poodle. they kept bin laden on the bracelet for how long? oh, no, wait a second. they blew his brains out. so they didn't treat him quite as badly, did they, mike? >> they did not knock on bin laden's front door. there was not a knock saying, bin laden, fbi, come on out. they didn't do that. >> all right. roger stone, trump's long-time adviser equated the use of force in his address to what was used in the bin laden raid, sparking all this way too early in the morning. >> way too early. some of willie's best work, way too early. >> now listen. >> i didn't understand the christmas special with kanye and bring crosby but still. >> you were adorable doing that. >> stone's complaint that his dogs were terrorized is a tiny bit ironic because his seven-count indictment includes the al galegation that stone tr

to intimidate someone by threatening their therapy dog. don't do that. along with joe, willie and me we have mike barnicle, nbc news national political reporter heidi pryzbyla and prize winning columnist, very wise, and associate editor of "the washington post" eugene robinson. heidi's getting wired up. did we get a text? this morning we'll be joined by two former trump insiders, former white house staffer cliff sims is here for his book "team of vipers." how mad are you, willie, he stole your title for your upcoming "morning joe" expose, right? right? >> well, mine's going to be dark, a little darker than cliff's book. i'm working on it with a publisher. i'll let you proof it.

>> let's just say we've been over some very rocky roads in our -- >> yet here we are. >> longest running anchor team on television. >> seriously, come on. can you name four people who have been around for like 12 years of a tv show every day. >> just grinding it out, man. >> the iron man, mike barnicle. >> former trump transition chair chris christie joins us today. he's out today with his new memoir -- let me finish -- the power of in-your-face politics. >> that's what i'm talking about. >> we'll find out what chris christie and cliff sims reveal about the inner workings of the trump presidency ahead this morning on "morning joe." former vice president joe biden -- >> we're going to talk about 2020 now, right? >> we can, if you'd like. >> is that okay? >> it's going to be rough for howard schultz.

>> did you see what happened last night at the book fair? >> yelling at him, calling hmm nam -- him names. >> was that you, willie? >> no. it was immediate and rough about how people feel about his candidacy. we can ask him tomorrow. >> he'll be here tomorrow. you know what that means, right? everybody in the political world saying if he runs, he will elect trump and he will destroy -- you know what that means, that like everybody's wrong. just like everybody said donald trump is at -- my point is, willie, you never know and these people, you know, that are predicting and what year are we in, 2019? >> yes. >> what's going to happen 19 months from now, they have no idea. >> we had mike bloomberg come out yesterday and say howard shuts shouldn't do it, a guy at the front of the line for an

independent run. >> let's go to howard schultz. former starbucks ceo howard schultz is not backing down from a potential 2020 independent run. schultz announced on sunday he will be making a former decision about a presidential bid in the next three months. numerous democrats have since warned that an independent bid for the white house by schultz would re-elected president trump. here is how schultz responded to his critics. >> if i run for president, i will run as an american under one banner, the american flag. the question i think we all should be asking ourselves is at a time in america when there's so much evidence that our political system is broken, that both parties at the extreme are not representing the silent majority of the american people, isn't there a better way, a better choice? >> if there is a choice between

president trump and a progressive, liberal-minded person on the democratic side, it would kill me to see president trump be reelected. and i believe that's what would take place. >> former new york city mayor michael bloomberg who has toyed with an independent bid in the past is now considering a democratic run released a statement yesterday warning of the consequences an independent might have in 2020. he writes there's a, quote, great likelihood is that an independent would just split the anti-trump vote and end up reelecting the president. that's a risk i refuse to run in 2016 and we can't afford to run it now. here's that moment from the new york book event that willie mentioned. take a look. >> i wanted to clarify the word independent, which i view merely as a designation on the ballot. >> don't help elect trump you

egotistical billionaire -- >> why would his publisher do that? and he's got this top notch pr team? you go there to do a book event, you will get yelled at. i hope he was told that. it's pretty basic. >> we've done about four or five of these -- >> every time. >> it's my favorite place to go -- >> because they yell at you. >> because there's always one in the cord. -- in the crowd. >> oh, more. >> they're very impassioned. >> that's not the first time he's going to hear it either. that's the grass roots speaking. he should be prepared for it. >> the irony to me and i understand everyone's objections in the democratic party but everybody talks about how the two-party system is broken, there's got to be a better way

and his answer is, okay, i'll try this way. i understand why they're upset, the stakes are too high, you can't let donald trump win again. but they won't even listen to him again. it's before he even announced his candidacy that he's being vaporized by progressives. >> gene robinson, i agree, if you look at the numbers right now, it makes no sense and he risks the reelection of donald trump becoming president again with 44, 45% of the vote. we're like 18 months out. shouldn't we give the guy a listen? your piece is on this in the "post." >> it does worry me a little bit that i'm with the conventional wisdom on this, strongly with the conventional wisdom that he risks reelecting trump. and the conventional wisdom has been always wrong recently.

however, i'm sticking with this. i mean, there's only one way i can kind of see this and i don't think -- he doesn't have the kind of message either that i think has any danger of catching fire in this country, number one. >> that's a problem -- get into that, if you will, because that is the problem. i've loved no labels and i've loved all of these let's come together and hug each other groups, i have, but they've never had a -- it's always been let's meet somewhere in the mushy middle. there's a reason why itchy and scratchy never got along in the simpsons because the kids stopped watching and went outside and played. why can't somebody run as an independent that has a strong, powerful message that will literally scare the hell out of vested interests in washington

and on wall street. >> exactly. an independent with a strong fiery populist message. the independent candidate that's done in our lifetime is probably ross perot. he had an idiosyncratic message, not like anybody else's. this is not a sort of hug me moment in american politics. and, you know, everybody says the two-party system is broken. but the two-party system right now is the vessel for polarization, for very strongly held views on both sides and for groups of people who are not at all interested meeting in the middle because their sense is you meet in the middle, you don't get anywhere. so there's a question about what

direction the country goes in but it wants to go in a direction. i don't think it wants howard schultz. >> here's howard schultz's problem it seems to me right now with his message. howard schultz speaks like the person he, is the political animal that he is and that is a very wealthy democratic ceo. i've heard howard schultz's complaint about the left wing of the democratic party now for about four, five, six years, they're too far left, they're going to chase off -- people that are scared of elizabeth warren, the bob reuben wing of the democratic party. when howard schultz runs that way, he'll kill off some democrats and some conservative democrats but this is what bloomberg's talking about. he's not going to light the prairies on fire with this message and pull from both sides.

>> and that's the point, is it not? if we replayed the schultz announcement that we just showed here, what's in it? nothing's in it. it's mush. it's basically, you know, nothing's working, i'm going to run, i'm going to make it work. he's a nice guy, he a rich guy, i'm sure he has some considerable thoughts that are relevant to what's going on today but what that message, it ain't going to happen to him. he's not going to affect the presidential election because he's not going to be there. >> president trump is apparently decided that howard schultz is getting in. at a fund-raiser at the trump hotel he told the audience how excited it was that howard schultz was considering, writing schultz doesn't have the guts and, quote, i agree with him

that he's not the smartest pers person. >> which leads a dash to my question who the hell is that 32%? who are the 32% that think he's smart and knowledgeable to be president of the united states? >> one of the interesting things going on i would submit is first of all, 80, 90% of the country, they're not on twitter. they're not looking at twitter each and every day. but what they are aware of, especially given the events of the last two weeks, is that the president of the united states pure and simple is incompetent. he didn't do the job. >> by the way, even his supporters and you are starting to see people on twitter saying, listen, just because people say they support donald trump doesn't mean they aren't

whispering to me, these are conservative trumpists talking that they understand he's not up for the job. i think we're going to start seeing some really serious republican challenges here. >> yeah, but on the democratic side, we talk about some of the campaigns or potential campaigns that may or may not have a message. i want to read from your piece in "the washington post," it's on how senator kamala harris has so far set herself apart from the pack. >> can you believe this? can we stop here for a second? they let me write an op-ed in the same newspaper space shared by pulitzer prize winning columnist gene robinson. >> and a good column it is. i read your column, joe. it's a very good column. >> it's like the end of "field of dreams." you were good.

gene, that means the world to me. >> you know, they let me be on television with joe scarborough. >> you choose to be. >> can i just ramble and make you even more nervous about me being on medication, can i just say that burt lancaster scene in that film? he had an incredibly storied career but his role in "field of dreams" was one of the most touching -- >> i cry every time i see it. >> i've seen it a thousand times, i tear up every time. >> most devastating line, "dad, you want to have a catch" and just throw as the sun goes down over the corn fields. >> so here's joe's piece on kamala harris, who i love. >> can i ask one more question? >> no. >> this tells you a lot about a person because the world is split into two distinct groups,

"field of dreams" or "the natural." >> willie? >> field of dreams. >> mike? >> i have to go with "the natural." >> heidi? "field of dreams" or "the natural"? >> okay. >> i was ready to talk about kamala harris. >> cleaning the purse. >> cleaning my purse actually. >> i can't tell you how much i love "field of dreams," right? but "the natural," what a baseball movie. >> having seen neither. >> what a baseball movie "the natural" is. i wish mika would read an op-ed i wrote in the "washington post" -- oh, what, you've been trying to for five minutes?

