>> all right. good morning. welcome to "morning joe." we've got live coverage of the breaking news out of california and, of course, all the of the day. we want to continue the coverage of the mass shooting at a popular college town bar in the town of thousand oaks, california. alex witt has been covering the story all morning long along with ayman. what do you have? >> it appears we have 11 people at least having been killed. the ventura county sheriff's department, the spokesman, saying there were 11 down. he was not including the shooter who is also apparently dead

inside this nightclub. >> now we know this is a tragic situation given the fact that 11 people are dead, joe and mika. we haven't heard from police who were able to identify the suspect, although they did confirm the fbi is on on the scene to help with that part of the investigation. the police sheriff that we are listening to there also said they do not believe at this point they have anything to lead them to believe this is a tli terrorism related incident, although they're not ruling that out entirely. >> this is the borderline bar & grill, a college area bar, very popular for the college country night tonight. you guys have kids. you know how terrible parents have to be. the five colleges in the area, they said about 200 people were packed inside here, but california lutheran university, pepperdine university in malibu,

all you have to do is drive about ten miles through the road there from pch over to the 101 freeway. apparently pepperdine university students frequented this place. also california state university channel islands, cal state north ridge and thomas aquinas college. this is a place, joe and mika, that has a very active social life. it's a. l popular place. they have two-step dancing. you can imagine the parents trying to get ahold of their kids at this late hour. but, again, 11 people killed. so 30 shots fired. there may be more injuries with those kids who took themselves to hospitals, joe. >> thank you so much, alex. willie, this just continues across the country. there is a sheriff earlier was having a press conference saying, you know, i can't make sense out of the senseless.

that's exactly what we have here, yet the another mass shooting in america. >> yeah. how many days are we less than two weeks from the synagogue shooting where 11 were killed there in pittsburgh. the word again from the ventura county sheriff's office, 11 victims inside this bar which alex witt just said it was a college night, which means you can be under 21 and be there. among the dead, a sheriff's deputy and you can see there the sheriff getting choked up talking about his colleagues and saying he's survived by a wife and a young son. but, again, this is the borderline bar & grill west of los angeles. 11 people were killed. the suspect, the shooter, is dead, as well. >> this happened just a few hours ago, so we'll be staying on this story. we'll be going back for updates to make sure we have complete coverage there. also politics today, we have republican communications strategist and msnbc political

contributor rick tyler, politics editor for the daily beast sam stein, white house correspondent for p bs news hour yamish elsendor. good to have you all on this morning. we have a lot of news. tuesday night, americans gave democrats their biggest house gains in a midterm election since watergate. president trump emerged somewhat in denial. democrats have won control of the house where they gained at least 28 seats with 15 still undecided. and republicans lost 7 governs mansions and 323 seats in the state legislature for a total of 367 during the trump presidency. hold on one second. because that's an important number. willie, you know how we had said at the end of barack obama's eight years in office, we said,

hey, listen, we understand everybody is focussing on hillary clinton losing the race, but if you want to understand just how bad things are with the democratic party, you have to look at the thousand seats that were lost over barack obama's eight years. to understand the true scale of this thumping, just how badly donald trump lost on tuesday night, how horrible he is for the republican party nationwide, the republicans lost a third. they lost a third of those thousand seats in trump's first two years. people like rick and steve schmidt and others, they don't have to look five years from now. he's doing it. they won a couple of red seats in the reddest of red states where donald trump won by 20 points. big deal. they're getting routed on the

state level. they're getting routed on the local level and they got routed in congress. >> beto o'rourke didn't win, stacy abrams, we'll see whether or not she prevails there. you lose the house, you have all the power and we learned how important that power in the house will be based on the fact that the president may -- we'll talk about the firing of jeff sessions. in january, those governorships will start. >> we all know democrats taking control of the house gives them certain powers to check this presidency and to compel him to answer questions, for example, to release his tax returns in a way that he has not experienced before, possibly in his life given what we've seen and what we know about this individual,

about this president. and that's the thing that i think shocked him the most yesterday and in our experience and the patterns that we've seen with him everything that he did yesterday was in response or to deflect. and we can talk about mueller and we can talk about the gafty of firing jeff sessions and how weird it was to do it lurchingly the way he did. but the bottom line is, he lost big time yesterday. he hates losing. on top of it, democrats have gained the power to basically ask him every question they finally want the answer to. >> donald trump was freaked out yesterday. everybody could see how freaked out he was. it was embarrassing watching him fire jeff sessions. >> and it's serious, of course. >> we'll get to that.

jim acosta, it was horrible that he would do that, but there's a reason, rick, why he did it the day after he got trounced, the day after republicans had their worst electoral beating since watergate. donald trump was humiliated. he was weak. he was battered. you could see him up there. he was baffled. he didn't know what to do. it was like a little kid kicking sand in the sandbox. he's screaming at jim acosta and then he fires jeff sessions. i he mean, i'd say the press shouldn't take the bait. this is about donald trump trying to distract from just how weak he is now, how vulnerable he is now.

>> i think when he went out there yesterday, and i watched the press conference. it was an hour and 20 minutes of trump bloviating. it seemed to me very staged. he wanted to go out there and pick a fight. so let's pick a fight with jim acosta, yamish and april. i think it was bush who had the word thumping, right? that was his word. and obama's word was shellacking. so we need a new word for trump. >> i think he called it a complete victory. >> it's a baghdad bomb complete victory. he was beaten so badly -- you look at those house races and those house races keep coming in, sam. they keep coming in for the democrats. >> they're going to end up with something like 37 gains, which is a huge -- you remember 2006, right? >> the biggest loss since

watergate. >> so you remember 2006. it was a seismic shift. this puts -- put that into perspective. trump's vulnerable right now. i think he knows he's vulnerable right now. i think he was lashing out and i think he expects us to take the bait. >> by the way, everybody did, didn't they? nobody was talking. i watched last night. you know what the huge story was last night? the story was the press followed him down the rabbit hole. what is going to affect this country and this constitution more than anything else -- >> the world. >> -- and the world, is that democrats now check him. it's no longer a one-party rule. >> and this is obviously a huge issue that he has a political allel lie in the role of attorney general. it could end up being the

beginning of the end for the mueller probe, right? but because house democrats are now running the committees, they could theoretically subpoena whatever work mueller has done and bring it into the committee level. the president will fight it, but the house democrats can now continue what mueller is doing. whereas priority the selection, this would be a huge crisis. the senate map is favorable to him. >> did you see the tweets yesterday? >> romney went after burr in north carolina. that's a swing state. and bur has been a straight shooter. >> corey garner.

>> he cannot afford to be a sycophant] for trump. and i wonder, if he didn't know, i told people i'm going to fire sessions, but i know i can't go after rosenstein or mueller, but i'm going to throw this out as a smoke screen. >> yeah, i think so. but it still has real world implications. this guy, matthew whitacre, who was a u.s. attorney in iowa, he's on television and on twitter calling the mueller probe a witch-hunt, retweeting something that call tess mueller probe a witch-hunt. >> that was his job interview. >> he talks about how they might be able to scam the government and now he's running the irs.

>> again, let's take this, though, to the next step, which is you're mueller. you're putting together this obstruction of justice charge and he has this hole in the puzzle. what can i put there? oh, he fires the united states attorney general. and appoints a hack, and may not have done that legally, to obstruct justice and stop this investigation. if donald trump gets rid of mueller, now the democrats can hire him. he can now work for the house of representatives and if they want to send all the information -- they're going to send it to the states. he thinks he's going to stop his

children, they'll be in state jail instead of the federal pen te federal penitentary. >> and no pardoning if any of these people are sent to state jails. >> and instead of democrats shouting on television or sending out tweets, jerry nadler comes out and adam fisch comes out and says, wait a minute, this doesn't fly. we're going to look into this matthew whitacre guy and see if this is okay. there is pushback now. >> i want to go to yamish. if we had gone with the narrative or if we were like fox and echoed the president's narrative, if it was a week ago, we would have -- maybe be going to a reporter on the border, about the caravans making their -- >> fox still covered the caravan

yesterday, didn't the they? >> are they preparing for 15,000 troops to go to the border? >> i don't see anybody at the border, no. >> no fox people at the border this morning? >> no. >> but they thought it was such a big story. >> hold on. did rush limbaugh talk about the caravan? >> thankfully i don't listen to rush all day. i don't know about rush -- >> what about hannity? >> they appear to have lost interest, fox news. it was mentioned just once in passing on fox & friends. >> but small pox is coming to america. they told us this as news. >> yamish, i don't understand because this was an invasion that was going to threaten our very way of life.

>> okay. i think we've thrown the red meat out enough. >> go ahead, yamish. >> no, there was not a care a ravan that was invading the united states. i will say i interviewed some trump supporters who were in a gated retirement community in south florida who were scared this caravan was going to come and bring all sorts of diseases to them. these were interviews i did on camera where people were really, really fearful and the president feels as though he was validated running that campaign because republicans were able to keep control of the senate and gain a couple of seats. that's why i posed that question to the president. what we know now is that a white nationalist visited the white house and was tweeting about it yesterday on the same day that i was asking about the question about white nationalism. >> and he called you a raciest for asking him about the

behavior that he is engaged in that has david duke praising him, right? >> he did do that. and i think what was going on there was that the president was very frustrated with reporters everall. moments before i posed my question, he was pacing, literally pacing back and forth at the podium. i thought he might even walk off because he had been calling people rude, hostile. and i, of course, as you know because i've been on this show multiple times and you've allowed me to be myself, i'm not someone who gets confrontation equal. so i said, okay, if you're going to call me a racist, i'm going to move on to middle class tax cuts and how you're going to get that done and he didn't have an answer for that, either. >> no answers. there were three people that went heavy on caravan ads. all of them lost. and for everybody out there that

was telling me, no, it's a real story, we're worried about the caravan, they're coming. i go back to what i said about martians coming to my backyard. they're not coming. and the caravan is not coming. the leprosy is not coming. >> no, they're not coming. and the caravan story was so cynically political. >> but how stupid do you have to be as a voter to believe it? >> pretty stupid. >> today, when they're not talking about the caravan any more. >> because it's all find outble on the google machine. >> it was a lie. >> trump named all the people who lost that didn't party him. but take jon tester in montana -- >> he was the number one target. >> he went to montana four times to try to beat tester, and

tester won. if you look at wisconsin, michigan and pennsylvania, there were six statewide races there, three senate races and three governor's races. the democrats won all of them. those were were the states that nobody thought he could pick up those electric tore votes which is how he became president. so you could say those rust belt states rejected trumpism. and that will be a real problem going forward. >> so to your part about the cara van, i don't want to blame people for being stupid because -- >> you know what? you can. it's time to stop giving people a free pass if they are going to make racist assumptions and they could disabuse themselves of those racist assumptions in three minutes. that is a sick, and that's a cult. thank god we found out on tuesday that is a shrinking,

