with national security and foreign poll? i general. in 2004 they were concerned about it but not every presidential race is top of zbliend mind. >> i would say this is the first time it's become a big issue in the media on any kind of sustained basis. we've been largely talking about impeachment and whatever trump does on a daily basis, talking about health care and the state of the u.s. economy. i think it depends on what happened. if this spirals in something much larger, if there's additional retaliation by the iranians, if there's other side effects of this back and forth between us and the iranians then it could become huge. but my expectation is it will be much more about trump and impeachment and the state of the u.s. economy. >> all right. jim live for us in washington, d.c. we'll be reading axios a.m. in a bit and you can sign up for that newsletter at signup.axios.com. >> that it does it for us this morning. "morning joe" starts right now. last week we took decisive

action to stop a ruthless terrorist from threatening american lives. we had a shot at him and i took it and that shot was pinpoint accurate and that was the end of the monster. sole main soleimani orchestrated the violent assault on the u.s. embassy in baghdad. they were breaking it, breaking it. had they gotten through, we would have had either hundreds of dead people or hundreds of hostages that. wasn't going to happen. and i called up our great generals. i said get them over there now. in recent days he was planning new attacks on american targets, but we stopped him. and we stopped him quickly and we stopped him cold. >> president trump when he sticks to the script and when he doesn't. good morning and welcome to

"morning joe." it is friday, january 10th, along with joe, willie and me we have donny deutsch, senior writer at politico and coauthor of the playbook jake sherman. he's an msnbc political contributor. cofounder and ceo of axe cos, jim vandehei. and senior adviser of moveon.org and an msnbc contributor karine jean hoo jean-pierre. president trump raels against democrats voting to limit his war powers. u.s. officials believe iran shot down that passenger jet near tehran in the fog of war. house speaker is nancy pelosi stands firm when it comes to sending those articles of impeachment to the senate. and then the two surprising polls that show billionaire tom steyer surging in two key early states appearing to qualify him for next week's democratic presidential debate.

and also pete buttigieg looking good in some of these polls as well. >> in new hampshire, yeah. >> so the house has passed a new war powers resolution meant to limit president trump's military actions against iran. the vote was largely along party lines with eight democrats voting against the measure and three republicans voting for it. ahead of yesterday's vote, speaker nancy pelosi criticized the administration for the air strike that killed iran's top general. >> last week, in our view, the administration conducted a provoc cotive, disproportionate air strike against iran which endangered americans and did so without consulting congress. we have no illusions about iran. no illusions about soleimani. he was a terrible person. did bad things. but it's not about how bad they are. it's about how good we are. we all would die for our

country. we take pride in saying that. but to kill for our country is a pretty traumatic thing. >> wow. so that was the criticism from nancy pelosi which is similar to what many democrats are saying about the administration's decision to kill soleimani. but increasingly some republicans are claiming democrats actually support the slain iranian general. here's what the president and some of his republican defenders have to say. >> you know what bothers me? when i see a nancy pelosi trying to defend this monster from iran who's killed so many people. when nancy pelosi and the democrats want to defend him, i think that's a very bad thing for this country. i think that's a big losing argument politically too. and yet now i see the radical left democrats have expressed outrage over the termination of

this horrible terrorist. and you know, instead, they should be outraged by soleimani's savage crimes and the fact that his countless victims were denied justice for so long. >> i never thought there would be a moment in time that the speaker of the house of representatives would actually be defending soleimani. >> they're in love with terrorists, we see that. they mourn soleimani more than you're gald stold star families are the ones that suffered under soleimani. >> the only ones that are mourning the loss of soleimani are our democrat leadership and our democrat presidential candidates. >> but, at least one republican senator marco rubio isn't following this line of