>> it's so good. >> an actor steps up to the plate and they swing, you can't fake that. >> kamala harris has what it takes. joe writes in part this, "it's one thing to propel a presidential campaign off a launchpad and quite another to successfully send it into a safe political orbit but a few days into her campaign, even harris' critic should take note that the junior senator managed something in her first campaign speech that the last democratic nominee failed to do throughout the whole 2016 campaign, she gave americans a compelling explanation as to why she wanted to be president. her message, "we are better than this" was delivered in the fierce urgency of now in that it was much like the earlier campaign launched by senator elizabeth warren, who framed her white house bid as a continue ways of her quest to protect consumers, to hold corporate

leaders accountable. like warren, harris will be underestimated by team trump at its own peril. we are of course in the opening steps of a grueling nonstop, two-year battle. perhaps harris will prove far more adept at beginning a presidential campaign than actually running one and warren may prove critics correct by proving she lacks the personal touch to navigate of ugly give and take of modern presidential politics but i doubt it. i wouldn't underestimate these two candidates. >> thank you for not getting into the whole field of dreams. because you knew sherlock and moving things around and everything comes to the. what i was trying to say was that kamala harris is the

natural in the field of schemes. boom, i just locked it all together. >> poor heidi. >> sorry, heidi. >> kamala harris, she looked look she had been there before on sunday. that was quite a performance. >> we got our first taste of that and she did definitely fill the stage, but as you point out in your piece, it is not just how she performed in that moment, it is that she's coming into this with something that privately even a lot of democrats will say was lacking in the hillary clinton campaign. i talked to people who were her friends, who were hillary's closest friends and yet she felt like she didn't have that really compelling message that spoke to the country, for the people, it's a slowigaslogan. when you have really easy messages that can be boiled down

to sound bites and ud repeat them over and over, that actually works. she's running on a progressive platform as well, these these are things that are going to speak to that growing, progressive wing of the party. as david axelrod points out in a piece yesterday, the big unknown for her and her coastal status. that is the key to any election trump lost in those states -- or won by such a handful of votes that, you know, somebody has to come into this -- whoever the nominee is has to come into this really strong in the midwest as well and it just unclear how she's going to play in those midwestern states. but maybe she's shaking things up and going with a totally different model to ref up the base. you saw that in some other races as well. stacey abrams, fingertips, in georgia came really close, a lot

closer than a lot of people thought by really working on revving up the base. >> and you know, gene, this complaint from some that a democratic candidate may be too progressive. it's really -- i'm sorry, it's not about being it's about having a message. mika, brzezinski, scarborough. >> no, no, keep going. >> complained for two years that hillary rodham clinton didn't have a message. for two years, from day one until the day of the election, she would say i'm with her? what was the other one? >> every time i asked people what her message was, it was a two-minu two-minute. >> think about what we already have with kamala harris.

they have their own message but what i heard is "we are better than this." and elizabeth warren, does anybody have to guess what elizabeth warren stands for? do you even need to go look at a five paragraph position paper on -- >> and if you look at her life, she has lived the message, like it or not. >> democrats already have two candidates with fierce, urgent messages that you can slap on a bumper sticker and run a government with right now. >> you got to be somebody. you got to stand for something i think in this cycle. and you're right, democrats already have two candidates who have that quality. the thing that we didn't know or that i didn't know, couldn't be sure of about kamala harris because you don't know of any candidate, can she command that stage?

does she have that x factor that you need to really be successful in a national campaign? and i think she showed us this weekend that, yeah, she's got that it. and then, you know, there are lots of other questions that are still unanswered. what happens in a two-year presidential campaign. you will take some blows. we see in. >> and a strong message, none other than bill clinton was the guy that always said better to be strong and wrong than right and weak, which explains drpt's victory in part in 20.

>> well, some of those concerns, too, that height was that she was i think some people will will look at her record as a prosecutor and like what they see. this will be pulled out by republicans and used by president trump that she would support eliminating private insurance in mek and that's going to be a quote. let i think republicans may see some today. >> all right. we've got so much to get to. still ahead on "morning joe," could the russia probe be wrapping up soon? what aking torng matthew whitaker is saying ksh. >> did you see this guy sweat? it was like scarborough country!

>> we have some hypotheses on what was behind that. >> like he was sweating. >> he said he reviewed it. maybe he was a little stressed out. >> did he? did he? >> you know what happened? >> what happened? >> ari actually called and said you know what happened, and who cares. >> so you think he was in a bad position? >> i think that he had just been -- >> it's get. >> plus, two big guests with brand new tell-alls. former governor chris christie kpz can have woo -- no,

location. >> no, i mean has he been on the show. >> yes, many times. >> i think we had him about 14 times a week. >> we can move on now. and former west wing aide will join us with his book "team of vipers." but first the cold streak has -- what the hell is going on with global waming? >> when you factor in the wind

chill, it really is eye opening. we're now in the negative 40 numbers in northern minnesota and fargo, negative 24 in minneapolis, already negative 18 when you walk out the door in chicago. that's why a lot of the schools have already cancelled and even government businesses have had people stay home today. 44 million people from north dakota to west pennsylvania, all under wind chill warnings. tomorrow morning, this will be the feels like temperature in chicago, negative 51. it takes five minutes to get frostbite. the coldest will be on thursday, nothing like the numbers in the midwest. also be careful, a little bit of snow in areas of alabama, mississippi and northern georgia

and tonight snow in the area of the northeast. new york city no snow but you'll just see your numbers plunging but nothing like what they're dealing with in minnesota. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. t. rowe price experts go beyond the numbers to examine investment opportunities firsthand, like biotech. because your investments deserve the full story. t. rowe price invest with confidence.

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a get your questions answered by awesome experts store. it's a now there's one store that connects your life like never before store. the xfinity store is here. and it's simple, easy, awesome. several current and white house officials tell politico that the president is angry at former white house aide cliff sims' new book that reveals the chaotic inside account of the trump white house. they say sims' former colleagues are calling him a traitor. they referred to him as simply "the videographer." and michael cohen is just, you know -- >> being called a videographer is not quite as bad as being called a murderer, which is what the president called me.

>> oh, right. >> and called mika as -- that scene is in the book. have you seen that? >> no, no. >> the president comes down when i would do videos with him in the morning, he gets off the morning he sent that tweet and sean spicer and i are standing there and the president comes off and says "have you seen it"? >> which tweet? the murderer? >> no, the bleeding from the face tweet. i said i think everyone's seen it. he said "what do you think?" and poor sean spicer says, "i think it was very aggressive." >> by the way, he lies -- "the washington post" needs to put that on as a lie.

he watches every day. everybody close to him says he watches every day. >> did anyone tell him that was a really dumb thing to do? >> yeah, sure. i think that's one thing you'll probably be surprised about -- >> what did you say? >> well, i sat that one out. >> but funnish t ifinish the th. >> i think people will be surprised that he's actually open to people saying, hey, maybe we should have done that different or what if we do x, y, z? he's going to do what he's going to do but he will take the feedback. >> can we stop this train right here and let's consider what you just said. he's the president of the united states, he's beginning his work day, he comes down on the elevator from the residence, the press secretary and you are there to greet him, the beginning of the president's work day and he says, "have you seen it," talking about a tweet? >> but it's all about reaction.

i call him a day trader. he's the minute trader. the fact that i bring this up will enrage a lot of people, i'm sure, watching the show. people always say i have to go and meet the president. i say what's he like? -- >> th >> this is hard to hear, people who have been maligned by him. >> nancy pelosi, hillary clinton, he's a very engaging at times likable side. did you ever see the engagineng

likable side of dratonald trump? >> absolutely. the black caucus came in and i think they expected to hate him but he came in and he was very gregarious. it just kind of the way that -- he is a great host. >> which by the way, that was a funny moment because we were at war with trump for the entire campaign but jared said, hey, we want you to at least come over and look at the campaign room. they opened up the door, we walked in and there was an audible gasp, like who let the enemies in? >> that's not true, we were glad to have you. tell me if you get this impression, too. i think one of the -- for me at least and for mika, one of the hundreds of tragedies of this

presidency is that because donald trump could be so engaging, he's decided to play it dirty. for instance, we saw him for 12 years behind closed doors, never, ever once i'll say under oath, i'll put into an affidavit, never once heard him say anything close to being sen. never once. and you just sit there and wonder for a guy that even nancy pelosi and chuck schumer and hillary clinton will tell you personally he's an engaging, fun guy, the congressional black caucus, you wonder why did he take this path instead of being open and gregarious and working with everybody and actually running a moderate administration, a unifying administration? >> i spent a lot of time in this book trying to help people make

sense of what makes donald trump tick, the way he approaches the decision making process. i'm not trying to convince you to be for him or against him but just see him firsthand what it looks like and one of those is the charlottesville incident. i go through that in a chapter in the book, i talk a lot about that. my experience is very similar to yours. i've never heard donald trump say anything in private, acting any way in private that made me think in any way he had a racist bone in his body. but the charlottesville, i think those were opportunities missed to bring reconciliation and healing in a way the president only can because he's got that giant megaphone, giant platform. certainly would have liked to see that a little bit more. >> willie, the one time we've talked about it before where trump called me up screaming and he said stop calling me a racist

on tv, you know i'm not a racist. you've known me. and i go, yeah, i know you're not a racist personally but you play one on tv for cheap votes, donald, and that's even worse. >> you can add in the proposed muslim band. did he talk to anyone about the birther conspiracy that he helped lead and did you view that as racist? >> i never talked to him about that. >> did it give you pause? >> there's a lot of things that give me cause. the way i approached it as a work workday, i've got a job here to do. as a staffer, you always have two options, right, the president makes a decision or does something you disagree with. well, you either get on board and try to do the best you can

or you quit. i think those are both can be honorable. my wife and i wrestled a lot with the first chapper er chap book was called a slow climb aboard the trump train. ultimately we decided not a lot of people have a chance to work in the white house and interact with the most powerful person on the planet. >> so did you quit on principle then? >> no, actually the last chapter of the book is i accepted a job as senior adviser to secretary of state mike pompeo and i was blocked from that job by general kelly. that's kind of how i exited trump world. >> the white house says you were fired. and that came from the chief of staff and others that you were to be let go for sneaking videos and things like that.

it's like sources say kind of thing. that's really a peacekeeper tur of what it's like working in that white house. anything that happens, you can bet you're going to get a call from a reporter because -- >> let's hold it there. when we come back, we'll talk about kellyanne conway. >> the videographer is going to stay with us and we will be right back to continue the conferring. the follow up cat scan showed that it had gone to her liver. we needed a second opinion. that's when our journey began with cancer treatment centers of america. one of our questions was, how are we going to address my liver? so my doctor said i think we can do both surgeries together.

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okay, we're talking to cliff sims, the white house videographer. he wasn't actually the videographer but that's what trump called him. >> we have a great story about kellyanne. she would come on the show and talk about the campaign, i can't wait for it to be over, it's a joke. >> i asked kellyanne the morning of the election, i said, boy, you're probably going to be relieved when this is all over. she said, oh, mike, this has been like spending a semester abroad. >> you tell a great story about

how she's the leaker extraordinaire. >> yeah. >> you tell the story. >> off air she would basically say i need to go take a shower because she felt dirty working for donald trump. she calls me up to her office in the west wing and says i want to do a response to this and as a messaging guy i want your help in crafting this statement. i sit down on her apple laptop and start typing. she's sitting at her desk on the iphone and types away and forgets the messages are synced from the iphone to the ipad and i'm working crafting a statement defending exactly what she's doing at the moment, saying how she has to baby sit the guy and

whatever -- in the moment? >> in the moment. >> and of course she denies that. she said it was not true, if i was a leaker, i would get much better press. all she has to do is tell every reporter in washington, d.c. she can publicly say if i have ever trashed the president off the record to you, i release you from the off-the-record biends, you can put that on the record. >> there would be a very, very long line of reporters stepping up to microphones telling their stories. >> heidi, you have a question for cliff? >> actually, segueing from that, the logical question, cliff on the relationship with her husband now on twitter where he is one of the president's biggest critics. based on what you saw, do you think that's all just an act, that kellyanne is actually just looking towards this as some kind of a cover, like some other people in the white house as well for when this is all over? >> i don't know.

that's certainly the favorite parlor game, the rumor around washington, d.c. that it is all a big act. let's be honest, would you this ever work in corporate america? if you had an extrif whose spouse spent every waking moment trashing the company? the since, i really don't know. >> gene robinson. >> my question is about jared kushner. it just a big question mark. he was the grand negotiator who failed to get a deal on the wall with congress. as far as i can tell as of this morning he hasn't solved the israeli-palestinian conflict. he's supposed to do all these things and never seems to get

them done except with the prison reform. >> my interactions, i think he's a smart guy. i do think there are times when you would like to see others who may be a little deeper, experienc experienced, mike pence playing a role in that. i think ultimately the president untrusts him implicitly. if you look at his family business, you're seeing an erosion of the historical presidency. the apparatus behind him, it's becoming more of a family business inside the white house. >> do you have any children?