shrinking cult. >>s as i was saying, i think part of the issue here is that you have a media operation, fox news, but also conservative talk radio that essentially amplifies whatever the president's political jaent is to be. and in this case, i think you accurately pointed out, the programming on the cara van was propaganda. it was a political campaign motivated propaganda. >> state run television. >> state-run television. so any talk about trump's political issues, he has to mention the fact that he has a media entity that is essentially serving as a campaign arm. i am not shocked in the slightest that the programming on the caravan is stopping entirely on fox. it was never a story. it was a campaign issue. >> one last note on it to make it official, the pentagon announced yesterday that the military operation at the border where the president sent troops down there will no longer be

called operation faithful patriot. is it a coincidence that went away the day after the midterm election? it doesn't mean the mission is over. it means they're turning down temperature on the at the department of defense. >> i ask people, tell me what nancy pelosi and rudy giuliani have in common. do you know the answer? >> no. >> they're both italian americans. but no one ever thinks of that. so we've had this experience with the irish and the germans and the jews and now the -- for some reason, the hispanics are going to fall for this that they're the enemy? because one day, hernandez and rodriguez, i'll ask you what they have in common and no one will say hispanic americans. >> we're following breaking news. we want to update you, 13 people are dead including the suspect and a sheriff's sergeant after a mass shooting at a southern california bar. let's go to nbc news

correspondent cal perry live in los angeles. cal, what do you have? >> this was the borderline bar out in ventura county just out on the 101 freeway, about 40 miles west of where i am here in los angeles. it was college night at this bar. and as you said, at least 13 people are dead, chug the shooter and authorities have just announced that one of the dead is a police sergeant, a 29-year veteran, sergeant ron helus. absolutely terrifying scenes, started at about 11:45 p.m. local time. the scene is now being investigated. policer were able to subdue the gunman fairley quickly. we understand from eyewitnesss the gunman opening fire right away inside that sort of music venue wednesday night in this part of the country and sort of just north of malibu is not like a wednesday night in other parts of the country. this was packed, this the bar full of college kids, scenes of horror as they sort of streamed,

mika, out the windows and doors of this club. it's something we've seen in this country too many times. many of the eyewitnesss saying they knew exactly what to do in the chance of a mass shooting. >> all right, cal, thank you. we're going to be following this breaking news throughout the morning. also still ahead on "morning joe," we'll show you more of the president's unbalanced, somewhat unhinged performance yesterday. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. pical vacuum head can struggle with large debris and stuck-on dust, so shark invented duoclean, replacing the front wall with a rotating soft brush. while deep cleaning carpets, two brush rolls pick up large particles with ease, make quick work of stuck-on dust, giving hard floors a polished look, and fearlessly devour piles. shark duoclean technology, designed to do more on carpets and floors, available in corded and cord-free vacuums, and only available from shark.

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like magic. at comcast, it's my job to develop, apps and tools that simplify your experience. my name is mike, i'm in product development at comcast. we're working to make things simple, easy and awesome. and last night, the republican party defied history for the midtown and mid the term year. we also had a staggering number of house retirements. you had some that decided to -- let's stay away, let's stay away. i'm not sure that i should be happy or sad, but i feel just fine about it. carlos cabella. mike kaufman. too bad mike. mia love gave me no love and she

lost. barbara comstock was another one. i think she could have lost that race. eric didn't want the to embrace. >> whose fault was it that there were so many retirements? >> it's me. i retired him. i'm very proud of it. if the republicans won and let's say we held on by one or two or three. it would have been very hard having that many republicans to ever even get -- and the closer it is, the worse it is. i'll be honest, i thought it was a very close to complete victory. from a deal making standpoint, we are all much better off the way it turned out. >> delusional. they lose a third of the seats in two years nationwide, 333. the worst defeat for republicans

since watergate. this guy was so bad, he was so horrible, so toxic that you would have to go back to richard nixon committing crimes and republicaning having to run under that scenario. >> this took work. >> he had to work hard to offense as many voters as he did. he's not well. i just -- i was worried about him yesterday. what? willie, it was delusional to say he did pretty well. later, he said i'm kind of glad we lost. >> even conservatives i saw yesterday were outraged by the fact that he's dumping on republicans who lost. like that was his focus, was

pointing out the ones who lost for distancing nemz from him. an he looked like he was backed into a corner. he looked uncomfortable. he was pacing around the stage at times. and he wouldn't stop. >> the party is dead in the northeast. you lose 333 seats nationwide, you lose the governorships that are the most important to trump for his re-election. that is just not good.

we now have the trumpan party. there is no realignment going on. parties often don't do well, the party of who has the white house. that's typical. but let's just face it about the senate. the republicans won the lottery map, right, in the senate. they got a great hand dealt to them. >> and we knew this two years ago. >> that was always going to happen. if you look at the jobs numbers, the stock market went crazy yesterday. explain that quickly. >> 543 points. 2.153%. >> the markets were thrilled that donald trump -- >> the divided government. >> has a dividing government now. >> right.

why did the democrats win and republicans lost so badly? what was the reason? jobs growth? no. wage growth? no. stock market? no. >> there was no reason other than donald trump and the kind of press conferences that he held yesterday. >> so what you just saw was dilution and he was combative yesterday. here is combative. >> you know, i keep hearing about investigations, fatigue, like from the time -- almost from the time i announced i was going to run. they got nothing, zero. you know why?

because there is nothing. they can play that game, but we can play it better because we have a thing called the united states senate. if that happens, we're going to do the same thing and government comes to a halt and i would blame them. if they do that, then all of this is a war-like posture. >> would you consider removing mr. mueller from his position? >> i could have ended it anytime i wanted. i didn't. i could fire everybody right now, but i don't want to stop it because politically i don't like stopping it. >> your campaign had an ad showing migrants climbing over walls and -- >> well, that's true. they weren't actors. >> they're not going to be doing that. >> they weren't actors. do you think they were actors? they weren't actors. >> they're hundreds and hundreds of miles away. that's not an invasion. >> on honestly, i think you should let me run the country. you run cnn. if you did it well, he would be doing better. >> that's enough. put down the mike. cnn should be ashamed of itself having you you working for them.

you are a rude, terrible person. you shouldn't be working for cnn. >> in jim's defense, i've traveled with him. he's a diligent reporter who busts his butt. >> well, i'm not a big fan of yours, either. >> the rapper little john said you called him -- >> he was on the apprentice. >> i don't know. oh, he was? okay. oh, i see. quiet. quiet. go ahead. >> it's just 8%, sir, single digits. >> see, when you talk about division, it's people like this that cause division. >> you called yourself a nationalist. some people saw that as emboldening white nationalists. -- >> i don't know why you would say that. why do i have my highest poll numbers ever with african-americans? why do i have among the highest poll numbers with african-americans? why do i have any highest poll numbers? that's such a racist question. honestly, i mean, i know you have it written down and you're going to tell me. let me tell you, that's a racist question. >> so yamish, this guy, his

party gets destroyed, wiped out in the suburbs. because of behavior just like this. because of his attacks against you and attacks against other members of the press. but he keeps doubling down on this losing strategy that gutted the republican party on tuesday. and did you feel when you were in there that donald trump was talking to his hard core 33%? >> i think he was feeling frustrated and angry at the fact that republicans lost the house. this president, as much as he campaigned for senate republicans and was traveling and talking about that, he was pulling up on stage house republicans. he was tweeting about house republicans the day of the election. so he was also very invested in the house.

so i think that he felt that loss very deeply and as a result he was angry about that. i also think he's almost saying trump won, but the republicans lost. the way that he was talking about those republicans saying, mia love, you didn't give me any love, he was almost laughing at the republican party saying he will be okay even if this party is going down in flames. >> he's not even good at this any more. he's just embarrassing himself not only on the national stage, but on the interpret stage. thank god there are checks and balances in washington. >> it made me a little uncomfortable, i will say. there was an interesting tell in all this. clearly he was building a -- not

a political party, but a cult. and the real tell, i thought, was what they are investigating. he assumes every republican will do his bidding and run counterinvestigations against the democrat. >> it's his senate, his supreme court, his white house, his justice department. i don't know if it continues after the midterms. but he has built -- not a political party, he has built a political machine circulating around his own party. >> if you look at the statements after whitacre was made attorney general, they were not critical of president trump.

>> in their heads, they think the only chance to survival -- and maybe it's because trump has told them this. they think the only chance for survival is if he gets his base out. because then you don't have a party. >> he said if he sell your soul to donald trump in the primary, iffer you're these suburban districts, you're going to lose the general election. we said that two years ago. corey gardner has to understand today that all the other republicans running two years from now have to know today. sometimes that's not a guarantee. if you sell your soul to donald trump, you're going to lose the general election. >> guess what? they're going back to sweeping

streets. >> in the rabbit hole, the president of the united states took away a press critical yesterday, a krn reporter for asking questions. there was no assault there as the white house alleges took place. to their credit, cnn didn't get mired in it. they did one report and focused on what we're talking about in the context where we're talking about fox is going with it. it's near the top of their website. i'm sure they're talking about it on their morning show today. they're along for the ride. >> probably say jim acosta has leprosy and small pox. >> he's a canny balance. >> and also, he's in a gang and he's from the middle east. >> well, he could be from the middle east. >> i can't say he's not from the middle east. >> this is very simple on the acosta thing, all right? and if i'm a news executive, if

acosta is not allowed in the room, my reporter doesn't go in the room. we try to overthink these things. >> there's some history here. fox news, during the obama era, was black listed from asking questions. they were allowed in the room, but they never called fox news. what happened in that moment was the other anchors complained to the obama press office. they said fox news is part of the white house correspondent association. you need to let them ask questions. reverse it. the obama administration reversed course. fox news is now in the opposite position. >> you know what is going to be interesting is once fox post election versus pre-election, i suspect that we're going to see a dramatically different the fox news after the election. starting now. we want to get back to the breaking news on the mass shooting in california. 13 people are dead including the

suspect and also a sheriff's sergeant. let's go to msnbc's alex witt who has been following this since the story first broke about 4 1/2 hours ago. alex. >> it's just a tragedy. let me tell you how this all went down. this is in the thousand oaks neighborhood in ventura county. it is considered a very quiet community, but you travel along the 101 freeway, and it's very easy to access the borderline bar and grill. reports as you said, 11 people injured, one sheriff's deputy sergeant helus, a nearly 30-year veteran of the miss department. but he apparently was the first alongside a california highway patrol police officer to go into the borderline bar and grill upon hearing that shots were fired. apparently there were two chp

officers just nearby doing a routine traffic stop. they heard the traffic about the emergency over their radios. they responded, as well. ron helus, again, this ventura county sheriff's officer killed at the scene, he was first into the borderline bar & grill. he was hit multiple times by gunfire and he has lost his life. we are getting an update on who these people are who have died. it may be a lot of students because this was a college country night, a very popular event at the borderline bar & grill. as soon as we get more details on who has been injured and killed, we'll bring that to you guys. >> and there's like -- this is where kids go. yeah. let me tell you xikly for anybody, parents, california university, pepperdine university, channel islands, cal state north ridge as well as thomas aquinas college. pepperdine university has issued a formal statement saying that they do believe there were students inside the borderline bar & grill.

they don't know the whereabouts of them nor their conditions, but they're working with authorities to try and get that information on out. so pretty scary time. >> alex, thank you so much. i will be coming back to you for updates on this breaking story throughout the morning. and we're back in a moment with much more morning joe. here we go.