criticism. >> do you think that -- do you believe that nancy pelosi is a defender of soleimani? >> i don't know there's -- i mean, i haven't seen any deferred of soleimani in american politics and i wouldn't include the speaker in that regard. i think they're wrong about their assessment of why this action was taken and they're wrong about claiming that it wasn't necessary. >> see, that actually is how debates in washington used to run. yes, we can be tough on marco rubio from time to time when he does things where it seems like he puts the interest of the president above that of the republic. but that's marco rubio actually -- god, speaking for a lot of senators i know, and some decent house members who say we have a difference of opinion. that's what we have. and, by the way, if a democrat had launched this, you would have had republicans being critical and bringing forward war powers resolution acts. but i just want to go down this

list really quickly. donald trump saying that pelosi defendants soleimani. it's a lie. it's a damable lnable lie. it's disgusting and disgraceful, we expect nothing less than that from him. it's a total lie. anybody who believes donald trump is just stupid as hell. if you believe donald trump that nancy pelosi's defended soleimani, let me be very clear, you're stupid as hell. you're one of those people i say should not be allowed around household appliances. you will take off some fingers, if not your entire hand. don't be dumb. don't believe what donald trump says when he says nancy pelosi and the radical democrats are defending soleimani and, by the way, rand paul actually doesn't defend soleimani. but he opposed the attack. mike lee like ways, he's a

republican, conservative republican actually. and the same there. libertarian party, we'll be talking to the head of the libertarian party in a little bit, they don't defend soleimani. but they also don't think that a president should be an imperial president and just assassinate people when he damn well feels like it when there's not an imminent threat. and collins, also the american conservative magazine also, they're not -- they're not mourning the loss of soleimani but they're very concerned that an imperial president is going around assassinating the number two person in another government. some people think he's a terrorist. i don't but many people do. the minority leader just sounded stupid, i never thought we'd get to a point where, gumby, i never thought we'd get to a point where somebody defended a terrorist. gumby, why are they defending -- how stupid are you?

don't be that dumb in public, okay. save this for the cloakroom, all right. that's just stupid. most disgusting one, by the way, nikki haley how shameful, seriously? how disgusting, nikki haley. nobody is mourning the loss of soleimani in the democratic party that i've seen. if they are, shame on them. but certainly not nancy pelosi. but that collins, the fast-talking collins where he's saying democrats are -- democrats are -- democrats are supporting and mourning the death of soleimani more than gold star parent -- what a liar. >> oh, wow. >> what a total liar. what a disgusting total liar. reminds me george washington said -- i love this quote -- guard against the postures of pretended patriotism. guard against the prepostors rf

pretend patriotism. that's who collins, trump, all of these people are. >> right. >> they should be ashamed of themselves. and they should be like, in this case, marco rubio where we can have our differences, i understand why -- why marco rubio believes as does he in this case. that the president should have this power and it shouldn't be limited by congress. i understand that. but we can have these differences. let's debate over the differences. do not say your opponents who are actually defending article one powers in defending article one powers are mourning a terrorist. that's a damnable lie and you know it. >> well, you will see, though, perhaps a strategy or a reason for holding the articles of impeachment until nancy pelosi is good and ready. >> well, she's exposed all this, right? >> first of all, we might hear from bolton, which i think a lot of people would like to hear

from bolton. but here's charles pierce who wrote the longer -- and charles pierce was initially against holding them for a long time. the longer pelosi holds the articles, the more we see how closely every single republican is tied to the president. and the lengths to which they would all go to protect him from any kind of oversight and from the faintest of consequences. i don't think this can go on forever, but there is one thing i'm sure of, if mcconnell goes ahead with the trial on his own, his days as a majority leader are numbered. >> and, willie geist, it's a great quote from charles pierce who talks about what collins said and what all these other people said. now you're seeing the bolton information's coming out. nancy pelosi's played her hand pretty well. these republicans, though, that have gone out and questioned people's patriotism and claimed that they supported terrorists are disgusting human beings. let me -- let me rephrase that.