>> i don't. my wife are in the process of adopting from colombia. >> organization, nich, nice. >> is there anything about donald trump being president of the united states scare you? >> there isn't. i just neff saw anything on the inside that made me scared in that way. certainly there's things i disagree with, things i wish that were done different there's a scene in the book where right after the first navy seal was killed and an interaction between he and i, a very poignant members where i can see the life of his presidency. >> we've wondered how people in the white house and you write in the book about one the very

first days of the trump presidency, where san spicer said it was the largest crowd in history. and you had to write in the book, you wrote it wasn't the biggest of all time. how do you grapple now looking back, knowing something was not true but having to go out and sell it. >> if i'm got to be critical of anyone else, i better be willing to be critical of myself. so i do that a lot. i talked about how i was ruthless at times and caught up in the games and the proximity to power and everything that does to people. but that first day, it's one of the biggest regrets i in the white house because the first piece of work i put me hands we're trying to make a case for this largest so i'm compiling thanksgiving and writing it

down. okay, the proliferation of the ent net globally, we know there was nor pap and sean leaned in to the in-person line -- >> that is so painful. >> on a human level, how did you feel about having o do that? we tried to put the best on it. i never felt like i was asked directly to lie. but i also didn't have to be an on-camera spokesperson for the president, which is clearly a very, very difficult job. >> do you think sean spicer and sarah sanders have lied and been asked to lie on tv? >> i think sarah, who i think is a very good person and who does

a good job. she goes out without all of the facts and i think stieps the crowd is not correct. >> it's interesting when we went to he had i had seen that there was -- that they had gone out and they were putting up pictures in the white house frequenting so i told ronnie, i said i just want you to know if you guys hold your first press conference on the crowd size, we are going to absolutely destroy

you on monday morning. we're going to kill you for it and everybody else does, too. ? that seen reins to and even i thouft it was interesting that trump was absolutely out of his mind about this, screaming and yelling and telling him to get out there. >> what a great start. >> yeah. >> clis simms, thank you. the book is "we'll get 'em next year. >> fael matthew whitaker was

physical f. everybody looks unfor theable. >> chris wrai, he's got to be guilty of something. >> never looked at him. never looked at him. by the way, chris wrai, what a gu guy. >> okay we're going to talk to senator dick durbin about what democrats can do to make sure the government does not close again. and former new jersey gofr fens us. we'll be right back. liberty mutual customizes your car insurance

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the head of the house intelligence committee said president trump's nonconfirmed pick of the head of the justice department should let special counsel robert mueller do the talking after the acting attorney general matthew whitaker said mueller is nearly done with his investigation when answering a final question during an unrelated news conference. >> reporter: before you came into your current role, you were publicly very critical the special counsel public investigation. now that you've received your briefings, is there anything you've seen or read about special counsel robert mueller or his investigation? >> i've been fulling briefed on his investigation and i look forward to robert mueller delivering the final report. i'm not going to talk about an open and ongoing investigation otherwise. but the statements i made were as a private citizen only with

publicly available information. and i am comfortable that the decisions that were made are going to be reviewed, you know, either through the various means we have but right now the investigation is i think close to being completed and i hope that we can get the report from director mueller as soon as possible. >> wow. >> i'm wondering if that was closer to "broadcast news" where albert brooks is sweating or -- >> no, it's just the first week. i heard about this. >> once you know you're sweating on tv and you tell yourself stop sweating, it's just like one of the showers at kaminski park. >> he's a big man that can sweat if he wants to. i'm not going to tempt fate.

>> let's figure out what's going on here. because, first of all, willie, we have been hearing from one yocal after another and we even heard from ty cobb back i think in 1873 that the mueller investigation was going to be done. and they keep saying it's going to be over. this has all the classic markings of a frant ig -- frantic call from donald trump, an order, a scream. i keep hearing mueller's over in february. they just busted roger stone. you have to have roger stone. i remember right before they get manafort they say it's going to be over in a couple weeks. no, you're see to see what you go from manafort first.

they got roger stone who says "i'm not going to talk" to now, we'll see, spring is in the air. >> so now we're coming up on the year and a half anniversary -- >> maybe he was pressured to say that. >> we heard from may from the vice president that it was time to wrap this up. this is all wishful thinking, projections. the difference is this is the acting attorney general who theoretically would have some knowledge of the schedule here but looked like he was projecting more wishful thinking. >> heidi and gene are with us. look, it happens, but he was extremely nervous. it was very strange to see the acting attorney general sweating bullets talking about the mueller probe being close to done. no need to practice con jackson

t -- conjecture covering a story like this because we just need to cover the facts but you wonder what's going on there. >> i don't know. there was a deer in the headlights quality to that appearance and, frankly, to his performance in this job. so, you know, maybe it was that the president has been yelling at him and get this thing wrapped up, i want it over, i want it done, or maybe it just slipped out. i have no idea. but i think it's probably more wish approximately thinking. -- wishful thinking. >> heidi, after that statement was made, you had democrats on the intel committee saying we'll just wait till mueller talks. big guy, you can conjecture all you want. >> and he said in his statement that while he'd been briefed, he was making that assessment based on publicly available information, and so he was not

sharing with the public initial that was privately discussed or based on his knowledge of the investigation. but i will say to the point of him sweating under the headlights, wait for next week because that is when the judiciary committee and the house is due to bring whitaker in. when i talked to nadler's staff and the lawmakers who are going to be launching a lot of these investigations, they say that the starting point here is bring whitaker in and to ask him specifically what his communications have been with the white house about the mueller investigation. they say that the department of justice has seen really no oversight for the past 15 months. so they want to get under the hood and find out exactly what's been going on at the department of justice and specifically regarding sessions being forced out and what whitaker's communications have been with the white house. >> all right. thank you so much, heidi. >> i got a problem with our next

guest. >> oh! >> nothing new there. >> get in line. >> i love it. >> well, he toll stole my title. >> what? >> "let me finish"? >> yeah. seriously, was that going to be yours? >> i'm always interrupting, she's always saying "let me finish." i read the book three or four times. all marked up, you highlighted and everything here. >> so the question is this -- did you ever get over -- did you get a chance to see springsteen on broadway? >> i did. i saw him the day after i left office. >> on broadway? >> yeah. >> what did you think? >> it was great. it was an amazing thing. it was a much different

experience. i've seen him 138 times. it's a much different experience than seeing him in a regular show. >> we've been busy with our 87 kid and moms and -- >> newlywed stuff. so we never unfortunately got a chance to go over and see him but i saw him on netflix. >> it is remarkable. >> a lot more talking, a lot more story telling. >> it was like the old shows. in the 70s and 80s he used to do a lot of that story telling and stuff. that's why the concerts ran four and four and a quarter hours. he would go on and tell a story about his father and independence day. >> i thought the two most moving moments were -- again, i just watched it on netflix, were

talking about his mom, having dementia, which i can relate to unfortunately all too well, but his mom still knows how to dance. she still hasn't forgotten how to dance. and then that scene where the dad said, i "i wasn't there for you but you've been there for us" and basically said don't do to your kids what i did to you. >> incredible moment. it's part of what makes him an american treasure. he's willing to open himself up in that way and share his emotions and feelings with people. that's something that makes him special. we jersey guys are all like that, joe. >> the level of honesty that he brings to the stage and it's on netflix obviously, is striking. >> and the admission. he basically says i'm a fraud. i'm playing a character. i never worked in a factory. i never got my hands dirty. and he said i've been playing a

character my whole life and my character is my dad. >> one of the funny lines was i've never worked five days a week, until now. he goes, "and i don't like it." >> to show up someplace every day is a pain. >> let me ask you this, a personal question. the last couple of years have been ugly politically. for me i have thrown myself into baseball as far as reading -- mika will tell you in ways that disturbs her absorbing everything i can about past world series. you know, history of baseball. i bet you i watched 90% of the red sox games last year. i never had time to do that but i needed that. to get away from the ugliness of all of this. and it also helps of course that my boys and my girl are also huge red sox fans so i can share

that with them. what you have done since getting out of the office, getting away from the ugliness that is and -- around all of us, whether you're a reporter, a blogger, whether you're on twitter every day. have you done anything to get away? >> yeah. it was my daughter's last year at notre dame. we made a lot of trips to notre dame for events surrounding the commencement and run-up to commencement. it made me appreciate a lot of things i'd been missing while i was doing all this. i was able to relate to my oldest daughter in a way that was different. she was 12 when i decided to run for governor and now she was 21 and graduated from college. and those years were really crowded years as you guys now and you understand that. so that was what i really did was to be able to take time to

do that. >> can i ask you one more question? i want people on tv to hear because i think it's so important that americans understand this. we're friends actually with steve doocy and of course steve's over on "fox and friends." of course we don't agree politically on where donald trump's taking this country, but i asked steve, we were talking this past weekend and i said, hey steve, do you -- i'm curious, do people come up to you in airports and give you hell? do you get attacked? he said you know what, people are so sweet, democrats, liberals. in person they come up, they may disagree with me but, you know, they'll like joke with me. he said maybe one time a year. and that's been our experience, too. >> for the most part. >> maybe one time a year people come um and th-- up and they ha

their opinions but most people have been so sweet. that's what people may not understand in this 24/7 news culture, that americans, you get out there like those texans that went to that funeral yesterday, i'm telling you, i don't give a damn what anybody says, and i'm not being a hokie here, we're n one nation under god, get people away from their twitter streams, get them away from their facebook, we're one nation under god. did you get that experience at notre dame? >> 99% of the people are nice, even if they don't agree with me. they come up and say hello. i think that's what this country has been and continues to be and we have to all strive to make it much better that way. you know me, i was happy to confront when doing the job that