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joining us now, former chief of staff the at the cia and department of defense now and national security analyst, jerry bash. >> jeremy, we've been talking about donald trump's freakout. obviously he's humiliated, feels weaken by the fact that republicans had their worst loss elect since watergate. yesterday, not really surprised he's attacking acosta, he's firing jeff sessions. but why don't we start at the very beginning here. there's an obvious ploy to try to get the news media off the fact that he's a very weak president right now. so the question is, the hiring of this sycophant], as some people might call him -- i never would, but some people would,

was that even legal? >> there is a statute that governs how doj is supposed to handle appointments to these acting positions. it says the individual who becomes active attorney general must be senate confirmed. of course, the chief of staff is not confirmed. i think it's fair to say that the appointment from the chief of staff position first of all is unprecedented and second it's quasi legal and it was really done, i think, as part of an effort to obstruct justice, to obstruct the mueller investigation, to starve it, to constrain it. >> you really think that, jeremy? i'm being sarcastic which leads to the second question. how dumb can donald trump be to fire the attorney general, let everybody knows he's firing the attorney general because he didn't want this man to recuse

himself, which he had to according to department of justice guidelines and hire a sycophant], as some people might call him, to run the department. is that not all the evidence robert mueller needs to put a nice, tidy bow and tie it up on that obstruct of justice charge? >> yeah. and if donald trump were so smart, why didn't he fire sessions and make this move six months ago, a year ago, before democrats were on the eve of taking the gavel of the judiciary committee, of the house joef sight committee, of the intelligence committee. now all the democrats have to do when they come in is put mark whitacre under oath and ask him, point-blank, what conversations did you have with the president about a potential quid pro quo. there was a series of letters fired off last night to a number

of branch officials so that anything having to do with the sessions firing would be preserved for willie. what could as a practical matter, what coma enthusiast whittaker do here about the mueller investigation. he called the mueller investigation a lynch mob and called for it to be defunded. he wrote articles for cnn.com, going on cnn as an analyst before donald trump saw him on tver and said let me get that guy at the department of justice. what could be his move against the mueller investigation? >> first, he could deny it, budget resources and personnel. and slow the investigation down significantly. second is he could fail to defend the decisions of the special counsel in court and if the special counsel has to litigate say a subpoena of the president that's going to go to litigation and go all the way up to the supreme court and the

attorney general plays a significant role in deferreding the decisions of the justice department. the third and most importantly he could refuse to issue publicly or make public any report that robert mueller generates. that's the most important point. if the democrats in the house begin to hold hearings down the road thinking about impeachment they will do so on factual basis, based on the mueller report. if whittaker squashes that report it will be much harder for congressional members to have a factual basis to proceed. >> is there a plan -- i know we've all heard discussions of this. what can you tell us about what, what is likely, robert mueller and the team would do if, if the investigation was halted? do they have their fingers on the button and ready to send out all the information. does it go to state courts? do you have members of trump's family actually being tried in

state court if they are going to be tried at all? >> i don't know about that, joe. i think the two paths that are most likely are number one, congressional and second is public. i think there could be a move by the special counsel potentially by invitation by members of congress that he would go up to the hill and presents information, potentially report to members of congress directly in camera, maybe in closed session, potentially open session. at the end of the day, robert mueller can speak openly. key go the microphone and say this is what i found in my investigation. >> that could be devastating. oh, my god, robert mueller, be robert mueller untethered. if he's fired, actually, unless donald trump can get him to sign an mda, that would be horrible for donald trump for mueller to go out and hold press conferences and testify before

congress? i guess you're right. boy i didn't even think about that public side of things. mueller unleashed would be pretty rough, wouldn't it? >> look, if mueller has a report that he wants to bring to the attention of congress and somehow whittaker or the white house tries to squash that report, i think actually bob mueller has a duty, has a constitutional duty and he has a history, obviously, of serving our country with distinction he has duty to make public his findings. >> jeremy bash, thank you very much for being on this morning. still ahead we'll talk to one of the red state senate democrats to get re-elected. >> joe manchin. >> i love him. >> i see that veil over there. >> he joins us live from west virginia. the very latest on the 13 people dead after a mass shooting inside a college bar.

>> joe can talk about this too because post-newtown joe manchin and it's interesting he won in west virginia, has fought hard for gun safety laws. >> we'll go live to the scene. "morning joe" is coming right back.

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jake went there tonight with friends. >> correct. it's a local hang out, especially on college night. it's not uncommon for him to be there with some friends. we were woken up by a knock on the door. a friend much his was there. are you ready. i'm right behind you. we'll finish this game of pool. got home. for whatever reason he found out about it through social media or news or whatever and him and his dad immediately came to our house and banging on our door and was concerned. so we've been trying to gets ahold of him since about 1:00. >> i see the anguish in your eyes and you're constantly

calling. >> it's ringing. several times it goes to voice. but it's unusual for him not to answer. he'll answer me morning, noon or night. >> we're following breaking news, 13 people are dead, including the suspect and a sheriff's deputy after a mass shooting at a southern california bar. let's go to joe fryer who is live in thousand oaks, california where it happened. joe, what's the latest? >> reporter: we can tell you 13 people have died. that includes the gunman. 11 of the victims were patrons or people inside the borderline bar. another victim is with the ventura county sheriff's department, a sergeant who was responding to the scene. it was a little bit after 11:00 here in california when witnesses say a gunman came inside the bar. it was a busy popular night filled with many college students and the gunman started opening fire. at this points we don't know much about the gunman. avenues white male who had a handgun.

what time of handgun we don't know. a short time ago the sheriff disclosed that, 11 people shot inside the bar were shot and killed within three minutes ever 911 receiving calls, sergeant ron helis and california highway patrol officer responded to the scene within minutes. they heard gunfire and went inside the building. sergeant helis was shot multiple times. highway patrol officer was able to rescue him and pull him out. sergeant helis was taken to the hospital but died a short time later. he was a 29-year-old veteran of the sheriff's departments. he informed sergeant helis' wife tonight he had died a hero. >> joe, the ventura county sheriff is pointing out sergeant helis was guesting ready to retire. can you characterize what kind watch place thfrs, the borderline bar and grill. we know it was college night which tells me on that one night

they let kids under 21 in that place. who all was in the bar when the shots rang out? >> reporter: at least maybe 100 people or more inside. mostly a young crowd, college students. there are a number of colleges within say 10 to 15 miles of this area, including pepperdine, including california lutheran university and a few others. those schools have put out statements saying they are checking to see how their students are after this incident happened. largely a young audience, young group of people inside. we also do know there was an older man who was in there with his stepson playing pool when the gunfire started. >> thank you very much. joe fryer at the scene. we'll be checking back in on that breaking news. horrific story. we're following some pretty, i think at this points we can call this a pivotal time in american history in terms of politics. with us we have white house correspondent for pbs news hour.

associate editor of commentary magazine and msnbc contributor noah rothman. editor of the "new yorker" magazine is with us. and former u.s. attorney for the northern district of alabama and an msnbc contributor. good to have you all on board at this hour. so let's just recap. tuesday night, americans gave the democrats their biggest house gains in a mid-term election since watergate. >> crushing. >> crushing. >> look at the northeast. we talked about it in the last hour. what did we talk about after donald trump won? people should focus less on hillary clinton if they wanted to judge the state of the democratic party and more on the thousand local races they lost, legislative seats they lost over eight years. that's devastating. it only took two years of donald trump for americans to throw out 333 republican state

legislators. trump has done more destruction to his party in two years, i bet that's a record, actually. than barack obama was accused of doing over eight years. a devastating loss that goes to the core of the gop. >> the difference we're seeing today that could impact the world literally and definitely the united states of america is that this president for two years has been unchecked by his complicit republican party, he has been unchecked at least publicly by members of his own administration and in some cases it's really surprising what has been allowed to happen, to pour out of this presidency in terms of lies, untruth, sowing doubt in people and the press and dividing this country in a way that even brings the word hate back into the foray, into the focus of the presidency. he's been unchecked every step of the way and now every question, every lie can be

checked. every question can be answered. >> and the democratic house will do that. >> they already starting. >> the press needs to do something too. the press needs to learn how to react to donald trump a little bit better. need to learn when he's putting out, throwing smoke bombs out to distract from the fact that he faced an extraordinarily humiliating loss on tuesday night. he didn't do a good job yesterday. i got to say everybody was focused on the outrage. >> of the sessions firing. >> of the sessions firing. anybody that's -- maggie was tweeting about this. anybody that follows donald trump and has followed donald trump for as long as others have, know what he's doing. >> exactly. >> oh, he's going to fire jeff sessions which he said he would do for months. then he picks a fight with jim

acosta. he might as well have gotten one of those boxing clowns and just punch because he would have as much feeling for that as acosta. acosta was a prop. listen i don't think anybody should send their reporters to the white house until acosta gets his pass back. but to say that, get that out of the way and then focus on the devastating losses and, david, i'm not saying this because as you know when you come to this set, we never kiss up to you. i think actually -- i think a thousand years from now, i hope that what you wrote on election night, we'll just say 50 years from now, how's that, what you wrote at 2:00 in the morning on election night predicting what was going to happen over the next two years, back in 2016 and then what you wrote this election night, which was it's

worse but at the end what do you say? you say democrats do a better job. keep your head. don't chase. >> look at what's at stake. you can pick out four gigantic earth shattering, literally earth shattering subjects nobody has discussed. not in the campaign. not in the aftermath of the campaign discussing jim acosta. if we're going to discuss jim acosta let's discuss it properly. >> hail and fire. >> exactly. what exactly happened. this is an authoritarian move. he deliberately called on jim acosta. he knew exactly what he wanted to do. then he threw him out of the white house. a working reporter. a working reporter. and then he accused him of mauling the young intern, the female intern to take the my could phone away.

this was a staged event. it's preposterous. no. it's not the authoritarianism that we remember 50 years ago. not that same style. but he's sending messages and arousing the base in the same way and saying look over here. don't look over there. don't look over the fact the climate has changed to such a degree we will be trillions in debts to keep up with it and lot of people will die. don't look that these people were killed last night and it happens on a regular basis using god knows what weapons that doesn't have to do with deer hunting. the theater of this presidency is not just the theater. it's a distraction from real life politics and the way we live our lives and it's destructive every single day.