they are behaving like disgusting politicians and they should be ashamed of themselves. >> those are not people who are writing posts for darkest corners of the conspiratorial internet. this was a presidential candidate in nikki haley. and i can add to congressman collins this i can only think of one family these afakdttacked ad star family and that's donald trump. and donny deutsch, a small but handful of republicans who voted for the war powers resolution is you have to come to congress. we're basically underlining a principle that already exists, which is the president needs talk to congress before making a decision to take the united states to war. that has been spun by some people on the right and these sitting united states congressmen as hating america, as supporting terrorists, as

mourning the loss of a terrible person in general soleimani. >> it's amazing those radical leftists who are defending the constitution, it makes them very, very radical. you talk to people in they're buying this that they're morons and stupid. something to make our viewers feel better, coming from the advertising world you'd say say voter or a consumer is not a consumer, they're your next door neighbor and mother and teacher, they're not morons. a usa today poll says are we more safe or less safe, 55% say we are less safe and only 21% say that we are more safe. so i think people do, in their -- >> you mean after the killing? >> after the killing, yes. and i do think that people do have a primal sense, and i think when you start to insult voters or insult your next door neighbor or insult your mother, people have a sense of it. and i think that is the core thing that this administration

has left behind, that people are not morons. people are not idiots in mass. and that usa poll proves it. it's very simple. i'm not a strategist, i'm not a war guy, i'm not a politician. but i can look and say since that happened, i ran once again, you know, amping up their nuclear warheads five months away, we are taking our eyes off of fighting isis. you've galvanized the iranian people, and we're probably going to be leaving iraq which makes us less safe. so it's not that complicated to look and see, oh, by the way, there are 63 canadian families mourning this morning collateral damage as a result of trump's act. so the escalation has killed already. >> well, donald trump didn't fire those missiles so you put that on the iranians completely on the iranians. i do think it's fascinating, you look at those numbers that by almost 20-point margin, jim

vandehei, americans thought his actions were reckless. this suggests that his initial instinct in 2016 was the correct one, americans are exhausted by wars in the middle east. listen, i'm still not sure how i feel about the killing of soleimani personally. still not sure about it. i think congress should have been advised. i think it's something, though, i say that, just for argument's sake to put it out there to say we need to have a debate about it, it needs to be reasonable and rational debate. i can be influenced one way or the other, but these clowns that are going out and saying that somebody who disagrees with them on a war powers argument somehow loves terrorists? that's pretty disgusting. >> right. >> and i don't know, i think back when you and i were roaming around on the hill a couple decades ago, i don't think that

was happening. >> no. and go back thinking about that time period, as you were talking. over the last 20 years, congress is basically making itself irrelevant. it's almost snapping itself as a branch of government leaving the presidency being even more and more an imperial presidency and increasing the importance of the courts. if congress says don't consult us at war time which we've been doing for 20 plus years. if you say we're irrelevant in a lot of the domestic policies because we allow things to be done by exec fiutive fiat, if y can ignore us when we're subpoenaing you, suddenly these members of congress are making sure that the position that they won is exponentially weaker. that's where it gets lost. >> jim, just to be irrelevant stating to both sides, i'll follow up on what i said yesterday. this isn't just donald trump. like there are was george w. bush after 9/11. >> for sure. >> seizing power from the

article one branch. it was barack obama doing the same thing wall of his executive orders. again, consolidating power in the article two branch. and donald trump doing the same thing. of course much faster pace, doing some things that are just outright unconstitutional on their face like declaring emergencies and stealing money from the defense budget to build a wall. >> and it might seem to some viewers like we're going down a rabbit hole of just debating something that would be in a political science classroom. but it's not. like, if you worry about authoritarianism, if you worry about one person having too much power, we have essentially created an oligarch i can. the president has so much power today than he's had in the past. if congress says the hell with it, we're not that involved, then the only other arbiter, the only other break on the power of the presidency is the court. and conservatives have been smart about putting a lot of effort into making sure they

could tip the court at the federal level and at the state level towards conservatives because that's durable and they're the referees about whether or not you go too far. so these things do have a consequence. this is no different than the debate around the iraq war and in the patriot act and how we thought about the response to 9/11. at every point congress just says, yeah, do whatever you want to do basically. >> so, jake sherman, nancy pelosi while she's been defending the war powers resolution has had to defend her handle of impeachment. she's getting some pressure from democrats. now looks like she's inching closer to sending those articles of impeachment against president trump finally over to the senate but on her timeline. here's what she said. >> now, in terms of impeachment, you all keep asking me the same question and keep giving you the same answer. as i said right from the start, we need to see that the arena in which we are sending our managers. is that too much to ask?