i needed to do. but that doesn't mean that your life has to be a string of nastiness. >> what's your relationship with trump now, especially after this book has come out? >> it's pretty much the same, mika. i think the book is really fair. >> but there are things where you reveal him to be a little less than knowledgeable. >> i tell the truth about a lot of different things. i also think i show him in the book through the conversations we have to be a good father and a caring father about his children. i think there's a lot more nuance to it. i tell the truth about what happened to me during the campaign, what happened to me in the aftermath of the campaign. people need to be responsible for the conduct they engage in and that's it. >> i'm going to ask you about juan of the -- one of the

passages about russia. you say the president said to jared, this russia thing is all over now because i fired flynn. he said you start laughing and you say, sir, this russia thing is far from over. what did you have take that to mean -- were you heard the president say that, were you floored by that? >> i was flord by the comment by both of them. i said this is far from over, i hate to tell you this, but we're going to becying here on valentine's day of 2018 still talking about russia and jared said to me you're crazy. i said, no, i'm not crazy. i've run these investigations before and i'm telling you that i know bob mueller and i know this justice department and i'm just telling you that it's going to take a long time. and now we're getting up to valentine's day 2019 and we're still talking about it. so what i was trying to say to the president that day was doesn't be fooled by what these

lawyers are telling you. when you hire a c-level legal team, which is what he did, that gives you c-level legal advice, and i told him that day also, i don't remember if i put this in the book or not. i said listen, there's no ways you can make the investigation shorter, but there's a long t-- lot of ways you can make it longer. >> obviously i was a low-level civil lawyer, but if one of my clients in a small case, in a small insurance defense case had done something publicly, i would have picked up the phone and said, hey, if you want me to continue representing you, you're going to shut your mouth and keep quiet because you're just helping the other side. why wasn't there any -- why won't -- donald trump has to

know that he has done nothing but help robert mueller and help those who want harm to come of his presidency. >> joe, i could tell you that i must have said this to him two dozen times over the last two years, you need to stop. you're making this worse. and i say to him, listen, i'm talking about this to you from the perspective of somebody who has one run these investigations and somebody who's been investigating. i didn't do anything wrong, i got investigated. i know how frustrated that is. do you think i wanted to keep my mouth shut during bridgegate? you know who my lawyer was? chris wray. he said to me, "you talk, i

quit." i don't think he he has the capacity on this score to listen to good advice because he knows i'm giving him good advice, he knows i know what i'm talking about. >> let me ask you a second question. >> that's so frustrating. >> it is. >> we've said it of day, we don't think the guy's up to the job to being president of the united states. he's ignorant when it comes to politics, ignorant -- >> hadn't heard that was your opinion. >> the revelation. but you would at least think a guy that has been through as much as he's been through over 40 years of his lifetime would know if you're in trouble you get the best legal team around you. i mean, that's -- to me that's the biggest shock. >> but because i'm following up on what up said before. he's had one of the worst legal teams around him. impossible. >> a c-level legal team. >> and rudy!

we all loved rudy as america's mayor but rudy's lost about 12 steps. >> go back to the beginning and then i'll get to rudy. first, i think because the president has shown himself to be less than a compliant client, that a lot of the really great lawyers in america don't want to represent him. >> like chris wray said to you, you talk, i quit. >> that's right. so i think a lot of them anticipated that was not going to be complied with and just said thanks but no thanks. and as far as rudy goes, listen, i think that rudy's role has been not to be a lawyer but to be a spokesperson, to be out there and be a fighter for the president. and you can argue whether he's been effective or ineffective, but i don't think what he's been sent to do is to be a lawyer. >> you saw rudy after 9/11. how sad is it seeing rudy giuliani tarnish his reputation

this way? >> what it is to me is that everybody should play the roles that they're best at playing, and when you put somebody -- joe, it's like if they put big papi at shortstop. he didn't belong at shortstop. i think everybody's got to learn the role they're supposed to play and play to their strengths, and i don't think the way this whole legal team has been run, and i say this in the book, has played to people's strength and has been to the president's benefit. it's in fact been to his detriment. >> you've said at times you're not helping yourself, you need to stop and he hasn't listened. >> that's correct. >> is he like that with he is and there are times he has not listened to me, don't tweet, don't do witch hunt, it not helpful. there are others times that he

has listened to me. i think chris wray hats been s of the best choices he has made. he's trying to rebuild the fbi -- >> and he stands up to him. >> and he stands up. chris is a standup guy. you need more people like that in government everywhere. chris wray is one of the examples i can give you of when he's listened to me. >> we have a lot more with governor chris christie. weep are going to actually bring out a guitar. >> you're going to play, right? can i sing? >> no, chris is going to play "rosalita." >> we'll be right back with more with chris christie and "let me finish." your typical bank. capital one is anything but typical.

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we're back with former new jersey government, forrer presidential candidate and he's out with his new memoir "let me finish," the power of in your face politics. i want to hear about the bad blood in the white house. mike, you go first. >> well, willie's the bad blood guy. in the book you write about donald trump, "he has a key understanding of what regular people are feeling." are you kidding? do you really mean that? >> no, listen, i absolutely believe that he does from watching him interact with people when we were campaigning together. i never campaigned with him before. after i endorsed him, this is the primary in '16, we would work rope lines together and the way he interacted with people and the way they interacted with him was a surprise to me.

>> we saw that, too, but he's governing like a plutocrat. >> as a political candidate, he understood how to relate to people. that's the context. >> that was then. this is now, okay? >> he clearly didn't understand it in the 35 days of the shut down. >> earlier we were talking about this great gift we've all been given, it's call america. yet nearly every day in his presidency that i can recall, he does something to provoke or divide specific peoples from other peoples in this country. so let me ask you this, you've spent a lot time doing this book, thinking about him, the campaign, the administration. is there anything -- i asked cliff sims this earlier -- is there anything about his presidency that scares you? >> oh, well listen, i think i put this in the brook in great length, the people he has

selected in large part to be around him as really disturbed me and i named names. michael flynn. i think it's one of the biggest reasons i got fired. >> what about stephen miller, the guy who says he doesn't want another refugee to touch u.s. soil. >> on a personal level i always got along with stephen. but i would say guys like bannon in the white house. >> what about whitaker? >> matt and i served as u.s. everyone tos togeth attorneyi attorneys to the agether and he allowed himself to be put in an untenable situation. this goes back to jeff sessions and the way jeff sessions ran the justice department. i've never seen the justice department more demoralized -- you certainly agree this jeff sessions needed to recuse

himself, right? >> you would have made the same decision. >> i would not have made that decision. >> if you had lied about meetings with the russians and then you had to decide whether to recuse yourself -- >> first of all, i would never lie. that's not why he said he recused. he said he recused because he was involved in the campaign. he knew that in november. he didn't just remember in march, oh, heck, i was involved in the campaign. if he had been honest and said i testified incorrectly, untruthfully before congress, that would have been one thing. that's how the president got shafted. if he thought it was a conflict, he should have told donald trump and from that moment he was messing up the justice department and -- >> he didn't know how things were going to unfold in november

and december and january. >> he knew he was involved in the campaign. >> he didn't know that the investigation was going to take off the way it did. >> but the investigation already existed. and the investigation into russian collusion and russian interference with the campaign -- >> it had not taken off. >> but it had already begun. he knew that and we all knew that publicly. i don't want to get side tracked on this. what i want to say to you is i agree with you that the real reason he recused, not the reason he stated, but the real reason he recused was because he got caught giving untrue testimony to congress and when the heat got turned on, he ran. and he left rod rosenstein, who i know well and have great respect for and we served as u.s. attorneys together in the bush administration, he left rod holding the bag. he left rod holding the bag. that's not leadership. if you were going to recuse on that basis and you didn't tell

congress the truth, you should have resigned, not recused. different "r" word. >> he recused on the 2nd and congress revealed the investigation the 20th, a couple of weeks later. let's put the question to you this way then. what worries you the most about donald trump being president oaf t -- over the next two years? is it russia and this bizarre relationship he has with putin? is it that he has chased off a pretty extraordinary secretary of defense? is it that he ceded the iranians to the russians? >> what scares me is nobody will get anything done in any of those areas or the domestic

areas that we need to get done because we so divided governmentally. >> you dealt with democrats in jersey. >> i did, i did. >> why didn't the donald trump we all know, who contributed money to nancy pelosi and chuck schumer and rahm emanuel and spent his life as a democrat, why can't this guy sit down with democrats and say, okay, listen, my people are going to stay with me no matter what i do, let's figure out an immigration fix, a transportation fix, let's figure out how to get some points up on the board? why can't he do that? >> he's going to have to decide if he wants to run for reelection and win, that's what he's going to have to do. he's going to have big decisions to make about that and if he doesn't make the right decisions, he's going to have much more difficulty. the transition plan that we laid out that i talk about in the book would have taken him in a

much different direction than the first six months did. >> but jared stabbed you in the back there, jared stabbed you in the back for a.g., as far as being vice president. why are you still hanging out with these people? >> well, wait a second. >> mitch mcconnell says you don't get much of a lesson from the second kick of the mule? the mule's kicked you three times now, chris. maybe it's time to take up something else. >> here's the point. the point is i love this country enough that i'm not willing to give in and not have influence when you can make sure that somebody like chris wray becomes director of the fbi. is our country and the justice department in a better place because chris wray is in the fbi? you better believe it. you can stab me, kick me, punch me, i get up. i get up. >> this is a very interesting

debate. there are a lot of people that will be pissed off by what chris just said. mika and i heard time and again from people we respected most in government, whether it was robert gates, one of the greats i think or general hayden, so many people said we only have one president and got to do everything we can do to try to help that president. so that goes along with chris's argument. >> i guess, but we're in a different time. i don't. i think at some point you got to take a stand. take a side. >> at some point -- >> that's what elections are about, too, right? >> that's true. >> that's the argument we heard from general kelly and others why they hung in there. the kushner name is in the front of the book right here. jared kushner, in that exchange we talked about about russia, said the firing of mike flynn, that ends the russia thing. fast forward to the shutdown. he was giving advice to the

president, dig in, hang in, we're going to win this fight. they didn't win the fight. they got sagging poll numbers. why does president trump continue to listen to jared kushner as his de facto chief of staff when the advice time and again has frankly been terrible? >> i don't know. makes no sense to me. listen, i just say this to you. this is part of the issue of having family work for you. right? i mean, i've always said i never wanted any members of my family working for me because if i had to fire them, i'd have to also sit with them at thanksgiving and that's a really uncomfortable thing. i told the president this, i said put aside whatever talents you believe and can be objectively proven that any one of the members of your family have, it is an untenable situation to be trying to manage -- so, for instance, i sat with him five or six weeks