>> it's stunning in the exit polls, immigration was higher in voters minds than the economy. most everything else. noah, you wrote and tweeted about the depth of these republican losses. you've also been warning republicans for the past two years not to follow donald trump down rabbit trail. and yet yesterday you had donald trump mocking republicans who lost, firing jeff sessions who a lot of those republican senators have very warm feelings for. so now you have reason for republican senators to be angry at trump and for house members to be angry at trump and you also have mark sanford, yes, donald trump way to go you

knocked sanford out and now a democrat owns his seat for the first time since 1991. what republicans will be dumb enough to follow him for the next two years? >> the republican party has a problem insofar they know donald trump is the most popular person in their party. they have their own careers to look after. they have to show deference to the most popular person in their party because they will get ousted. but it deteriorates when donald trump is less of a political force. his pettiness has the potential to bring him down. there was a post mortem on this election cycle in which the governor of iowa offended him somehow so he, the president shunned her and did his best to undermine her. now she survived. mia love yet survive though she got a lot of heat yesterday from this president. this will be an awkward situation and these lawmakers

now have less -- are less inclined to be differential to the president. so they have to go their own way a little bit and that's something i think the president might end up regretting. >> willie, i don't know if you know this or not. i was iran congress. about seven years after i won the masters which was again '87. yeah. seriously. 0-1. par 4 by the way. you would think someone would notice that. >> hit it off the tee. >> when i ran in '94 gingrich aggressively ran against me. he did everything he could to help my opponent win the republican primary. and just following up on what noah said i was a free agent. i went to washington. every time i was threatened what

will you do run against me again. i got 82% the first time. he goes after the iowa governor. the iowa governor survives. he attacks mia love. she may survive. even if she doesn't, again, we're seeing that the emperor has no clothes. these voters in these districts aren't dumb. if they realize by electing trump in the primary they will lose the general election. i find voters can figure this out. you can see the difference between the 2010 republicans and 2014 republicans, 2010 tea party shut down the government. 2014 republicans won the primary. >> politicians are transactional and can read the field. they can read the field. if they see a weakened president and see the examples of people who won in suburban districts distancing themselves from donald trump will be emboldened to do that. david, to your piece about the

democrats, i heard and noah also at 2:00 in the morning through "morning joe" on election night i herd democrats -- >> you looked fantastic. >> thank you very much. still awake, three days later. yes. democrat after democrat on set with us and off talking about democrats needing to just focus here and not jump right to impeachment and not to have a tantrum that's been spent up for a couple of years now. what does that nine as a practical matter? >> i think we shouldn't underestimate donald trump's political bother his base. i would bet the republicans in florida feel that his presence there, almost constant presence there helped them out. >> that's the one swing state. that's donald trump's state. >> yeah. >> so there's that. he still has a very powerful base that he speaks to in a kind of almost mystical connection no matter what he does and they forgive him everything. that remains a powerful thing. when it comes to impeachment

people old enough to either remember or read about, remember that impeachment in many ways backfired the republican party when it happened to bill clinton late in his second term. so it has to be very methodical. pieces that have to be in place. at the same time parallel to that you have the mueller investigation. you can say many things about robert mueller. one thing you can't say is that he's a fool. he had to be anticipating, you know, this set of events that was going to come. and so what happens? from what i understand, and we know very little, i don't want to pretend i know much, it has to be that there are a lot of indictments to come they have been held in reserve. >> but the democrats i'm talking to didn't even raise the word impeachment. nancy pelosi was asked about it and she said infrastructure. >> it's a trust building cycle for democrats. the october survey from the "wall street journal"/nbc news

poll show the democratic brand was less than the republican brand. >> let's go there, with joyce vance. the fidelity of the mueller probe, the firing ever sessions and whether this was legal and all this in light of democrats new authority. >> there's so much this morning that it's really hard to pick. but i do think that the most important points, and i'm mindful of joe's caution about not following all the bright shiny objects. for justice department purposes what we need to focus on is we now have an acting attorney general hand-picked by the president because of his ties to the white house. and that lack of independence is very dangerous thing, certainly in context of the mueller investigation, possibly likely in other regards as well, because it's the independence of the justice department that serves this country and the rule of law so well.

so we need to focus on what happens at doj. we need to make sure that the mueller investigation is fully protected. that probably requires action on the hill. and these next few days will be very telling as we see whether deputy attorney general rod rosenstein continues to lead the mueller probe or whether that shifts in to the new attorney general's hands. >> was this cnn analyst and weight lifter, if he takes that position -- can he take that position legally? isn't that against the guidelines of the justice department? isn't it rod rosenstein that is supposed to be running doj right now? >> so there are a couple of different paths for succession and under the normal doj rulings this should fall to rod rosenstein, the deputy attorney general alternate succession paths would possibly let the president appoint someone in

this position. it's unusual. it's not completely unprecedented. b b butbutressed by the fact of terminating the mueller probe makes this appointment more suspect. >> if we can talk about the room you were in yesterday with the president and the press conference where the president said one of your questions, asking him about white nationalism and being a nationalist was quote racist. just the tenor of that room what was it like to be inside for those bizarre 90 minutes? >> i think at first the feeling in the room was in some ways light because president trump was almost making fun of republicans that lost. he was making that critical distinction between him and the republican party saying donald trump won, the republican party lost some seats but i as an entity am still a good brand. then he started getting

questions from reporters from voter suppression, about his ad that was deemed too racist, about the idea that he was saying the caravan was invading this country when it's not and of course my question about emboldening white nationalist. it was then that the press conference that had been going in some ways smoothly for him went off the rails. he was really pacing back and sports and became something of a tussle back and sports between reporters. by the time he got to my question he was already angry at the fact that reporters were asking him, i think, reasonable questions about how this country is doing. >> i was concerned yesterday for the president's own sake how he was doing. let's look at a clip. >> you know, i keep hearing about investigations, fatigue. like from the time, almost from the time i announced i was going to run. they got nothing. zero. you know what, there is nothing.

they can play that game but we can play it better because we have a thing called united states senate. if that happens we'll do the same thing and government comes to a halt and i would blame them. if they do that, then just all of this is -- >> do you consider removing mr. mueller from his position. >> i could have ended it at any time i wanted. i could have. i could fire everybody right now. i don't want to stop it because politically i don't like to stop it. >> you're campaign had an ad showing migrants climbing over walls. >> that's true. they were not actors. it's true. do you think they were actors? they weren't actors. they didn't come from hollywood. >> they are hundreds of miles away. that's not an invasion. >> honestly i think you should let me run the country, you run cnn. if you did it well. >> that's enough put down the mike. >> mr. president are you worried about indictments coming down. >> cnn should be ashamed of

itself having you work for them. you after rude, terrible person. you shouldn't be working for cnn. >> in jim's defense i traveled with him in washington. >> i'm not a great fan of yours either. >> you called him uncle tom. what's your response. >> i don't know who littlejohn is. >> he's on "the apprentice". >> i see. >> quiet. quiet. >> just 8%. single digits. >> when you talk about division, it's people like this that cause division. >> you called yourself a nationalist. somebody people see that as emboldening white nationalist. >> that's a racist question. why do i have my highest poll numbers ever with african-americans. why do i have my highest poll numbers with african-americans? why i do have my highest poll numbers. that's a racist question. hon honor nef w

honestly that's a racist question. >> do you remember "seinfeld" when cramer fell asleep in the tanning bed? >> i do. >> you got a google machine. what did you find? >> there's a picture of then hosted "celebrity apprentice" with donald trump with littlejohn. that was 2013, those in fairness. a while ago. >> a long time ago. so, david, so much to digest. >> i watched that. >> the question is what are our friends and our enemies, more importantly overseas when they see that performance. >> i had a couple of reporters from "the new yorker" doing exactly that in western europe and elsewhere and diplomats are freaked out. people are freaked out. they watch something like that, and they expect a certain range of behavior from any leader much less the president of the united

states. this is so far out of the range of the expected role or tolerable that it requires a clinical evaluation rather than a political evaluation. a perfectly legitimate question. a tragedy it has to be asked of the president of the united states. >> it has to be asked. when david duke himself says, david duke him several says thank you mr. president, admitting that you're a white nationalist. >> he's in a corner. this is one of the frightening aspects of the post-election moment is that on any given day donald trump is unpredictable, erratical. when he's in a corner, when investigations heat up, when indictments accelerate from the mueller investigation, when house committees chaired by democrats start to heats up, his behavior is not going to get better. it's going to become like that times ten.

>> joyce, what would you recommend to democrats that are investigating, going to be investigating donald trump? how would you recommend they conducts themselves over the next six months? >> it needs to be done the right way. it should be methodical. it should not be a scatter gun investigation. there should be a focus on ethical lapses in the administration, a focus on congressional oversight and i think in many ways a willingness to let bob mueller finish his work and let him handle the criminal side of the russia investigation and see what evolves. it's so easy for us to forget how quick and how efficient mueller has been. really he's on a record pace for any sort of public corruption investigation. we need to let him finish and see what he finds and then congress can determine what its legitimate function is once the

facts are disclosed. >> following up what david said about the clinton impeachment, you know, bill clinton actually did well in 1998 in the midst of the controversy. he, in fact, i think he only lost three or four seats. but the republican majority actually went down to four seats and it was newt gingrich that was run out of town, not bill clinton and bill clinton's approval ratings went up to 60%. so democrats need to look back, as david was saying, at the lessons of 1998, 1999. >> take their time. david, thank you very much. thank you as well. good to have you on this morning. good luck covering the president today. >> great work. >> still ahead, nancy pelosi has the president's backing for speaker of the house. does she have her own rank-and-file? we'll ask congressman tim ryan

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we are hearing the stories of survival from the overnight shooting in southern california. one 19-year-old witness said she found herself hiding with a group of strangers holding hands as a gunman opened fire in a crowded bar. 13 people are dead including a 29 year veteran of the sheriff's department and the suspect who police say was armed with a handgun. let's bring in alex witt. she's been following the story. >> reporter: that sergeant, a man named ron helis leave behind a wife and son. short while ago on the "today" show the ventura county spokesman described what he saw. >> this is the most horrific thing i ever saw in my 41 years.