>> are you holding them indefinitely? >> no, i'm not holding them indefinitely. i'll send them over when i'm ready. and that will probably be soon. >> so, jake, on the other side you have leader mcconnell who said i'm not going to show you the arena, i don't owe you that explanation. send them over, we'll have a trial. he's said he's not an impartial juror, that he's coordinating with the white house. so when will she be satisfied with what she sees over in the senate enough to send over the articles of impeachment? >> well, that's a good question because she's not going to see anything in the senate. that's the question that you might want to pose to her because mitch mcconnell has said flatly, i'm not going to show you the rules. it's going to be close to the clinton rules which are obviously already out and searchable online. so, listen, nancy pelosi's detractors argue that she has wasted two weeks, three weeks and she could have sent this over a couple weeks ago or this week to get this trial started. and she's already impeached the president, she might as well send the articles to the senate. her allies and her aides said

that she's forced a week's long discussion on whether the senate is how have witnesses baked into the process. of course witnesses might or might not be part of the process, they'll be subject to a majority vote in the senate during the impeachment trial. this might make people's eyes glaze over, but that's the reality. and, listen, nancy pelosi has -- is going to send these over. she's not going to see the rules for the trial. so it's fair to ask what exactly she's accomplished. but people in her orbit believe that she has at least notched a political victory by forcing this week's long discussion. there will be a lot of discussion about that. but i imagine based on what she said yesterday, the clip you just showed, she is going to send these articles, if not today, i don't think it will be today, but monday or tuesday which would begin the impeachment trial next thursday or friday-ish, depending on when she sends them, and then the impeachment trial will get started. so that's the dynamic -- >> but what will be different that day, a few days from now than today?

>> nothing. >> so then what will have been her leverage? what will she have achieved? >> leverage is only -- leverage say dynamic which each side needs something from the other side. mitch mcconnell doesn't need anything from nancy pelosi, so the leverage -- i don't know if she ever said it, but the leverage that her allies believe she had she never actually had. she never was able to change the rules. mitch mcconnell, like him or not, has a very, very tight grip on republicans in the senate and he came out to the microphones earlier this week and said i have my entire conference, all 53 senators behind me and if you would like to send met articles, great. if not, i'll move on to passing a trade deal and confirming more conservative justices. mitch mcconnell never needed anything from nancy pelosi so there never was any leverage. it was all imagined and kind of a political stunt, which didn't cost anybody anything, it wasn't damaging, it's not like shutting down the government. it just put us in this suspended state of pause for two weeks for

seemingly little practical reason, although you could argue there was a political reason. >> joe, mitch mcconnell was asked last night about nancy pelosi's deand mand to see the s for the trial. he said flatly, yeah, we're not going to do that and kept walking. >> you know, you look at what's happened since nancy pelosi's delayed this instead of rushing it through. suddenly john bolton, perhaps the most important witness to all of this says he'll come forward and talk given the right opportunity. that may get a couple of republican senators to vote to hear that testimony. also, the last two days have shown, once again, how repugnant some political figures are willing to be on the house side. as charles pierce said, karine, it's not a great secret that a lot of senate republicans see their house counterparts as, quote, bad seeds. and when you have them running

around saying that democrats love terrorists more than gold star parents, again, it just is another mark on house republicans, on the republican party themselves. and, if you don't think -- i'm not talking about you, but if people out there don't think that that doesn't place pressure on republicans who don't want to be associated with that sort of action, those sort of words who have to run statewide instead of a safely gerrymandered district in colorado, maine, california, then they didn't understand politics. this has ban a boeen a boom, i very positive for nancy pelosi and the democratic cause. >> one thing you mentioned that charlie pierce said is nearly every day that she's held on to these two pieces of articles of -- articles of impeachment