ago and talked with him about the chief of staff job. one of the things i said was anybody who takes this job should not have jared or ivanka report to them because it's folly to think that they would. they report to you. they're your responsibility. and if a chief of staff wants to be successful in this job, then that's the way that reporting has to be. i think we need to be realistic about this and so i can't answer that question, willie, because i don't know. >> so jared gives the worst advice, the president takes it. these are two spots, jared and ivanka that could be filled with competent people who could stand up to him and give him good advice. >> or not filled at all. i mean, but listen -- >> it's destructive. >> at the end of it what this creates, though, is a difficult situation, which is what i try to describe in the book. i had 140 people working for me at the transition. they worked six months to put together an extraordinary transition plan and, in fact,

when both plans were looked at right before the election, you had objective people saying our plan was even ahead of where hillary and her plan and her team was. we put together this extraordinary thing. because a couple of people decide they want to be in charge, jared, steve bannon and rick dearborn, they throw all that work out. and what i say in the book is the country's still paying the price for that because you cannot put this thing together in 71 days, especially when you've never been in government before. right? so all those decisions come back to the detriment of the president and more importantly to the detriment of the country. we still have desks empty in places and things that should be being done are not being done. >> you could have the best staff in the country and we hear it repeatedly and you hear it repeatedly, elected officials, republicans and democrats, who go to the oval office to talk to

the president about specific things, they come back and they say he had no idea what i was talking about. he had not read what was prepared for him. he had no really solid, smart questions to ask. what do we do about that? >> well, the best way to deal with anybody's shortcomings is to put better choices in front of them to make. >> how about just reading something? >> the thing that a good staff does, mike, and you know, the thing that a good staff does is put good choices in front of a decision-maker so any one of the choices will wind up being okay. what happened in this instance was -- let's use one example of one cabinet position. our top recommendation for hhs was alex azhar. we wound up with tom price, which was an unmitigated disaster. if he had met azhar, i believe he would have picked azhar in november/december of 2016. when he finally did meet azhar

afterwards, he did pick him. so part of what you need to do, especially with somebody who hasn't been involved in government before is to put good choices in front of them so whatever choices they do make, they're going to wind up being in a range of talent -- >> there's so many in every department, d.h.s., the way they handled it. the head of d.h.s. doesn't seem qualified at all. >> how about e.p.a. >> i talk about that in the book. d.h.s. deserves some of the blame but you know who instituted the separation plan. it was jeff sessions. it was jeff sessions who spoke up at a cabinet meeting and said i can fix this for you, mr. president. if we tell them they've got to be separated from their children when they come in, they won't come. >> so why is that a moral policy still not unwound? >> and we find out it's worse

and worse and there are more children -- >> you said how is that a moral policy? >> it's not -- >> i'm asking how is that immoral policy still hounding us? why haven't we sent government officials down there to take care of those kids? >> you know what happens in those situations then. once the bureaucracy gets wound into doing one thing, it takes a long time to unwind. to turn that back around without having the resources, either with the right number of judges and lawyers to represent people and give them due process, that's why it was a disastrous recommendation. >> it just wrong, joe. >> executed and pushed by the preds and front president and fronted by the head of the d.h.s. >> if you're donald trump and

you're not a lawyer and your attorney says to you, we can do this, do it the right way and no one will be harmed. he then says, okay, go ahead and do it -- >> but there were people testifying from d.h.s. saying it will hurt the children. >> if you were president of the united states, you would say get out. >> my level of sophistication on that issue is greater than his. no doubt about it. that's one of the problems with him not being a lawyer and not understanding that kind of process, he got talked into it by the attorney general of the united states, who pursued his own personal agenda on immigration rather than what was supposed to be the right policy for the country and those people. >> i don't know how much legal sophistication you need to know separating kids from their parents are wrong. this book is also about your political career. i want to ask you a quick one before we go. eight years ago at this time running up to the 2012 presidential campaign, there were few hotter politicians in america than governor chris christie of new jersey.

>> i remember. >> do you still have the "time" magazine cover? >> that was aefter '12. >> do you regret not running now? >> no. you have to be ready for president. joe knows, i had those conversations with him at that time. i felt i had no business running for president of the united states after being governor for new jersey after 15 months. i was not ready. i had a pretty good chance to certainly win the nomination, and who knows what would have happened against barack obama. i made the decision that in my heart to believe that i was ready, mature enough, prepared enough to take on the most important job in the world. i have no regrets. >> so in this new context -- >> after we have eight years of

a president whose main accomplishment politically was to be a state senator, and i dealt a with a lot of state senators, none of the ones that i met should be president of the united states and now a president who had no political experience of any kind at all, that's why i say my decision looks antiquated. but it doesn't change who i am, willie. i would not have done it, i still would not go back and change it. i think what happened to me in 2016 and the run-up to that, i write this in the book and we spent a couple of chapters on it, was i had three low-level aides who decided to do something extraordinarily stupid, without my knowledge, without my permission, without my consent and it turned the entire thing on its head and i think it encouraged people like jeb bush and donald trump to get into a race that they might otherwise not have gotten into given my standing at the end of 2013 and into '14, having gotten

51% of the hispanic vote. >> donald trump always said, by the way, that you were guilty. >> he said it publicly, when you get to the highlighted part of that, i deconstruct his speech he made in december accusing me of knowing something about bridgegate, line by line we deconstruct it and tell the story that when i after him that night after he went after me in the afternoon, we got a call from corey lewandowski saying we want a truce. i said if he wants a truce, he can call me himself. and he did, he called me and said i was wrong, i shouldn't said it and i'll never say it again. when he said all those untrue things about me, no matter the fact that i'd known him for 14

years, i took him right on. >> that's a great message to democrats as they move toward 2020, if you're going to beat donald trump, you're going to beat donald trump by taking him on head on like that. >> i think it just like that. if you want to win, go out and play to win. i say that to anybody who runs for president at any time. i have no second thoughts about how we ran 2016, i'm proud of how i conducted myself, my only regret is i didn't win. that was a phenomenon on the republican side of things that none of us were going to be able to contend with. there are a hundred different things if we sit down over eight drinks one night -- >> it was like barack obama. we would see the democratic debates and everybody would talk about barack obama and hillary clinton and who won when we were all sitting around the table going, wait a second, chris dodd and joe biden were easily the

best debaters on the stage that night, but nobody was paying attention to them because the big story was hillary versus barack obama and history being made. >> the night in new hampshire when i had my debate back and forth with marco rubio, in every one of the debate i was in, i was rated at one of the top two debaters. mary pat went door to door in new hampshire a lot and she learned a lot. this is when i knew we were in big trouble. she said we went to the door one day, i'm mary pat christie, i'm married to -- and this woman says, we love your husband, but we're voting for trump but we love your husband. she said so why are you voting for trump? because your husband is a politician and we don't want a

politician, we want a businessman. i think people now would look back at it and think differently. >> we could use a brain surgeon. >> mika, let me finish. >> no, let me finish. former governor chris christie, always good to see you. the book is "let my finish." it's out today. it's good to see you. >> thanks, governor. good to be here. >> i don't know how you do it. >> the government shutdown cost the economy $11 billion but the white house is pushing back on that price tag. and the state of the union is back on. president trump will give the address next week even as another partial government shutdown looms. we'll have much more "morning joe" ahead. we're back in three minutes. ♪ ♪

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i got some news in here. five police officers were

injured after a shooting at a houston residence last night. according to police there, the officers were met with gunfire after serving a search warrant for narcotics in the southeast part of the city. unclear, though, how many suspects fired at the officers. according to officials, four of the officers were struck by gunfire. another suffered a knee injury. two officers in critical but stable condition. two others in good condition. one officers with a shoulder wound released last night. texas governor greg abbott in a statement called for prayers for the injured officers and said the state will provide any resources needed by police as they continue their investigation. >> we hope they recover. this is the story we mentioned earlier this hour, a big crowd attending the funeral of u.s. air force veteran joseph walker yesterday in colleen, texas. the people who attend. did not know the vietnam veteran but assured that the 72-year-old who died last november was not buried alone.

last week funeral plans were announced but expected no one to attend after no family or loved ones came forward after his death. he was classified an unaccompanied veteran. that changed after a facebook post from the cemetery asking people to attend. hundreds of people turned out. walker joined the air force when he turned 18 and served from 1964 to 1968 during the vietnam war. he received an honorable discharge at an unknown rank. mike, the photographs that started to come out yesterday. i heard about this and a couple of days spreading. they were trying to get people come up. photographs came out of miles long. >> gave me goose bumps. god bless those people. god bless them. nobody deserves to be buried alone and certainly someone who served the country the way this man did. and he received a fine funeral

but god bless the people who showed up. >> absolutely. apple is reeling from another breach of privacy issue. iphone and mac computer users discovered the application allows you to hear through someone else's iphone even if that person didn't answer your call. after adding your number -- as a third user on a face time call the glitch allows you to hear audio coming from the other person's phone regardless if the person you're calling has picked up. that's not good. to make matters worse reports state that if the person being called presses the power button from the locked screen in an attempt to end the call their video is also sent to the caller unbeknownst to them. last night apple said it has disabled group face time and that's the feature that was causing the glitch. the company says the issue will be addressed in a software update later this week. we're more than a week past

the nfl's conference championship games but the fallout over that no call in the rams-saints nfc championship game continues. a federal judge in new orleans yesterday heard from lawyers involved in a lawsuit filed by two saints ticket holders who were left angry over the failed penalty call that cost the saints a chance at the super bowl. the lawsuit says nfl commissioner roger goodell should implement a league rule that could reverse the game' results. the lawyer said the league gets it but the rule in question of not meant for that situation. the nfl says replaying even a few minute of the game would require a super bowl delay and more than $100 million in costs. that was truly a horrific call. a shame they can't do anything about it. what your going to do? pick up the game from before? >> what about roger goodell saying something about it, standing up in public and talking about it. he did not do that. the arrogance is incredible.

still ahead former starbucks ceo howard schultz isn't backing down from a potential 2020 run. he has a message for his critics. what about a message for potential voters. senator dick durbin will be our guest. you're watching "morning joe". we'll be right back. from the very beginning ... it was always our singular focus,