>> we can't say enough about the sergeant who lost his life a few hours ago. i know he was your friend too. what should we know about this courageous man? >> well, just that. that he was the one that sacrificed his life to put, to save others. he ran into danger, he didn't walk. he ran into danger hoping that he might be able to save someone else's life. and he made the ultimate sacrifice. but he did it as a hero. >> again, that is ventura county sheriff jeff dean and here's really a huge irony. apparently this borderline bar and grill is very popular with people who are survivors of the route 91 las vegas shooting just a year ago. this has been reported by the "l.a. times". in fact one of the women who worked at the bar survived that shooting, and she was able to get out, but described the gunman throwing what she called

tear gas and then she hid behind the bar. people were knocking out windows, doing everything they can to gets themselves outside much that bar to safety. can you imagine people surviving a year ago the worst shooting in history 58 people killed there to be confronted by a madman here tonight in thousand oaks, california. it's just chilling. >> thank you very much. we'll keep checking back with you as more developments come in. a turn back now to politics. with the mid-term elections behind us one of the next big battles democrats will face is for the speaker's gavel. as former house speaker nancy pelosi aims to retake her role as speaker of the house. >> a democratic congress will work with solutions that bring us together because we have all had enough of division. >> but her path isn't exactly clear. with a number of democrats questioning whether her

leadership is right for their party. joining us now, one of those democrats, newly re-elected congressman tim ryan of ohio, also here with us on set msnbc host stephanie rule. >> will nancy pelosi be the next speaker of the house? >> to be determined. there's a lot of new members. i think we need to talk with in the next couple of days that are, you know, have said publicly numerous times ran campaigns about not supporting her for speaker. i think it's important that we listen to those new members. they got elected in red districts, conservative districts. they did a heck of a job over the last year. i think their opinions should matter. >> at the same time her comments yesterday were really about staying focused, working on a bipartisan level, focusing on getting things done. is this really the right time to have division within the party? >> well, the question really is

what are we doing moving into the future? you know, today we're thrilled that we won, we had so many good candidates that were able to win in so many tough districts. this is the beginning of the game not the end. how do we build a long term durable sustainable majority? and i think asking new members who just campaigned for new leadership to come in and cast a vote for, forks you know, the stat status quo that's not why they got elected and that gentlemcans going into 2020. my opinion has not changed in the last 18 months the insurance the previous race and, again, it's nothing personal but when the exit polls are showing 55% negatives for our top leader in the democratic party, we lost

the narrative on the caravan in the last six weeks, we lost the narrative on mitch mcconnell saying he will gut medicare and social security. we have to think who are the better people to put in place to go and campaign for these new members that we got? you know, in these suburban districts. who are the best people. these folks need to say what's the new leadership team look like? why wouldn't we sit down with these new members who clearly have put us in the majority, have won in districts we haven't been able to win in. let's ask them what they want so we can sustain the majority. >> congressman, democrats had a good night last night but progress jennifer candidates did not. almost across the board in races ranging from arizona governorship to florida to georgia to maryland, texas senate, california's 45th, nebraska, the suburbs of pennsylvania, wealthy suburbs,

places like southern california where a progressive candidate managed somehow lost against a republican who was indicted on 60 counts much corruption. do democrats have to tailor their message? >> well, again, these constituents that voted for our newer candidates, they may not be as progressive as some of us are. i'm as progressive as it gets. we need to make sure we're winning these seats so we can move on an agenda that more progressive than a tax cut that's a give away to the top 1%, or complete deregulation that's going to kill us with climate change, so we need to take steps. how do we hold power? we got to mature as a party and say how do we get power? grow our power? then hold power and move an agenda, yeah, that's probably not as progressive as most

people would want but i think making sure everybody has health care, whether or not it's medicare for all is something most democrats and most progressives would be for. we have to talk about how we're best the party for the economy. how we can make public investments into education, research, broadband that in the long term will be a lot better for growing the economy. entrepreneurship, innovation, getting private-sector venture capital into places like ohio. that needs to be the democratic brand moving forward and, yes, we're going make sure we hold the president's feet to the fire every step of the way. article i is the first article of the constitution and i want creates the congress. >> congressman, it's willie geist. good to see you this morning. i'm curious from a tactical point ever view how democrats now should conduct themselves. speaker pelosi does have the gavel now that you run the kmeepts and chair them. there are members of your caucus

who are out for blood figuratively for president trump. they feel for two years he's run roughshod over the country and democrats. you don't necessarily have the luxury that someone who serves in san francisco about screaming like your share on fire about donald trump. you're in a district that a lot of people voted for donald trump. you cover jounyoungstown, akron ohio. people want to use the word impeachment on day one in january. what do you think about that? >> the major thrust of our argument and the agenda we pushed forward has got to be reducing the economic anxiety that's facing middle class people. most people don't have much in savings. most people are living paycheck to paycheck. there's still an agenda that we need to push, whether it's

health care, pensions, retirement, medicare, social security, increasing wages, that's got to be the thrust of our argument. but we can walk and chew gum at the same time. article i gives us the constitutional obligation to oversee the president. president trump is not a king. there's a reason we have this democratic republic here in the united states and people govern wasn't that comes oversight responsibility. not running around with your hair on fire. responsible, sober oversight responsibility. if the president is making a lot of money in office from other countries that are intentionally helping him make a lot of men and that affects his policies and his decisions that he makes on behalf of the people of the united states, i would think those suburban women who voted for democrats to come in office would be very interested in make being sure that the president is acting on behalf of the public interest, not his personal interest. >> all right.

congressman tim ryan, thank you very much. >> look forward to seeing those questions being answered. so stephanie let's talk about constitutional obligation. what big questions do you see that you think that democrats you want to hear answered but also what questions do you have about what transpired over the past 24 hours? >> for democrats it's great to hear what tim ryan has to say, but democrats need to tone economy in a bigger way. white men are not voting for democrats. not enough white suburban women. whether it's right or wrong a lot has to do with the economy. president trump ran in 2016, he had his base. his base has actually grown because now he has an investor class. he has corporate america. the stock market is up 28% from election day to mid-terms. that has not happened in 64 years. so those investors and i'm not talking big time investors, i'm talking about every day people living in the suburbs, they look at that.

they may not put trump card in their front ward or wearing a maga hat but they are going to the ballot and voting for him because i care about me and i want to protect my investments. democrats are doing nothing combat the narrative when the president says you're going to lose your money in the stock market if you don't vote for me. what are democrats saying? >> 28% since election day, the market has gone up. that's a clear sign that the market, like a lot of americans, wanted a check on donald trump, right? >> well, no, no. 28% from when he was elected, from when trump was elected until the mid-terms. >> it's gone up since then as well. >> great point. so the market went up 28% between mid-terms. excuse me. between president trump winning and the mid-terms. that's a big positive for trump. you still saw republicans do

well two nights ago. but now yesterday we saw great market gains and that shows us that the market is saying we do not want a trump oligarchy. a split government is good for the markets. >> a lost of these people, a lot of my friends whether in connecticut or florida or new york will say yeah he's crazy but things are going pretty well, and if i have to choose between donald trump and elizabeth warren or bernie that's an easy choice for me. by the way that's an easy choice for a lot of people that used to vote democratic. we talked about these republicans that voted democratic. there are a lot of as you said people in the investor class that have said wait, wait, wait. if this is a party of bernie sanders or all the progressives you talked about that lost, i got to vote for trump.

we may not understand it. we may not like it. but they sure understand it. >> we do under it. we're not even talking about the super rich investor class. people want to be able to pay for their kids' education. they want to be able to live a good life. they are saying look at my 401(k) it's going well. i don't like politics. itches at a ceo event last night. did you see this jeff sessions news. they are sort of like i'm not paying attention. where we could say are you kidding me? oh, gosh all that politics is dirty. did you see bob menendez ran again. i got you. >> one of the things that the market like is a deregulated economy. where it's pared back and the private-sector has an opportunities to innovate and grow. if you're anticipating gridlock, legislative gridlock, nothing coming out of congress and a regulatory state that can be pared back why wouldn't you inuniversity of in capital and

continues to perform as the economy has been performing. >> or if you're a democrat you figure out how can i own an economic message for everyone. and say look at the investor class like it's just the wealthy. it's not. it's people across the country who are invested in a little bit, have who401(k)s. they are saying i got to take care of my family and democrats need to figure out why are they ceding the pro trump narrative. >> have republican presidents been able to give republicans these different things that they want? >> jeb bush would have done it. any regulatory formula, but yeah. again, though, one of the things that used to drive me crazy would be, as a republican, is

when democrats and the media would talk about oh, the investor class, the billionaires on wall street. they are all in the republicans pocket. no they weren't. they felt more comfortable giving money to pro business democrats like bill clinton. okay, he's going to take care of the economy, not get into my checkbook. and also i don't have to deal with all the right-wing extremism on social issues. just repeating what they say, what they said all the time. and democrats have always done so well on wall street. but not if it's a party. again, listen, don't send me your tweets because i'm not going toe -- to read them. if democrats don't like the truth that's fine. but if bernie sanders or

elizabeth warren is the face of the democratic party over the next two years not only are they going to lose all the wall street people they are going to lose, as you said a lot of middle class people that would normally want to vote and give money to democrats. >> 100%. mitch mcconnell's wildest dream is for democrats to move further to the left and miss characterizing who investors are. they are not simply george soros and wall street titans. >> stephanie rule see you at 9:00 a.m. after "morning joe". >> straights up. >> i get there. still ahead a day after democrats gain control of the hours president trump threatens to retaliate if they launch investigations in to his administration. we'll talk to house intel committee member congrefrom con next on "morning joe".

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house intelligence and judiciary committee democratic congressman eric swalwell of california. he won re-election on tuesday to

a fourth term representing the state's 15th congressional district. also with us on set is msnbc chief legal correspondent and host of "the beat." great to have you both. congressman, it's not your district but your state. we are following breaking news overnight, of course, of 13 dead in this mass shooting at a bar. just wonder if your office has been taking in information or your reaction, sir, to the events? >> good morning, mika. i'm grieving too as a californian for the victims of the borderline shooting. they were dancing. it was college night. here we are mourning the loss of 12 individuals including a brave police officer, the first one to go in and we're still climbing out of the dark hole we were in just a few weeks ago after that synagogue shooting. but, you know, let's hope that those that were wounded recover, but that we have a congress that recognizes that doing nothing is

only leading to more shootings and that it's time we start doing something when it comes to gun violence. >> all right. thank you very much. we're following this and will be bringing the bringing the lates information in and break in, if necessary. now to the major political questions at hand. since democrats have won control of the house, moving forward, what will be the priorities and how will you navigate not just the legislative priorities in trying to get something done but also deciding in a unified manner as to what questions need to be asked to this president? >> yes, i think first seek to collaborate where we can. i see opportunities on infrastructure the dream act. background checks and prescription drug reform. those are all issues where the president has called for action but republicans never brought those issues up. when it comes to investigation, no longer look the other way or give a free pass especially when it comes to russia and should we protect mueller?

see the president's tax returns and no longer allow him to cash in on access to the oval office as he has been doing for the first two years. >> congressman, it's willie geist. democratic leaders say i see a willingness to work with the president here. we won't lead with investigations, where do you want to lead? what's a productive way to start this new congress? >> look, i believe that most americans just want to believe they work hard, they do better, save more and look at their kids and dream bigger. so on infrastructure, build modern schools, green our grid. reduce congestion, move the american people around. >> that has to be a priority. the president came to congress twice and said you should invest a trillion dollars and do. that democrats agree. so we'll send that to him. hopefully the senate passes it and see if he will sign it. >> what makes you agree, congressman, you have a willing partner by president trump? do you think she somehow humbled

by the election? why won't he work with you if he hasn't previously? >> i think you have to try if you reject that and go for the jugular, i think the american people will think you are rejecting it further. if he rejects it, he is paving the piece of legislation for someone who would pass that. you have to try. >> let's talk about the news yesterday that matthew whitaker is now the acting attorney general after jeff sessions fired, submitted his resignation letter, but he was fired by the president of the united states. what do you see here? broadly for the president? >> the first big problem for the president and the united states is we have a president who has made it abundantly clear the only thing he cares about with regard to how the justice department would run is that person's position on his personal criminal exposure and that of his family in the russia probe. and that's why the president said that the recusal was always