we've heard more explosive information and details. but another thing that has happened is we have now had this national conversation about how unfair this trial is potentially going to be because of mitch mcconnell essentially saying he is going to be an accomplice for donald trump, to help donald trump. and so i think that is really key and important. and you have to think about it. if mitch mcconnell is saying that, why would nancy pelosi hand over the two articles of impeachment when he's saying he's going to set up an unfair trial? but here's the thing, i think, here's the thing, joe. i think at the end of the day she is going to move forward. clearly she has to give forth the articles of impeachment. i say if i were her, what i two is the day that she does that, she also subpoenas the house subpoenas john bolton to testify. i mean, there are a bunch of things that she can do that -- and we know she's smart and she's strategic and this is what

she has said. and one last thing, too, is we found out from the public that they want witnesses. they want a fair trial. and so by holding on to this, she has really helped us get more information out there, helped the public see what exactly is going on. and to aryour point, joe, theres political ramifications for mitch mcconnell. he has a very small margin of error if he wants to hold on to the majority. kansas is potentially now in play because pompeo has said he's not going to run for senate, the u.s. senate. >> by the way, mitch mcconnell sitting at what? 18% in his own state? everywhere he goes he's had people shouting in open rallies, moscow mitch. he's going to have a hell of a rough run in 2020. i don't care how cocky people are that send out the videos and say cocaine mitch.

you know what some those dollar bills that they have going through the cocaine mitch little video tribute, it's going to be rubles by the fall that he's counting. i mean, he's going to be up for a tough fight. cory gardner's up for a tough fight. martha mcsally is up for a tough fight. susan collins, good lord she's up for a tough fight. thom tillis in north carolina also going to be up for a tough fight. so -- and you look at these numbers, i mean, you know, by 20 percentage points. people want to see witnesses. >> they want to hear more. >> in the senate trial. you even look at that poll that donny was talking about, by 20 percentage points. people think donald trump was reckless this past week as commander and chief. republicans are running around celebrating. they don't know what they're celebrating, mika. they don't. they're -- they're getting crushed in every one of these polls. even on the issue of

impeachment, the majority of americans believe donald trump should have been impeached. in a lot of polls, including the fox news poll, they want him impeached and on removed. they're on the wrong side of public opinion. they're on the wrong side of history. and while they are still running around, i guess they can afford to in jerry man der districgerr the house, but you better at least pretend you want a trial and hear from these witnesses and get them over there. because let me tell you something, i've seen this before with my buddies that were going down, moscow mitch won't be there your last ten days of your campaign in colorado. he won't. he's going to be fighting for his own political life. moscow mitch won't be sending money to maine. he's going to be like flooding it into media markets around lexington, kentucky, because he's going to be fighting for his political life. moscow mitch, he not going to be

in the research triangle in north carolina campaigning for you, thommy, boy, he's not going to be there. he's going to be fighting for his own political life. so if you want this pro stos lo process to look rigged, you're going to pay for. last ten days of your campaign. look at the polls and choose wisely. >> goodness, it's just free advice right there for you. >> choose wisely. you want the knight to say he chose wisely. you need to choose wise. >> i "politico's" jake sherman, thank you very much for being on this morning. >> indiana jones and final crusade one of the best, willie, one of the best, right? >> classic. >> so many movie -- >> that was a classic. still ahead on "morning joe," we'll hear from a house republican decorated combat veteran dan crenshaw is our guest. but first, we want to get to the new poll numbers out of south carolina showing tom steyer in

second place. steve kornacki says while the other candidates focus on iowa, new hampshire, steyer's basically had the run of the place. but first, let's go to bill karins with a look at some unseasonally warm weather. bill. >> it's going to be a wild three days. we could hit 80 degrees in west virginia, we could deal with thunderstorms and tornadoes. life threatening weather developing over dallas to waco down to san antonio this evening and then that line of storms rolls through east texas, eastern oklahoma, into arkansas and louisiana tonight. and then tomorrow morning they ron on through mississippi by the afternoon. the weekend by the time they get to georgia. that's the warm side of the storm. the cold side will have winter storm warnings issued from kansas city up through milwaukee. we'll have an ice storm we're dealing with in areas of michigan, especially central and southern michigan. you may get snow and then ice and winds for 40 miles per hour. that's a recipe for widespread