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you'd laugh. oh, ow. [ chuckles ] you'd cry. look, look, look, look, look, look, look,. maybe even laugh while crying. what the fertilizer? sounds pretty great, right? riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight! just say, "add epix" and it can all be yours. it's easy to upgrade. and you don't want to miss out on everything epix. to storm my house with greater force than was used to take down bin laden, or el chapo, or pablo escobar, to terrorize my wife and dogs, it's unconscionable. >> you'll remember, actually, that is a good point, mika, because one of the things that made willie and me upset even during the height of the war on

terror, willy the way they treated bin laden's poodle. like don't terrorize bin laden's poodle. and they put, tom nichols pointed out, how long did they keep bin laden in an ankle bracelet for how long? >> just to keep track of him. floating around pakistan. >> wait a second, they blew his brains out. >> okay. so they didn't treat him quite as badly. >> they did not knock on bin laden's front door. there was not a knock saying, bin laden, fbi, come on out. they didn't do that. >> roger stone, trump's long time adviser equated the use of force to what was used in the bin laden raid. i do think bin laden might disagree. listen. >> i didn't understand the christmas special with kanye and

bing crosby but still. >> you were adorable doing that. stone's complaint that his crossing the were terrorized is a tiny bit ironic because his seven count indictment includes the allegation that stone tried to intimidate someone by threatening their therapy dog. don't do that. welcome to "morning joe". it's tuesday, january 29th, 2019. we have mike barnicle. heidi przybyla. and eugene robinson. former vice president joe biden -- >> wait. wee going to talk about 2020 now? >> you can, if you like. >> rough for howard schultz. >> did you see what happened last night? >> yelling at him. >> of that you, willie? >> no. it is immediate and round and

universal from progressives about how they feel about howard shuttle's candidacy. he'll be here this week. we'll ask him tomorrow. >> he'll be here tomorrow. you know what that means, right? that everybody in the political world, everybody is saying that if he runs he will elect trump. >> right. >> and he'll destroy -- you know what that means. that like everybody is wrong. like everybody said donald trump -- you never know. my point is, willie, you never know and these people, you know, that are predicting in what year are we in? 2019. >> yes. >> that what's going to happen 19 months from now? they have no idea. >> we had mike bloomberg come on yesterday. >> i'm a fan. >> bloomberg should. >> he's been at the front of the line for an independent run. >> let's go into howard schultz and then joe biden. despite growing criticism from democrats former starbucks ceo

howard schultz is not backing down from a potential 2020 independent run. schultz announced on sun he'll be making a formal decision about a presidential bid in the next three months. numerous democrats have since warned that an independent bid for the white house by schultz would re-elect president trump. here's how schultz responded to his critics. >> if i run for president i will run as an american, under one banner the american flag. the question i think we all should be asking ourselves at a time in america when there's so much evidence that our political system is broken, that both parties at the extreme are not representing the silent majority of the american people. isn't there a better way? a better choice? if there's a choice between president trump and a progressive, liberal-minded person on the democratic side, it would kill me to see

president trump be re-elected. and i believe that's what would take place. >> former new york city mayor michael bloomberg who has toyed with an independent bid in the past and is now considering a democratic run released a statement yesterday. warning of the consequences an independent might have in 2020. he writes there's a quote, great likelihood is that an independent would just split the anti-trump vote and end up re-electing the president. that's a risk i refuse to run in 2016 and we can't afford to run it now. here that moment from the new york book event that willie mentioned. take a look. >> i wanted to clarify the word independent which i view merely as a designation on the ballot. >> don't help the left elect trump you egotistical billionaire. >> why would his publisher do that. he has this top notch pr team.

you go there to do a book event you'll get yelled at. i hope he was told that because that's pretty basic. >> we've done four or five fence at union square and it's my favorite place to go. >> because they yell at you. >> my favorite place to go. there's always one in the crowd. but they are like really impassioned. you'll have people shouting from the crowd which is cool if you're us. and there aren't cameras on you and nobody is going to write about it the next day. that ain't where you want to launch your presidential -- >> it's not the first time howard schultz has heard that either. that's just out in the water there and he should be prepared for that. >> that's the grassroots speaking. >> here's the irony and i one everybody objections in the democratic party. everybody talks about how the two party system is broken, there's got to be a better way. his answer is okay i'll try this way. then immediately shouted down by

every progressive. i understand the stakes are too high. they won even listen to the guy. even before he announced his candidacy that he's being vaporized by progressives. >> gene robinson i agree if you just look at the numbers right now it makes no sense, and howard schultz risks the re-election of donald trump becoming president again with 44%, 45% of the vote. that completely makes sense. we're 18 months out. shouldn't we give the guy -- listen, your piece on this in the "post." >> yes. you know, it does worry me a little bit i'm with the revengeal wisdom on this, strongly with the conventional wisdom that he risks re-electing trump and the conventional which come to has been always wrong recently. however, i'm sticking with this. there's only one way i can kind of see this and i don't think --

he doesn't have the kind of message either that i think has any danger of catching fire in this country. >> that's the problem. get into that if you will because that's a problem. you know, i would love no labels and love all of these things, let's come together and hug each other groups i have. >> exactly. >> but never had -- it's always been let's meet somewhere in the mushy middle. you're okay and i'm okay. there's a why itchy and scratchy never got along in the simpson. the kids stopped watching and went outside to play. why can someone run as an independent that has a strong powerful message that will literally scare the hell out of vested interests in washington and wall street. >> exactly. an independent with a strong fiery populace message.

you know, the independent candidate who has done best in our lifetime probably ross perot. he had and i die message. howard schultz says i'll take a little bit from here, a little bit from over there. this is not a hug me moment in american politics. and everybody says yeah the two party system is broken. but the two party system right now is the vessel for polarization, for very strongly held views on both sides, and for groups of people who are not at all interested in meeting in the middle because their sense is you meet in the middle you don't get anywhere. so there's a question about what direction the question goes in but it wants to go in a direction. i want doesn't want -- i don't think it wants howard schultz.

>> here's howard schultz's problem. he is a political animal and that's a very wealthy democratic ceo. i've heard howard schultz's complaint about the left wing of the democratic party now for about four or five, six years. moving too far left. they are going to chase off -- you know people that are scared of elizabeth warren, people that are scared of -- you know the bob rubin wing of the democratic party. so when howard schultz runs that way, he'll peel off some democrats and some conservative democrats but that's what bloomberg is talking about. he's not going to light the prairies on fire with this message. and pull from both sides. >> that's the point. is it not? if we replayed the schultz announcement that we just showed

here, what's in it? nothing is in it. it's mush. it's basically, you know, nothing is working, i'm going to run, i'm going to make it work. he's a nice guy. he's a rich guy. i'm sure he has considerable thoughts that's relevant to what's going on today. with that message it's not going to happen to him. he won't affect the presidential election because he won't be there in the end. >> president trump is excited that howard schultz is getting in. the "new york times" reported a fundraiser at the trump hotel last night he told the audience there how excited he was that howard schultz might get in explicitly because it would help him get re-elected. he shared his thoughts about schultz's potential candidacy saying schultz doesn't have the guts and not the smart evident person. america already has that. the public disagrees. the nbc/wall street journal poll only 32% rate trump as being

experienced and knowledgeable enough to handle the presidency. >> to the question who the hell are those 32%? >> same 32% who rode with him the whole time. >> who are those 32%. >> one of the interesting things going on, joe, i would submit is that, first of all, i don't know 80%, 90% of the country are not on twitter. they are not looking at twitter each and every day. what they are aware of especially given the fends of the last two weeks is that the president of the last two weeks is pure and simple income period ten. he can't do the job. >> even his supporters and you're starting to see some people on twitter saying listen just because people say they are supporting donald trump done mean they aren't whispering to me as a conservative trump is talking, that they understand he's not up for the job.

i think we're going to start seeing some really serious republican challenges here. >> so we heard mike barnicle saying that howard schultz doesn't have a message. which democratic candidate clearly does? but first here's bill karins on a check on the dangerously cold temperatures. >> we're going back 20, 25 years since we were this cold in the midwest. it has begun. for the next 48 hours is the peak of this outbreak. look at international falls, negative 47 right now. fargo is at negative 45. so this little piece right here that's the beginning of the really historical cold. it's still plenty cold already in chicago at negative 19. going to get much worse. 45 million plus are under wind chill warning from western pennsylvania through the dakotas. peak of it is tomorrow morning at this time. this is why they are cancelling schools throughout the region. a lot of them today. chicago negative 51.

at that temperature any exposed skin, five minutes for frostbite to kick in. same goes for minnesota, iowa, much of wisconsin, northern half of illinois. thursday, it gets a little bit better, minneapolis and chicago. but not much. thursday still a brutal day. you're talking today, three days in a row. you have to spend time indoors. very cold in areas of central new england and i-95 down to d.c. and through the ohio valley but not the really, really dangerous stuff like we had today in the midwest. winter alerts kind of underachieving snow event. winter storm warnings out. we saw snow in mississippi and alabama but hasn't produced much. later today we'll get that snow to the north. here's a look at the radar. a little bit to the north. mostly rain. atlanta no problems. just too warm for snow for you. a lot of people aren't complaining about that. a lot of kids down there would like to see a couple of snowflakes. new york city is one of those spots that will get cold. wind chills minus 15. chicago minus 50.