the issue, not that jeff session did anything wrong or anything on immigration or national security or any other issue. the fact that he followed the rules and simply was not involved at all in overseeing the mueller probe was grounds for this rather long awaited firing in all of the public berating that went along with it. so even if are you fought following the russia case day-to-day, that's pretty striking for an office that has to do when forcing our laws and dealing with national security. >> congressman, matthew whitaker has not hidden whatsoever his views on the mueller investigation. as an analyst on cnn, he called it a witch hunt and retweeted articles that called it a lynch mob. he is talking of de-funding the mueller investigation. what recourse do you in congress have if, in fact, math chew whitaker carries out some of the things as the pundit now as the acting attorney general? >> we have a hell of a lot of recourses than we did on monday. we've won the majority in the house. so, the days of just looking the

other way are over. so we can, you know, first pass legislation to protect mueller, try and build momentum in the senate, where they have already legislation out of the judiciary committee. we can insist documents be preserved and demand the recuse am of mr. whitaker who has demonstrated a pretty clear conflict of interest. we may have been a lot more powerless in the past. but that's not the xhas now. this is a new time for the president. >> so, ari, lay it out for us in terms for the options for democrats the different committees that will be taking up different issues, from tax returns to the mueller probe. what are the options and how will they be moving forward? i hear letters are already being written up. >> there has never been as target rich an investigation of the president in the modern era than this one. he is secretive. the key action of the committees. have you the judiciary committee

that can look at how he is doing with thet department of justice. they can preserve things. have you ways and means. >> that doesn't mean a senate or a full house vote to request his tax returns. you have maxine waters expected to take over finance, where all the issues are in the trump information through the intelligence committee, which is not only look at russia. that's one piece also, this is a president that didn't release his tax returns. the american people want to get answers on whether that's affecting foreign policy. if other question is if donald trump did what appears to have done yesterday and put in someone whose mane qualification for this office is -- main qualification for this office is a russia probe. are we seeing a gangster-like white house controlling in doj. what is the line to take one example? mr. whitaker spoke publicly on television how you could

secretly kneecap the probe by de-funding it over time. how would you know if something like that is being done behind the scenes? a lot of americans are saying, okay, i hear about this crisis. it seems like we're at the precipice. what are you guys going to do about snit. >> ari, we are already doing what we can to protect the rule of law. we had a conference call yesterday. you know, going over what we can do immediately. so, here's what we can do. we now are in a position where we can stop, you know the president's priorities, if he's just running over the rule of law. he has to work with the congress. so, mr. whitaker, we know he was those chosen for his wrong reasons. first insisting he recuse himself is step one. step two, requiring that a public position is made on whether or not he has a conflict of interest. jeff session went to the

department of justice and asked whether he had a conflict of interest. they said he did. i think the same request should be made of mr. whitaker. step three is protect mueller. now that will have a lot more momentum. >> congressman, as i look at your travel schedule. you will be in iowa just in time for the pork chops or? >> you and my wife. yeah, i'll be there saturday and sunday. a lot to celebrate there. we won two seats. we almost took out steve king just about two percentage points away of doing. that lots to celebrate winning in the mid-west. where i was born, by the way, ari. >> all right. enjoy iowa. thank you. it's getting really interesting. isn't it? . we'll see you on "the bet" at 6:00 eastern time right here on msnbc. still ahead, we will talk to the democrat that ended eight years of the republican control of the michigan governor's mansion. plus the newly re-elected

senator from west virginia democrat joe manchin and much more from the president's wild news conference. ""morning joe" asks is coming right back. [ phone rings ] what?!

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a guy just dropped this off. he-he-he-he. welcome back to ""morning joe"." it's 8:00 on the east coast 5:00 a.m. out west where we are following breaking news in southern california. 13 people are dead, including a gunman and a sheriff's sergeant after a mass shooting. alex whit has been tracking the story since it broke very early this morning. alex, what's the latest? >> yes, mika, indeed. it's been a harrowing six hours since this all went down at the borderline bar & grill in thousand oaks northern colorado about 40 miles north of downtown slaevenlths you mentioned that sheriffs deputy that gave his life. ron helus a 30-year veteran of the ventura county police

department. we seen sheriff jeff dean. he spoke with the "today" show and gave a time line. take a listen. >> we received 911 calls of gunshots firing at the borderline bar & grill. the sergeant and our patrol officer decided they had to go in right away. as they began to make entry, sergeant helus was shot multiple times by a patrol officer helus, they backed out. additional units could get here. those additional officers made entry. that's when the suspect was found deceased and the 11 additional victims were found inside. >> now, this was all a part of a college country night at the borderline bar & grim. a very, very popular event with college students. there are a number of colleges in the community. we can confirm morepark and

pepperdine university, of course, in malibu, they have said there were students in attendance. they do not know the conditions. they are working out feverishly to find out the details. very popular with california lutheran students, cal-state university channel islands, and thomas aquinas and california state north ridge. again this was a college country night. very popular. about 200 kids there inside enjoying line dancing and all sorts of wonderful things before the horrors unfolded at 11:20 p.m. right now, back to you. >> all right. alex whit, thank you very much. we'll have continuing coverage on this throughout the morning. we'll get back to you with any new information. we also have a lot of politics to get to. tuesday night, americans gave democrats their biggest house gains in the mid-terms since watergate. >> was it really that bad?

>> that long. >> i didn't know it was that bad. since watergate. >> it was bad. >> so donald trump damaged the republican party in a way that nobody has since nixon had to resign in shame? >> it's possible he damaged himself as well, because they have subpoena power now. president trump emerged in denial, declaring republicans performance close to complete victory. democrats have won control of the house where they gained at least 28 seats with 15 still undecided and republicans lost seven governors mansions and 323 seats in the state legislature for a total of 367 during trump presidency. >> hold on one second. because that's an important number. willie, you know how we had said at the end of barack obama's -- eight years in office. we said, hey, listen. we understand everybody is focusing on hillary clinton losing the race. but if you want to understand just how bad things are with the democratic party, you got to

look at the thousand seats that were lost over barack obama's eight years. to understand the true scale of this thumping, just how badly donald trump lost on tuesday night, how horrible he is for the republican party nationwide, the republicans lost a third, they lost a third of those thousand seats in trump's first two years. people, like rick and steve schmidt and others saying he's going to destroy the republican party. they don't have to look five years from now. he's doing it right now. they won a couple of seats in the reddest of red states where donald trump won a couple of points so what. big deal. they're getting routed on the state local, they're getting routed on the local level and they got routed in congress. >> that's what we were saying, democrats had mixed feelings of what happened.

because the splashy high profile once didn't go their way. stacy abrams, we will see whether or not she prevails there. as you say, you lose the house, have you all the power. boy, we learned yesterday how important that power in the house a pushback is going to be based on the decision the president made. we will talk about the firing of jeff sessionles the state houses are where the action s. it's where the country changes, where things will happen differently today in january when those governorships and those legislatures become more democratic. >> we all know that democrats taking control of the house gives them certain powers to check this presidency and to compel him to answer questions, for example, to release his tax returns in a way that he has not experienced before, possibly in his life given what we've seen and what we know about this individual. about this president. and that's the thing that i think shocked him the most yesterday and in our experience, the patterns that we've seen

with him, everything that he did yesterday was in response to deflect and we can talk about mueller and we can talk about the gravity of firing jeff sessions, how weird it was to do it lurchingly the way he did. but the bottom line is he lost big time yesterday. he hates losing. on top of it, democrats have gained the power to basically ask him every question they finally want the answer to. >> donald trump was freaked out yesterday. everybody could see how freaked out he was. and it was -- you know, it was embarrassing actually watching him firing jeff sessions. i know everybody can put their hair on fire. it was embarrassing. >> and it's serious, of course. >> you know what, we'll get to. that jim acosta. >> exactly. >> it was horrible that he would do that. but there is a reason, rick, why he did at this time day after he got trounced. the day after republicans had their worst electoral beating

since watergate. donald trump was humiliated. he was weak. he was battered. he was kwon fused. you could see him up there. he was just baffled. he didn't know what to do. he was freaking out. and it was just like a little kid in a sand box trying to kick sand on other people when he was the weakest person there. so what does he do? he calls you meisha a racist. he's screaming it at jim acosta. then he fires jeff sessions. i'd say the press shouldn't take the bait. this is about donald trump trying to distract from just how weak he is now. how vulnerable he is now. >> i think when he went out there, i watched the press conference. it was an hour and 15 minutes of you know trump bloviating. it seemed to me very staged. he knew what he was doing.

he wanted to go out there and pick a fight so let's pick a fight with jim acosta and, look, i think it was bush who had the word thumping. nafls his word. obama's word was shlacking and so we need a new word for trump. i think shlong, maybe that's weird. no we don't want to go there. >> i think he called it a complete victory, right? something like that? >> that's juxtaposition. >> it's a baghdad bomb. he was beaten so badly. you look at those house races, they keep coming in, sam, for the democrats. >> we're going to end up with something like 37 gains, with i is a huge -- you remember 2006. >> since watergate. >> 2006 was a seiss malshift. >> huge. >> that year customs gained 31 seepts so this put that into ber spective. trump's vulnerable right now.

i think he knows he's vulnerable right now. i think he was lashing out in all the ways you are talking about. he expects us to take the bait. >> by the way, nobody did. nobody was talking. i watched last night. you know what the huge story was. >> the press. >> the huge story was that the press followed him down the rabbit hole and said he put out there. when, in fact, what's going to impact this country and this constitution more than anything else? is that democrats -- >> the world. >> and the world. >> the world. >> the democrats checking it's no longer a one party rule. >> even this attorney general session's news, you have to contexttualize it, obviously. it's a huge, huge issue he now has a political ilie in the role of attorney general. and it could end up being the beginning of the end for the mueller probe. right? but because house democrats are now running the committees, they could theoretically subpoena whatever work mueller has done and bring it into the committee level the president will fight

it. but the house democrats can now continue what mueller is doing. whereas prior to this election, this would be a huge epic constitutional crisis. i will say trump has one ace in the hole still. >> that is the senate map is really favorable to him. he will have more senators in the next congress. so he can confirm people to his cabinet who are more sycophantic now. >> except guess what when you talk about republicans having 53, 54. >> yes. >> take mitt romney off of there. >> oh my goodness, did you see his tweets yesterday? >> romney went after trump yesterday. >> i think he's going to be -- >> burr in north carolina a swing state. >> a thorn. >> and burr has been a straight shooter. >> burr is up for election in 2020. >> corey germany cannot afford to be a sycofant for trump. trump is in the same position he was before. i wonder, willie, if he didn't know, he told people i'm going to fire sessions.

but i know i can't go after rosenstein. i can't go after mueller, but i'm going to throw this out here as a smoke screen. >> yeah. i think so. it's still, yes, he wants people to chase the story. it still has real world implications. this guy, matthew whitaker who was u.s. attorney in iowa is on television and twitter calling the mueller probe a witch hunt, retweetinging that calls the mueller investigation a lynch mob. he has actively been on telechristian i vision and onlinep. >> that's his job interview. >> you say that jokingly. >> it was, it's like the beverly hills guy, he goes on tv. he talks about trump and how they ought to be able to scam the government. now he's rung the irs. >> quite literal lay cnn co-panelist was tweeting he had back stage green room conversations with whitaker who said he would fly out to cnn precisely so he could get a job

in the trump organization. >> let's take this, though to the next step, which is, you're mueller. you are putting together your obstruction of justice charge and he has this puzzle, this hole in the puzzle. >> what can fit in that puzzle? >> what will i put there? >> oh, he fires the united states attorney general and appoints a hack and may not have done that legally to obstruct justice and stop this investigation. boom. oh the puzzle is complete. guess what. if donald trump gets rid of mueller, now the democrats can just hire him. he can now work for the house of representatives and if they want to send all the information, they're going to send it to states. he thinks he's going to stop his children if they've done something wrong from going to jail? they'll be in state jail instead of federal penitentiary. >> here's the other question -- to bring it full circle. >> by the way, no pardoning if

either of these people are sent to jat i state jails. so he has no exit. >> as of 36 hours ago, instead of democrats shouting on television sending out tweets, jerry nadler comes out as head and wait a minute, this doesn't fly, we will look into this matthew whitaker guy, we will see if there is okay. there is pushback in the country. >> i want to go to amish, pointing out rye now if we had gone to the nar five or we were like fox and echoed the president's narratives of what he thinks were the biggest concerns in this country right now, if it was a week ago, we'd have maybe be going to a reporter on the border about the caravans, making their way into this country. >> i'm sure fox and everybody covered -- yesterday, right? >> no, they didn't. >> didn't martha go to the border yesterday? >> today they're at the boarder? are they preparing with 15,000 troops? >> alex, did that i go to the border this morning?