power outages. here's the snowfall forecast, kansas city 4 inches. areas of chicago, 2 to 4. milwaukee could get 9 inches of snow. and then the warm side of this storm system, areas on the east coast will be in the 60 over the next couple of days. that's why we're not talking about snow or ice up through areas into new england. boston could be in the 60s. new york city could be in the 60s this weekend. be prepared for a lot of airport problems anywhere east of the rockies because of the winds, the severe weather and the snowy weather. it's going to be a rough travel period over the next couple of days. new york city, mid-60s two days in a row this weekend. unbelievable. you're watching "morning joe," we'll be right back. you're wat" we'll be right back. the first fda-approved medication of its kind,

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♪ welcome back to "morning joe." joining us now, msnbc contributor but so much more than that, mike barnicle and guy cecil. the latest poll shows a four-way tie in the race for the democratic nomination there in new hampshire. mayor pete buttigieg leads the field with 20%. he's up ten points just since september. former vice president joe biden at 19%. he's down six. senator bernie sanders at 18%, he's up six points. those three sit within the poll's foir poupol poll's 4.9 margin of error. and senator elizabeth warren is down 12 points since september. amy klobuchar rounding out the top 5 with 6%, she's up four. as we leave that up for a

moment, just a snapshot of where we are right now in new hampshire, what do you see? >> i think new hampshire is reflective of what we're seeing around the country, which is there is still a lot of movement inside the democratic primary. you still have over half of the voters in most states that are early saying that they haven't firmly decided who their first choice is. you see five, six, sometimes ten-point swings. the reality is going into the final month, iowa, new hampshire, the early states are all really a jump ball for three to four candidates. it will be exciting to watch. >> that's the corrected phras p jump ball. it's extremely volatile in new hampshire. the surprising thing to me is bernie sanders is not as popular in new hampshire -- was as popular in new hampshire, he's not doing as well in new hampshire with the voters as did he four years ago. joe biden has tremendous resilience, but it's still the four of them, jump ball.

who knows what's going to happen. >> you look at two big swings, buttigieg up ten and warren down 12, does that say to you that this party from a survival point of view says we have to be in the center. if we go too hard left we lose and re-elect donald trump. >> i'll tell you one thing about being in the center, you're right. and the soleimani hit, that resonated in southern new hampshire, manchester, places like that, people were not opposed to the hit itself. >> i think as we get go forward, the bidens, the buttigiegs, i believe bloomberg when he gets in, tom steyer in south carolina which we'll get to is a prekearser pr precursor of what money can do for you. i think the more centralist candidates will rule the day. >> bernie sanders is hoping to do well there, showing new hampshire which you've shown in other places a dip over the last couple months from the fall now into the up in year. >> yeah, and it remains a real

challenge for her campaign to stem that. but, guy cecil, it's fascinating you have two favorite -- one a favorite son, one a favorite daughter from neighboring massachusetts and neighboring vermont. usually you could say in the old days, tom harken, he wins iowa, songus does well in new hampshire. it seems if you look at that poll if it is flattening out, you have a former mayor from south bend, indiana, doing well and biden. it really does seem like we have the complete nationalization of these contests, that it's no longer -- you're not going to have favorite sons and favorite daughters doing as well just because of where they serve. >> i think that's right. and i think it's especially true this year when you have so many candidates. not to get into the arcane delegate rules, but the most important number in all of these polls is 15. because in order to get