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it's easy to upgrade. and you don't want to miss out on everything epix. welcome back to "morning joe". let's read from joe's new "washington post" op-ed on how senator kamala harris has so far set herself apart from the pack. in his piece entitled kamala harris has what it takes, joe writes in part this: it's one thing to propel a presidential campaign off the launch pad and another thing to send knit to safe political orbit. few days no her campaign even harris' critic should take note that the junior senator managed something in her first campaign speech that the last democratic nominee failed to do throughout the whole 2016 campaign. she gave americans a compelling explanation as to why she wanted to be president.

her message, we are better than this was delivered with a fierce urgency of now in that it was much like the earlier campaign launch by senator elizabeth warren who framed her own white house bid as the continuation of her quest to protect consumers, to hold corporate leaders accountable and to promote a fiery brand of progressivism shaped by the prairie populism of oklahoma and the liberal each thos of harvard julyism. harris will be underestimated by team trump as its own peril. we are, of course, in the opening steps of a grueling, nonstop, two-year battle. perhaps harris will prove far more adept a beginning a presidential campaign than actually running one.

i doubt it. >> kamala harris, she looked like she had been there before on sunday. it was quite a performance. >> we got our first taste of that. she did fill the stage. as you point out in your piece it's not just how she performed in that moment, it is that she's coming in to this with something that privately, even a lot of democrats will say was lacking in the hillary clinton campaign. i talked to people who were her friend, who of hillary's losest friend and yet they felt like she didn't have that really compelling message that spoke to the country for the people. it's a logan, but you know hat? i also covered the bush campaign. here's what i can tell you. when you have really easy messages that can be boiled down to sound bites and you repeat them over and over that actually works. she's running on a progressive platform as well. medicare for all. universal pre-k.

that's going to speak to the growing progress jennifer wing of the party. but as david axelrod point out in a piece yesterday the big unknown for her is her coastal status and how that will play in some of those industrial midwest states. that is the key to any election. trump lost in those states by such a hair, or won by such a handful of votes that, you know, somebody has to come in to this, whoever the nominee is, has to come in to this really strong in the midwest as well and u just unclear how she will play in those midwestern states. maybe she's shaking up and going with a different model to rev up the base. you saw that in some other ways as well. stacy abrams in georgia came really close, a lot closer than people thought by really working on revving up the base. >> you know, gene, this complaint from some that a

democratic candidate may be too progressive, it's really -- i'm sorry, it's not about being too progressive or being too conservative, it's about having a message. mika brzezinski-scarborough complained for how long -- did that make you nervous >> keep going. >> complained for two years that hillary "rodham" clinton didn't have a message. for two years. from day one until the day of the election. she would say i'm with her? what was the other one? >> no every time i asked people what the message was, it was a diatribe of nothing. >> people would say go to her website. think of what we have with kamala harris. first of all, she has her own message. what i heard is we are better than this. that can give anybody chills, right? and elizabeth warren, does

anybody have to guess what elizabeth warren stands for? do you need to go look at five paragraph position paper in >> if you look at her life she's lived the message, like it or not. >> democrats already have two candidates with fierce urgent messages that can slap on a bumper sticker and run the government with right now. >> i will also say -- >> you got to be somebody. you got to stan for something i think in this cycle. and you're right. demonstrate already have two candidates who have that quality. the thing that we didn't know or that i didn't know, couldn't be sure of about kamala harris because you don't know if any cane can she congressman that stage. does she have that x factor that you need to really be successful in a national campaign?

and i think she showed us this weekend that, yes, she's got -- she's got that "it." so there's lots of other questions still unanswered. what happens when you get knocked down, because you will get knocked down in a two year grueling presidential campaign. you will take some blows. so we'll see if she can take those punches and get off the canvas and come back. . but right now i would say it was a really pretty sparkling debut. >> coming up the government may be re-opened but the shutdown is still having a big impact on many americans. we'll hear from some business owners in michigan mcconnell's home state. but senator dick durbin is standing by. he joins the conversation ahead on "morning joe".

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. a new report is shedding light on the economic toll the government shutdown took on this country over 35 days. according to the nonpartisan congressional budget office the u.s. economy took an $11 billion hit in those 35 days. parts of the federal government went unfunded.

including $3 billion that will never be recovered. the cbo say those losses may just be the beginning. the report says underlying those effects on the overall economy are much more significant effects on individual businesses and workers. among those who experienced the largest and most direct negative effects are federal workers who faced delayed compensation and private-sector entities that lost business. in the wake of the report house speaker nancy pelosi released a statement that reads, when the congress completes its bipartisan, bi cameral work to fund the government the president should swiftly sign the legislation to avert another shutdown and restore the certainty to our economy and the lives of the american people. >> we disagree with cbo. they are doing the best job they can. i get that. i won't knowledge any of that right now. as i said many times, you have

just a whole bunch of very temporary factors and now that the government is re-opened the switch goes right back on. certainly no permanent damage to the economy. >> joining us now, washington bureau chief for "usa today" susan page and image lexington kentucky, hans nichols. is that about yothe kentucky brr i see behind you? >> you can smell it. on the shutdown, the impacts here are lingering and lasting. the key line from that report is that it's just at the beginning of this. we've been talking to distillers here. we're here at the barrel house distilling company. they can't get a new label out -- >> sure you have been talking to distillers. >> real reporting. shoe leather reporting. guys, it does have a lasting exact when you look at how

things can slow things down. i'll try not to stumble through this and not slur my words. you guys aren't making it any easier by interrupting me. just across the street there's a cider house and there they don't even know how much it will cost them. there they say it's too early to tell but it will have an impact. have a listen. your point of contacts, you have no way to figure out when you can open up business? >> that's right. >> what does it feel like >> pretty horrible. we put all of our savings, everything on the line for this business. it seems like it's kind of silly to argue for so long. >> you know, that's really the silliness aspect of all this. we're here in michigan mcconnell's home state. they senators haven't had an opportunity to get back to their home states to hear about it. they may after this three week period is over. alabama, richard shelby is on that committee.

here in kentucky it's widely felt we caught up with coach cal perry and he said it's obvious that kentucky tant tolerate another shutdown. >> i think the president knows it, the congress knows it, the senate knows it that these people don't deserve to be the middle of this. they are. you know, some of them have children with special needs. we had a woman who had cancer. we had a woman who was being thrown out of her apartment. >> what's your message to say mitch mcconnell, your home state senator, what do you tell people not to have this happen again? >> well, what i hope is they all come together and under we just got to make something work and everybody compromise. >> so, guys, coach cal he and his wife through their foundation gave out $200,000 to locals. gave out a bunch of grocery cards. it's an indication how through this entire shutdown communities

have come together but it's the question of the breaking point how much longer can people last if, indeed, we have another shutdown after this three week period. now you guys can come at we with your bourbon jokes. so we'll call this the "morning joe" share. we're dealing it. >> i got to say, man, i think i under estimated you. you're the real deal. you got the kentucky brown water behind you and then you get coach cal, all to explain a government shutdown and the costs on a state. i mean, journalism professors, seriously, okay, get your beta max out. record this segment approximately willie looks how he takes us step by step. this is as good as afternoon -- like what is that, abc afternoon rock.

>> "school house rock." >> that's what hans is doing for us. he's educating us. it's fun. if we're not careful we might learn something. >> that's the most kentucky report ever. >> i'm sorry, was joe making fun of me? >> no. >> was joe talking. okay, good. >> no. i'm not making fun. >> kentucky has vandy. i watch practice. >> so, you know, he was drunk -- >> thank you so much, hans. seriously that was an awesome package. i hope i'm not revealing anything but i made, if so i apologize to my oldest son in

advance. but my oldest son is moving to nashville, tennessee. right? and one of the things he's most excited about is vandy basketball. like, i mean -- don't you guys have -- the court is like -- it's like a stage. >> memorial gym. >> he's excited about that. >> vandy baseball, very, very good. >> vanny baseball is great. >> vandy hoops almost beat number one tennessee last week. just as bad as that saints call they should have won. a tough game. >> we never called about that saint call, did we? >> truly awful. i'm not a blame the refs guy. but that decided the game. >> do we get to a point where you can review next year, where you can review pass interference calls? you can't go through an entire

season -- >> think about what that looks like. they are going challenge every pass interfere rern call. they will stop for three minute. did he touch his hand. you can do that on every penalty. >> watch the pass interference calls on that particular defensive halfback for the rams this sunday in the super bowl. >> the thing is, though, is if it gets in the way of the game -- listen, not to go back to baseball. if you're a baseball fan you still remember the missed call at fast break in the '85 world series. i mean the royals were playing i think the cardinals. yeah. if they could just -- what's so maddening, the national championship game, the alabama-clemson game other than the fact we got our teeth kicked in by clemson. these refs it would take them a minute-and-a-half to review something that you could tell in

fire second was or of not a catch. they need to figure out a way to do it more quickly. you got 30 second. was it pass interference or not. go. >> let's bring in one of the members of the congressional conference committee charged with coming up with a compromise solution to fund the department of homeland security, democratic senator dick durbin of illinois. he's also a member of appropriations and judiciary committee. senator, good morning. good to see you. we won ask you about replay unless you want to get to that. >> subject to instant replay you'll never reach an agreement. >> there you go. >> senator, let me ask you. we just went through a 35 day government shutdown. we detailed in kentucky and. state of illinois the pain it caused people, money that they will never recover. pay they will get. what hope and what assurances can you give the american people we won be right back here in a couple of weeks? >> i can tell you that as i look

at the conferee, a lot of my friend, democrats and republicans that worked on currents before successfully. i have a positive feeling going in. now if the president has the last word and still sticks to his position that he has to keep this campaign promise, all bets are off. if you want us to reach a reasonable bipartisan way to make our border more secure, demonstrate and republicans can do that. >> we're back in this cycle as you know, snare, back in december where the president by most opinions lost this fight to nancy pelosi and to you all now and is hearing from his base, hearing from conservatives and media that he caved, that he lost the fight. now he said to himself and on twitter i can give up the wall. i have to hold my ground on the wall. how do you work with someone when you're negotiating from that position where he says it's the wall or nothing? >> i can tell the wall as the president described it in his campaign will never be built period. many times seems to be racing

away from that promise about a wall paid for by mexico himself. if you want to border security with technology and personnel we can do that on a bipartisan basis. last week on the outside tibl straw that broke the camel's back was when the air traffic controllers said that's it. we can land and take off as we had planned. more intervals between planes for safety. we'll slow down operations across america. at that point republican senators stood up and said we're finished. we won't let our loyalty get in the way of common sense. we want this shutdown to end. if the president looks over i had shoulder for loyal republicans to stand by him to go into another shutdown he's going to see a pretty empty room. >> how sad it takes as a crisis to get the nation up and running. susan page has a question for you. >> to follow up on something you were saying. no question this conference

committee could reach a deal on a longer term funding bill because it's a group of people on both sides who are accustomed to coming to compromises. but are you -- do you believe that the republicans on this committee will be willing to buck president trump if he's not willing to relent on funding the wall or some fundamental question that keeps you from reaching a deal? >> i think there's a growing sentiment on both sides, democrats and republicans. we got to get beyond this mess. we're talking about the proposing for one department. we have so many other thing to do including a new round of appropriations for next year after we finish what we were supposed to do for this year. many of us are chomping at the bit to get to work. that's why we were scene here. to be caught up in this problem, 35 day government shutdown over the president's campaign promise, i think people are losing their patience on both sides of the aisle. >> senator, given your sense of the senate which i trust because you are you, you got together,

the conference committee comes up with something. a resolution, a bill that makes sense. that both sides agree on. that the bill is passed. what happens if the bill goes down pennsylvania avenue and the president of the united states refuses to sign the product of your labor? >> well we're back in the soup again, mike. but i want to tell the president is also dangling this possibility of executive action. i'm not sure what that looks like and i'm not sure if it's a good idea under the constitution to give the president that much authority but he's left that out there as a possibility if his own party is not supporting another shutdown. >> all right. senator, former vice president joe biden said his daughter asked him yesterday, quote, are reonce? and biden told an audience in fort lauderdale, florida last night i'm running the traps on this. i don't want to make this a fool's errand. i'm a lot closer than i was before christmas and we'll make

a decision soon. biden added, the one thing that's for certain is we are, in my view, a battle for america's soul. i'm making a decision now whether or not i'm the right person because it's important, it's critically important we change the atmosphere. should joe biden run for president? >> he has to make that decision based on personal basis and politically. he's widely respected. he was called in by campaign after campaign in the last cycle. he has a great deal of experience. this is a very personal decision. i think that's what it will come down to. >> what about hillary clinton? will that be good? >> no. i don't believe so. i believe we need to move beyond the last campaign. i haven't heard any serious suggestion from her side that she's looking at it again. i hope she done get engaged in another effort. >> john kerry in >> john, i talked to.

