrifying. >> oh, my god, terrifying. terrifying. >> all right, well, thank you all so much for being on and we appreciate everybody watching. have a great martin luther king holiday. and let's remember why we're

having it and where we'll been and where we need to go as' country. thank you. that's it for "morning joe" this morning. chris jansing picks up the coverage right now. >> joe scarborough, thank you. i'm chris jansing, in for stephanie ruhle. a daca deal hangs by a thread as the debate shifts from the dreamers to the president's ince incend airy comments. >> he did not use that word. >> president push back and blaming democrats for lack of a deal. >> i am the least racist person you have ever interviewed. >> as trump defends himself, 800,000 dreamers are left in limbo after a court order provides temporary relief. and pandemonium in paradise. this morning, the investigation behind that terrifying false missile warning sending millions of hawaiians running for their lives. >> i was with my two little girls who are 8 and