delegates, you must meet a threshold of 15%, either in a congressional district or in a statewide race. so what makes a difference once you get into these time days, it's what kind of organization do you have on the ground? and so from a media perspective, from a poll perspective, we have nationalized our elections. but if you're going to be sure to get over that 15% threshold and look at the new hampshire poll, there's a lot of folks right on that bubble. the organizing on the ground comes into play especially in the first four states where there's so much interest in organizing. >> all right. so take a look at this. tom steyer surges to second place in south carolina. according to a new fox news poll, former vice president joe biden sits at 36%, 21 points ahead of the rest of the democratic primary field. and there's steyer sitting in second place at 15%, up 11 points since fox's last south carolina poll in october. he's in a statistical tie with

senator bernie sanders who has 14% support in the early state. also up by four points. both sit within the poll's three-point margin of error. senator warren sits in the top four down two points and former mayor pete buttigieg support two points. tom steyer also enjoys a seven-point bump in nevada tying with senator elizabeth warren ahead of its february caucuses. according to the latest fox news poll, former vice president joe biden at 23% has a six-point advantage over the democratic field in this state poll, down one point since november. senator bernie sanders follows at 17%, also down one. since november, steyer is up seven points in this poll. warren is down six. former mayor pete buttigieg has 6%, down two points and andrew yang sits at 4% support, up one. >> so -- >> interesting.

>> jim vandehei, not to make tom steyer's success about michael bloomberg, but this was bloomberg's logic, which was, okay, while everybody's spending all of their money in new hampshire and iowa and other people are going to be -- biden's going to be focusing on south carolina, i'm going to spend money on the super tuesday states after south carolina. >> and, by the way, i have more money. >> i have more money. this is working for tom steyer. he's spending money in nevada and south carolina and it is having an impact. money still, it seems, is the mother's milk of american politics. >> right. it can't -- it can't buy an election, but it certainly can buy name recognition which you're seeing work for steyer in those two states. and i think what you said about bloomberg is right, that's what they would say. if this thing is tight like all your polls show and then it heads beyond those four states, it's possible he's not said --

bloomberg's not said how much he's going to spend. it's not impossible that he would spend 2, 3, $5 billion. if you put that type of money into a bunch of states against candidates who couldn't even come close to competing against that, it could make a difference. particularly once the campaign heats up and you have to compete in many, many states in a very, very compact period of time. and that's the bet that bloomberg's making. at some point you have to be yourself out there. you have to go through the scrutiny and be on the debate stage and go through interviews and i think that's what bloomberg probably fears the most. but money's not a bad thing to have right now. >> and, by the way, ka rooen, th karine, this puts steyer on the debate stage. if you're sitting there and you're elizabeth warren or bernie sanders looking at the south carolina poll saying i spent my entire life, my entire career developing a message, an ideology, building a base and here comes tom steyer in the

course of about a month spending more than $15 million, more than any of us can spend outside of mike bloomberg and matching new york and exceeding me in the polls. >> tom steyer's been able to buy his way on to the debate stage and buy ads in those states. and it's helped him in the poll. that is clear. that has been his strategy and it's working for him right now. we'll see if those two polls in nevada and south carolina are outliers. but i have to tell you, willie, everything is going to change after iowa. iowa is in less than 30 days. as we've seen time and time again, whoever's the winner and who are the losers, the polling in all the other states change almost overnight after we see those results. and there's something actually kind of -- kind of different about iowa this year. well, there's a couple things, but one of them is we haven't seen that many polling from coming out of iowa and we haven't seen -- this is the

first time since, like, 2000. and so it is a tossup in iowa, jump ball as you guys were saying. it's a tossup in new hampshire. we are -- it's really very much in the unknown. later today we're going to see des moines's register poll coming out, which is a gold standard in iowa for polling in the presidentials, so we will get a sense of where this race in iowa might stand. but this is -- we are really -- it's hard to say who is going to come out on top. because i do think it is a tossup, a four-way tossup right now. >> so, guy cecil, it's a tossup. right now, though, who has, as george h.w. bush said in 1980, the big mo? >> well, i'm not sure if it's the momentum, but the stability is with joe biden. i mean, he has managed to withstand an onslaught of attacks from opponents, advertising directly from donald