if you have politics in your bloodstream only embalming fluid will replace it. a lot of my friends took a look at the white house and said i can do a better job. i hope they weigh this in a serious manner. >> we had chris christie on last hour talking about his new book, and he had talked about, and described our border policy regarding children and the separation as immoral. here we are months later, we still -- there's still no transparency. we don't know what's going on down there. we don't have an exact number. we're told it may be more than we ever were told. how do we, with democrats now running the house of representatives and you all in the senate, how do we get the truth and how do we get aid to those children and how do we start working every day to bring

them back to the loving arms of their parents? >> joe, a few weeks i asked the inspector general at the dhs to take a look at the zero tolerance plan. they started separating forcibly separating children, infants, toddlers more than a year before it was publicly nunsd. the inspector general said there could be thousands of children separated. we know 2800 were separated under the new policy. hundred of those young kids still have not been reunited and not in family environments at this moment. it's the most insensitive, inhumane thing i can think of. >> what's the number right now? >> it's a little more than hundred. in some circumstances they judged the parents are too dangerous. but, you know, we ought to be taking a careful look at that. some parents went back to hair home country.

we were told the children would be returned there. there are complications here that were caused by an administration that never took a serious look at reuniting -- >> are kids still incarcerated. are they still being held in camps? have we gotten them, all of them into loving homes? do we have the answer to that? >> i don't know the answer on each and every circumstance. but in most circumstances after a brief period of time children are turned over to a foster facility or foster family. >> this is so maddening. we've talked about this before. donald trump, he had this idea about a muslim registry and it was such garbage, unamerican, it was everything that this country wasn't but i tell you what kind of registry we do need have and tell me how do we get it? how do we get a registry from

our government, this is not donald trump's government, this is our government, this is your government, this is your constituents government, how do we get a registry of every single child that our government seized, incarcerated, separated from their parents so it can be on the front page of the "new york times", the "washington post", the "wall street journal," the "chicago tribune," we all deserve to see that. how do we get to that point? >> once the zero tolerance policy was recognized for what it was foriblely removing children from their parent a federal judge in san diego zepd up demanding that. protecting confidentiality and demanding an accounting from this administration. it took months before they could actually locate the parents and the children and reunite them and as i said there's still a hundred or more in suspense.

there could be many more before this judge got engaged and there should be an accounting of every child forcibly removed from their parents at the border. >> senator dick durbin, thank you very much for being on. >> senator, how are the cubs going to do this year >> looking forward to sfrang aft -- spring training after what happened to the bears. >> have we figured out, mike, are the white sox going to end up getting machado? >> i don't know. white sox signed like several members of his personal family. i don't know. you have to ask jerry if he's ready to pot for $300 million for a ten year deal. >> a guy that could hit in the world series. >> senator, thank you. still ahead, we spoke with two big guest this morning, each with new tell alls about the

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so, earlier this morning, we talked with a former white house communications aide chris sims and now the president's tweeting about him. quote, a low level staffer that i hardly knew named cliff sims wrote yet another boring book based on made-up stories and fiction. he pretended to be an insider when, in fact, he was nothing more than a gopher. he signed a nondisclosure agreement. he is a mess. you know what's a mess -- >> so -- >> associatisorry, just saying. >> willie, he's just sold cliff sims another 50,000 books. like, why does he help his opponents? >> his criticism never substance

ditch, it substantive, it's alw that the book is boring. >> he was there, walking with the president, but i guess he's just a gopher. here's the conversation with chris sims from his new book "team of vipers." and chris christie who has his own new book out entitled "let me finish." both had a lot to say about the inner workings of the trump work house. >> if jeff sessions thought it was a conflict to be involved, he should have told donald trump that when he asked to be attorney general. from that moment, he was messing up the justice department and never recovered. the real reason he refused, not the reason he stated, but the real reason, was because he got caught giving untrue testimony to congress and when the heat got turned on, he ran. and he left rod rosenstein, who i know well and have great respect for, and we served as the u.s. attorneys together in the bush administration. he left rod holding the bag.

he left rod holding the bag. that's not leadership. >> the president said to jared, this russia thing is all over now. he said, you start laughing and you say sir, this russia thing is far from over. what did you take that -- when you heard the president say that were you floored by that, that he actually thought he'd done something productive -- >> i was floored by the comment from both of them. i said this is far from over. i hate to tell you this, if it was valentines day of 2017, water going to be sitting here on valentines day of 2018 still talking about russia. there's lots of ways you can make it longer. the way is to keep talking about it, tweeting about it. every time you do that, prosecutors say, great, more things for us to chase down. i don't think he has the capacity on this score to listen to good advice, i could tell you that i must have said this to him two dozen times over the

last dozen years. you need to stop. you're making this worse. i say, listen, i'm talking about this to you from the perspective of someone who's run these investigations and someone who's been investigating. like, you know, i didn't do anything wrong, i got investigated. i know how frustrating that is. do you think i wanted to keep my mouth shut all during bridgegate? i didn't. you know who my water was, chris wray. chris wray said to me, you talk, i quit. i went, i like chris wray, i'll keep him around. >> you think spicer and sanders for example have been asked to lie and have, in fact, lied -- >> i think what is more often the case, especially with sarah, who i think is a good person in a tough job, goes out sometimes without all the of facts and you find out after the fact what you said was not exactly correct. >> i think that rudy's role has been not to be a lawyer but to be a spokesperson. to be out there and be a fighter for the president. >> so you guys said that, that she was, you know -- off air she

would basically say, i need to take a shower, because she felt dirty working for donald trump. >> she did, after talking about him -- >> so she calls me up to her office and says, hey, i want to do a response to this. as a messaging guy, i want your help in crafting this statement. so i'm like okay. i sit down on her apple laptop and start typing. and she's sitting at her desk on her iphone. she's texting away and forgets the i-messages are synced between her iphone and laptop. i'm watching as i'm supposed to be crafting a statement defending her against exactly what she's doing in this moment which is telling reporters, you know, trashing her colleagues to reports, talking about how the president -- she has to baby-sit the guy and, you know, whatever. >> she was standing up, writing that, in that moment? >> as i'm supposed to be -- >> cleaning up her mess -- >> why does president trump continue to listen to jared kushner as his de facto chief of staff when the advice time and again has frankly been terrible? >> i don't know. >> yes.

>> it makes no sense to me. listen, i just say this to you. this is part of the issue of having family work for you. right? i've always said -- i never wanted any members working for me because if i had to fire them, i'd have to also sit with them at thanksgiving. >> i'd meet the president on the private elevator. he gets off in the morning, he sent that tweet -- >> uh-huh, uh-huh. >> and spicer and i are standing there and the president comes off and he says, have you seen it? >> which tweet? murderers? >> no, the bleeding from the face tweet. i said, i think everybody's seen it. and he said what did you think. and sean spicer says, it was very aggressive. just kind of goes into this whole thing, like they're going to say it's not presidential. tell them it's modern day presidential. but i don't watch that show so don't tell everybody -- >> which by the way, he lies --

you know, "washington post" needs to put that on as a -- he watches every day. everybody close to him says he watches -- >> hold on, did anyone tell him that was a really dumb thing to do? >> yeah, sure. people will be surprised he's actually open to people saying hey, maybe we should are done it different or what if we do x, y, z. he's going to do what he's going to do. he will take the feedback. >> and the morning joe book tour stop continues tomorrow. former starbucks ceo howard schultz will be our guest on set. time now for final thoughts. susan page, first to you. >> you know what's amazing. the number of tell all books about donald trump. how quickly they've been produce and how consistent they are with the fuse coveranews coverage ba anonymous sources done by outlets the president likes to call fake news. totally consistent in tone and detail. >> mike. >> i'm going to stick with the fact that chris sims frightened me with the elements in his

book. one specific element, the president of the united states comes down in the morning on an elevator. the elevator opens. they start their day of business for the united states of america. and the president of the united states america first thought is "did you read it" about a tweet. >> and cliff said there's nothing anybody can do about the tweets that happen before he comes down the elevate person they're going out up in the residence and there's nobody there to stop them. you touched on this. from chris sims book where he quotes steven miller as saying this, i would be happy if not a single refugee set foot ever again -- touched foot, excuse me, on american soil. that's from steven miller who's making immigration policy in this country. >> he's one of the most influential policymakers there. that is a -- just a blatantly un-american statement. if you put that statement up to the words of ronald reagan, the words of just about anybody.

any person that's ever been in the white house, running the white house. it's something. so anyway -- >> i thought it was fascinating, the balance that chris christie was talking about in terms of trying to help versus dealing with what's in there. i think that the strain of that has been brought to a whole new level with this presidency. >> it has. and, i mean, historians are going to be debating for a very long time. are you glad that chris christie stayed in there. you know, what -- was he, you know, staying around a man that so many people find abhorrent because he was there when the president said i need an fbi director, he goes, chris wray. and, you know, guys like chris wray doing an incredible job there. that's an ongoing debate. there are no easy answers to that. it's very easy to say, hey, i'm offended by the guy as we are. >> why don't you walk out? i would never work for him. it's easy to say that. >> general mattis, general kelly

and others who i think believed they were doing the patriotic thing and preventing perhaps worse than we've seen publicly. >> and, you know what, i think we were better, safer, with general mattis at dod than without him there. >> yikes. >> no easy answer. >> absolutely. general kelly, for whatever faults he had, he made the country a little bit safer. >> that does it for us this morning. stephanie ruhle picks up the coverage right now. >> thanks, mika, thanks, joe. this morning, stone unturned. president trump's former associate will be arraigned in just a few hours in a d.c. courthouse. as the roger stone media tour rolls on, the mueller investigation could, i said could be wrapping up. at least according to the acting attorney general. >> right now, the investigation i think is close to being completed. >> connection lost. the justice department unveils