>> no border. >> no fox people at the board their morning. >> they thought the was such a big story, our country was if danger. they were replacing the border and doing 24 -- >> hold on, did rush limbaugh carry on? >> well, thankfully, i don't listen to rush all day. so i don't know exactly. >> what about hannity? did hannity stalk u talk about the smallpox on the boarder? >> reporter: fox reports it was mentioned once in passing. >> what? but smallpox is coming to america. they told us this is news. >> i don't understand, because this was an invasion that was going to threaten our very way of life. they were brigg leprecy and smallpox up here. >> i'm sure the president talked about that yesterday, that must have been a primary -- >> i think we have drawn the red meat out. >> the chum has been thrown in the water. go. >> that will put it in context. >> no, there was not a caravan

that was invading the united states. to put that plainly. i will say i interviewed some trump supporters who were in a gated retirement community in south florida who were scared this caravan was going to come and bring all sorts of diseases to them. these are interviews i did on camera, people were really fearful and the president essentially feels as though he was validated in running that campaign of fear because republicans were able to keep control of the senate and gain a couple seats. that's why i pose that question to the president is are you worried you are emboldened white nationalists? we know a white nationalist visited the white house and tweeted about it the same day was asking the question about nationalism. >> he called you a racist for asking him about the behavior that he has engaged in that has david duke praising him, right? >> he did do that. i think what was going on there the president was very frustrated with reporters overall. moments before i posed my

question, he was pacing literally pacing back and forth at the podium. i thought he might walk off. because he had been calling people rude, hostile. i of course as you know i have been on this show multiple times. you have allowed me to be myself. i'm not someone who gets flapped up, confrontational. if you call me a racist, i will move on to middle class tax cuts to figure out how you will get that done. of course, he didn't have an answer for that either. president trump relishes in certain republicans losing the mid-terms, naming the names of people who didn't kiss up to him. we'll show you that and much more. in his wild news conference. >> no embrace.

[ phone rings ] what?! ready for christmas? no, it's way too early to be annoyed by christmas. you just need some holiday spirit! that's it! this feud just went mobile. with xfinity xfi you get the best wifi experience at home. and with xfinity mobile, you get the best wireless coverage for your phone. ...you're about to find out! you don't even know where i live... hello! see the grinch in theaters by saying "get grinch tickets" into your xfinity x1 voice remote. a guy just dropped this off. he-he-he-he. last night the republican party defied history for the mid-town and mid-term year.

we also had a staggering number of house retirements. you had some that decided to, let's stay away. let's stay away. i'm not sure that i should be happy or sad. but i feel just fine about it. carlos kur bella, mike kauffman, too bad, mike. mia love gave me no love. and she lost. barbara comstock was another one. i think she could have won that race. peter roscomb didn't want the embrace. >> whose fault is it -- >>? jeff flake's case, it's me. pure and simple. i retired him. i'm very proud of it. if the republicans won and let's say we held on by two or one or three, it would have been very hard having that many republicans to ever even get support among republicans. and the closer it is the worse it is, i'll be honest, i thought it was a very close to complete victory. from a deal-making standpoint,

we are all much better off the way it turned out. >> delusion al. >> shh. >> they lose a third of the seats in two years nationwide, obama lost today. 333. the worst defeat for republicans since watergate. this guy was so bad. he was so horrible. so toxic. >> that actually you have to go all the way back to richard nixon committing crimes and republicans having to run under that scenario. >> it's tough work. >> he had to work that hard to offend as many voters as he did. >> hmm. >> he's up there and he's not well. >> i was worried about it.

rally, it was delusional to say he did pretty well. later, i'm glad we lost. conservatives support donald trump and heard yesterday were not just perplexed but dumping on republicans who lost. that was his focus. pointing out the ones who lost for distancing himself from this. you have to say, he looks like he was backed into a corner, he looked uncomfortable. he was pacing around the stage at times, was he going to step off the stage? where was he going? he wouldn't stop, it was 90 minutes of that. >> yeah. >> he couldn't stop himself. he was just so angry, but rick, willie is right, he was delusional. i say republicans did pretty well when they just got absolutely trumped the party is dead in the northeast. it's dead in the northeast.

again you lose 333 seats in two years nationwide, you lose the governorships the most important to trump. it's not good. >> it's not good. i don't use the truth that the republican party left me. the truth is there is no republican party anymore. it's gone. >> right. >> we now have the trumping party. there is a realignment going on, there is no circumstance in which you could say the president did well. now, parties often do, don't do well with the party of who has the white house. that's typical. the senate the republicans won the lottery map in the senate. they got a great hand dealt to them. >> by the way, we knew this two

years ago. >> if you look at the stock market, it went crazy yesterday. >> explain that quickly. the market went -- >> 543 points i think. 1.53%. >> markets were thrilled that donald trump. >> has divided government. i like divided government i don't think the government is the answer to everything. to me sometimes when they can't do anything, it's better than the alternative. lot of conservatives think that way. when you have job numbers, gdp growth the market is as well as it could be the republicans should have gained seats. they gained seats and lost the majority. i don't know what fact you can point to other than donald trump. what would you say, why did the democrats wince and the republicans lost so badly? what was the reason? was it because of the jobs growth? >> no. wage growth, no? stockmarket? >> no. >> there was no reason other than donald trump. >> right.

coming up on "morning joe," it could be the reason why president trump was dragging out his separation from jeff sessions. he wanted that news to drown out the republican loss of the house of representatives. and the gain of a check on his presidency. >> and they lost big. >> big. >> they lost huge. huge. >> i don't know if it's true or not the biggest loss for republicans since watergate. really, that right? i think i heard that on the twitter. >> that has to be humiliating for donald trump. >> that he lost more seats for the republican party. >> yeah. >> like than any president since nixon. >> that is correct. you are watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. >> i like this show. i learn so much watching this show. i can't believe it. that grandpa's nose is performing

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joining you now, former chief of staff at the cia and a national security analyst jeremy bash. good to have you. >> jeremy, we were talking about donald trump's freakout, obviously, he's humiliated, feeling weakened by the fact republicans had their worst loss electorally since watergate. so yesterday, not surprised he's attacking accost that, firing jeff sessions.

why don't we start at the beginning here. his obvious ploy to try to get the news media off the fact that he's a very weak president right now. so the question is, the hiring of this sycophant some people call him. i never calm him the trump sycophant. was that even legal in. >> well, actually there is a statute that governs how doj is to hand him appointments to the acting positions. in that statute, it says the individual who becomes acting attorney general must be senate confirmed. okay the chief of staff is not senate confirmed. there was a little legal dispute, there was a statute that might suggest the move is potentially legal. i think it's fair to say the apayment of whitaker to become acting attorney general from the chief of staff position first of all is unprecedented, second of all, it's quasi-legal, it was done i think as a part of an effort to obstruct justice to

obstruct the mueller investigation to starve it, restrain it. >> you really think that, jeremy? you think he'd fire, okay, being sarcastic. which leads to the second question, how dumb can donald trump be to actually fire the attorney general, let everybody knows that he's firing the attorney general. >> right. >> because he didn't want this man to recuse himself, he had to recuse himself according to justice department guidelines and hire a sycophant. i would never call him this that, some would would to run the department s. that not all the evidence robert mueller needs to put a nice, tidy bow and tie it up on that obstruction of justice charge? >> yeah. and if donald trump were so smart, why did he fire sessions and make this move six months ago a year ago, before the democrats were on the eve of taking the gavel of the judiciary committee on the house oversight committee of the intelligence committee. now all the democrats have to do

when they come in is put mark whitaker under oath and ask him, point blank, what conversations did you have with the president about a potential quid quo pro, where he would you a point you on this position and you would crack down on the mueller investigation. in fact, there was a series of letters fired off by house democrats to a number of executive branch officials asking them to preserve all e-mails, all techs, all what'sapp, all signals, so anything with the sessions firing would be preserved for investigative purposes. >> jerry, it's willie. >> hi, willie. >> what could he do about the mueller investigation. he retweeted calling it a lynch mob. he's called for it to be deep funned while he was a pundit writing articles for cnn.com going on cnn as an analyst before donald trump saw him on tv and said let me get that guy at the department of justice. what could be his move against

the mueller investigation? >> i think three things, first of all, he could deny the budget resources and personnel and slow it down significantly. second, he could fail to defend the decisions of the special counsel if court and if the special counsel has to litigate say a subpoena of the president, that will go to litigation and pay go up to the supreme court and the attorney general plays a significant role in defending the decision of the justice department. the third and potentially most importantly, he could refuse to make public any report that robert mueller generates. >> coming up, the newly re-elected senator, democrat i don't manchin standing by. he yoins the he joins the conversation next on "morning joe." - [narrator] meet the ninja foodi,

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let me say that i never expected this race to be the national race it turned out to be. i never expected president trump

to come to the state as much as he did sending vice president pence, sending his family time after time after time and you stood tall. what you said -- what west virginia said loud and clear tonight, mr. president, we want our senator, not your senator. >> wow, that was tuesday night in charlotteton, west virginia. joining us is the newly elected senator from west virginia democrat joe manchin. senator, good morning. welcome back to the show. it's been a while. good to see you. >> yes oh. we don't have the senator's micro. >> he lost his voice after all that campaigning. let's see if we can fix the -- >> do we have his mic or no? >> let's see if we can fix the audio? >> we will learn on that aspect. sam, we will get it up in a

second, for manchin won re-election in a state that won by 42 points. the final margin was about 3 points that he won. he's right the president came in. the president's kids went in. >> yeah. >> they were all in to knock off i don't manchin. >> it's an interesting race in the fact that joe manchin and donald trump are not. they can get along, amicable toward each other. he has a decent relationship and there was an assumption trump would back off a little bit. but he ended up besting his opponent in the race and done threw skilled centrist rism. >> let's take two on this. good morning, good to have you back with us. >> hey, guys. it's, yeah. >> so how did you do it, senator? let's talk about what happened in that state? obviously, you were the government of that state of. are you a popular figure there. the spread was probably thinner than you'd like it to have been at three points. what was your message to voters as they were bombarded all the

way from the top of the president of the united states with messages against you? >> i think, willie what you just saw the clip that i spoke that night as far as election night. when we were -- >> lost his voice. >> i lost my voice on the motorcycle ride with you guys. >> oh. >> but anyway, let me say that that night when you heard me say what i said, it truly was that. the people of west virginia like their senator. they like the president. they support him. he won over 42%. make no mistake about it. this was between me and the president. for the last five months, he's called me during the campaign. i said why do you keep coming back? i said why do you keep coming back? but he does. i said, that's okay, mr. president, i have been uning are against you five months. every ad has been you coming on saying a vote for my opponent

for morrisey is a vote for me. i need that guy. it's almost do whatever you can to get rid of joe. guess what, the people of west virginia said we want our guys, i'm their guy. i'm 100% west virginia. we pushed that home. because i'm going to make a vote that's good for my state. whether the president -- it's whether it's for him or fought. i stood up against him with the aca and every time he came to the state. he says, joe doesn't vote with me. i voted with him on more things than any other democrat. and he knows. that but he wants 100%. i said, i'm association i have been married for 51 years, gail and i don't agree on 100%. but i said, i vote with the people of west virginia 100% and what you want to do with health care, what you did with taxes was wrong, mr. president. >> so, joe, so what's your message? i mean because donald trump got like he won by like 87. >> 42 points.

>> 42 or 87. >> 42.2 to be compact, joe. >> well, i'd round it out to 45 or 50 if i were you. anyway, so what message do you? i'll add john tester to it. what message do you and john tester have for democrats that will be running in 2020 in red states on how you can win and how you can get through a primary where people want you to go way too left and beat the republican in the federal election. how do you do it? >> let me say this, i would say this to the new congress coming in. a democrat controlled congress. look for the positive. look for ways you want to make things better. look for ways you can work with elected officials. president trump is a president. every red blooded american should want the president to do

well and succeed f. they do well, we all do well. but also make no mistake about it. article 1 and 2 of the constitution is very clear, the separation of powers. we basically, i've always taken this approach. i want the president to succeed. i want to work with him. when it's good for my country and my state. if i think it's not and there is a better way, i'll stand up to him. so if they go in there basically saying i'm going in with a positive attitude and not obstructionist and negative and against and against. so i will tell the new congress, put your agenda together. find out how ut want to fix health care, find out how you want to fix immigration, all the different things, how we will fix the tax code and not have this horrible debt that we are inheriting. go and say mr. president, can you work on in? as the president refuses, they can say, here's our agenda the new contract with america that

makes us really better and then take that positive. don't use all your energy for negative. you get nowhere with it. i think people know how to fix things. >> let me ask you this, and there is a tough mo, to ask this question, i would have asked you regardless of the tragedy going on in southern california. we're certainly thinking about and praying for those people and the family members, but i want to ask you a question completely separate of the sad tragic news breaking today. you and i talked a lot after new town and december of 2012 and beyond as two guys that always had the support of the nra who believe what the second amendment says. >> that americans have a right to keep and bear arms. but you did what everybody said

was not possible. you actually look on the nra in west virginia and said, hey, i believe in what you have always believed in. but there are some things that background checks and bump stocks and other issues, you actually parted with them. everybody said you weren't going to be able to do that and survive in west virginia. you did. you survived. the question is, how did you do it and talk to gun owners in a way that made them understand you still supported the second amendment. you wanted reasonable safeguards. >> joe, first of all, all the gun owners if west virginia know me. i go hunting and shooting them. no one will defend more than i will on your second amendment rights. also we believe in west virginia, law abiding gun owners believe in common sense. common gun sense. i knew that res fated.

i said, guys, all i'm asking for, when there is a commercial transaction. don't you think we should know what their background or purpose is. don't you think if a person is too dangerous to get on on airplane, maybe they ought to be too dangerous to buy a gun in this is nonsense. i never took on the nra. they took me on, joe. i stay where i've always been. and i'm still an nra member, lifetime. and i will be -- remain that. because i think there is enough good people when i ask the nra, put my bill in the magazine, let them vote on it and see. you will have 70 to 80 to 90%. >> isn't that the great irony, joe. when we talk about the quote in the nra, we are talking three lobbyists that actually the overwhelming majority of nra members i know and you know and you even have polls taken, you

are exactly right. 70, 75, 80%, joe, of gun owners and nra members support what you are trying to do. >> joe, we did school safety. we did mental illness. we did everything. our bill was a dream for any law abiding gun owner. our bill the manchin-toomey bill was a dream bill. it was a dream come true bill any other time. but the country has become so divisive and divided that these social issues are drawing the line. take the abortion issue. i have -- i said i was born in a pro-life family. i was raised pro-life. with the exceptions and i have always voted pro-life with the exceptions of rape, incest and life of the mother. which i think is reasonable, which most pro-life people accept and that's what they judged themselves by. they gotten to the point now, there is no exclusions. no exceptions whatsoever. so all side have gone to the extremes and just driven these

social wedges to people pushed apart. i kept talking about things that people said, oh, you can't talk about that joe. i said, i'm the same person i have always been. people are trying to make it that i'm somebody different. i haven't changed. i'm not changing, joe. i'm coming back to washington on tuesday. we've got to sit down and work through this. i've said, jeff sessions should not have been fired. mueller should be protected. we've got to get this investigation done to where it has credibility by the most credible person in bob mueller. all this stuff has to come. lindsay graham has said that, basically tom till liss said it. corey booker said it. chris kuhns, they got a bill. we need to get on that bill and make it work. >> senator joe manchin, congratulations. gait to have you back on the show. thank you. >> i'm coming back. i'm back. i'm back. >> yes, he is. we hear you. >> it may be safer on this side of the election than the other side. >> okay. thank you, joe.

up next -- >> oh, by the way, joe, if are you still there. it looks like alabama, your brother nick may be taking them to another national championship. we don't another national championship. >> joe, we've got to go. we've got to go to that game. i'll get you tickets. >> watch out for the mountaineers. >> what was a good ad wasn't it? >> that was a great ad. that one. you shooting a bill on a post, yeah. >> i blew the living daylights out of that bill. >> good-bye. thank you very much. you guys can make your plans off air. up next more about the impressive women who helped make history in the hid temidterm elections. we'll talk to one of them. keep it right here on "morning joe." e deep south. this thanksgiving...

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the new 2019 ford edge. so shark invented duo clean. while deep cleaning carpets, the added soft brush roll picks up large particles, gives floors a polished look, and fearlessly devours piles. duo clean technology, corded and cord-free. yesterday we talked about the big gains that women made in the midterm elections. we want to highlight a few more of them. three states selected their first women governors. christie noem, gretchen whitmer. 27-year-old lina hidalgo and in

harris county texas the third largest county in the nation. sharise davis become the first lgbtq elected to congress in california's 25th district republican congressman steve knight conceded to 31-year-old democratic katie hill and in california's 39th congressional district if the young republican woman wins her race she'll be the first korean women elected to congress. i have chills. let's bring in the newly elected democratic governor of michigan

gretchen whitmer. it was one of the seven governor seat that is democrats flipped in tuesday's midterm elections. it's great to have you on the show. congratulations. what do you think it was about your message that brought you to victory? >> thank you. i'm so glad to be with you. my race was always about the fundamental issues. one of my tag lines that resonated across party lines was fix the damn roads. we have infrastructure issues in michigan. we have serious infrastructure issues i'm eager to tackle. it was staying tethered to the dinner table that resonated with voters on both sides of aisle and propelled us to this win on tuesday. >> governor-elect whitmer, michigan has always been part of the blue wall. donald trump won michigan,

wisconsin and pennsylvania. is that blue wall rebuilt? >> i'm going to work to rebuild my state and rebuild my party as well and make sure that we get back to solving problems. i picked the mackinaw bridge as part of my campaign. we have to get back to building bridges. it's how you solve problems and make people's lives better. that's been the focus of my campaign. that's what i'm going to do as governor. >> i'm going to try to get through this question without laughing. you did well on the ballot. something else did better than you. legalization of marijuana in your state. >> here we go. >> it's a legitimate question. 57% on the ballot initiative to legalize marijuana use in your state. do you support it? do you think it's an organizing

principle for democratic voters? you've seen public opinion polls. support for legalization is through the roof. >> people came out for it. there's no question. we had a medicinal marijuana initiative we passed ten years ago. i supported that then. i took care of my mom at the end of her life. she died of brain cancer. i supported it then. as governor i've got an important task to make sure we do it right. there's no question younger voters were really inspired by it. i think it's something that pulls people to the polls. it creates opportunity. that's got to be my mindset as we move forward. >> let me get off the weed topic. it's willie geist. congratulations. thanks for joining us. nine of the counties you took voted for donald trump just two years ago. you flipped them to you this time around to get into the

governor's mansion. what do you say to some of those voters who voted for donald trump, but then flipped for dwryou? >> it was about staying focused on the dinner table issues. when you can't put food on the table, you 're worried about th water coming out of the tap, when fundamentals are not being meant nothing else is going to persuade you to take action. so that's why i stayed tethered there. that's what i'll stay to focussed on as governor. the story from '16 also was we didn't turn out and vote. we turned out this year. i think incredibly so. that's a real piece of what happened here. >> governor elect gretchen

whitmer, thank you very much. congratulations. >> thank you all. >> that does it for another edition for "morning joe." time for final thoughts. >> other than weed, sam, give us your final thoughts. >> weed is an organizing principle for voters. >> rick? >> i think we're about to head into two years of very difficult contentious -- the way your government functions. the government functions on one word, compromise. i don't think that's going to happen. >> my thoughts this morning are in thousand oaks, california where a college night at a country bar 12 people were killed. we know one name. sheriff ron helus, a 29-year

veteran of the force was about to go into retirement. he rushed into the bar and was killed. we thank him for his courage and bravery. >> how difficult for his family and all the families who are frantically trying to figure out whether their loved ones were in there. just a tragic story. >> with 30 seconds left let's check in with alex whit. anything new? >> we have all the statistics and the like. we're going to get these stories. i was just reading about a college student named taylor. she talked about in the panic kids were line dancing. she got knocked down by a bar stool that was being thrown through a window. a guy helped her up. she said before she got there there was a group of men that stood by the window to block anything that happened.

she said they were heros and tried to block us. >> thank you. unbelievable some people who escaped the shooting in las vegas were working in that bar. it brings it all full circle. >> it's heart breaking. >> that does it for us this morning. hi, i'm stephanie rule. we start unfortunately with that breaking news this morning. 12 people called after a man burst into a popular california bar packed with college students and he opened fired. [ gunshots ] >> we dropped and we heard the gunshots. by the grace of god i got to the front door. i don't know how. >> friends got the bar stools and they started throwing them against the windows. we got out. >> sergeant helus died