trump. i think he overcame a few sort of early mistakes in the debates. he has built a team, they're advertising in early states. they have independent groups supporting them to help deal with some of the financial disadvantages he had from getting in late. so he probably goes in in the strongest position at this point. the reality is, i think today if you were identifying a tier 1, it would be joe biden and bernie sanders with pete buttigieg and elizabeth warren right behind them. and then the open question is, can money stop momentum? what happens when bloomberg and potentially steyer don't place in the top five or six in the first two states? what happens if bloomberg doesn't place at all in the first four states? account money he's putting in nationally around the country help create momentum? that really hasn't happened before because we haven't had this exact dynamic before. i think we're going to break a lot of precedents inside of the

democratic primary going into the beginning of this year. >> all right. still ahead, we're going to dig into some new head-to-head matchups that shows several of the democratic candidates leaving president trump in states that will be critical in the 2020 election. "morning joe" is back in a moment. e 2020 election. "morning joe" is back in a moment. i'm your mother in law.

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now to some hypothetical head to head matchups at 50 past the hour. in nevada former vice president joe biden and senator bernie sanders lead president trump in a hypothetical 2020 matchup according to the fox news poll. biden has an eight-point advantage over trump in the silver state, 47% to trump's 39%, and sanders has a five-point lead, 46 to trump's 41. let's go to wisconsin. the fox news poll shows joe biden beats donald trump by the widest margin, and in michigan, hypothetical matchups conducted by wdiv and the detroit news, joe biden again ahead the most, 50 to 43%.

>> look at bloomberg. not only does he have 50 billion more dollars than donald trump, donnie, but mike bloomberg just taking it to donald trump in detroit, guys, home of rock and roll in michigan. >> i got to tell you that the steyer thing is such a tell about what's going to happen with bloomberg. i don't think people appreciate the tonnage, i want to say it again this guy is worth $52 billion. he could take 20 billion and on top of that he has a message. he's running across all the states one message about health care talking about obviously he's got to protect health care, but he also beyond the tonnage in the media he has the message. he says, look, i created health care for 600,000 people in new york city. this is a guy that has a resume that's done a lot of good stuff. not only does he have the message, he has the money, and i want to go back to donald trump in 2015. i mentioned this once before. donald trump showed up for his

first rally or his first speech, and cnn gave an hour of free time. he went from 1% to 3% in the polls. it be the more he spends he automatically rises in the polls. the more he rises in the polls, look at bloomberg, mike bloomberg do not stop looking at this guy. i believe there is a serious chance he ends up our candidate. >> as you've run a lot of these political campaigns, you look at mike bloomberg, in a lot of people's eyes it looked like a vanity project in the beginning. he's got $52 billion to spend. are you taking his candidacy more seriously than you did perhaps a month ago? >> i don't think there's any question about it and not just based on the michigan poll, but the reality is that from a strategic point of view, michael bloomberg is running a national campaign. he has over 800 people already on staff, many of those in these states, so it's not just the

money that's buying him name i.d. and buying him television, it's also organizing that's happening in states that these other candidates cannot afford to advertise and organize in, and probably won't be able to. i mean, just the idea that you have a candidate this early advertising statewide in places like florida and texas and california, which are obviously delegate rich, there's absolutely no question that it puts him on the map in a serious way. the question becomes once these candidates move into these states, again, obviously advertising at a lower rate, once we get through the first four, what happens if joe biden wins three or four of the first four states? it changes the dynamic, and then the question becomes does money really matter in these places when you have a candidate that is as well-known as joe biden around the country? >> yeah, and that's a great point because i do think if biden wins three of the first four, then he's off to the races, and i don't think anybody's money is going to stop that because he's going to have

the earned media hundreds of millions of dollars in earned media that money can't even buy. mike barnicle, it's interesting, what i think is so fascinating about michael bloomberg's position in this race is the money that he is pouring in even now is -- it's a rounding error. donald trump raises -- is raising all of this money. his people are excited about all the money he's raising. bloomberg can write a check for whatever donald trump raises over the next two years and bloomberg won't even miss it. why is this important? >> well, over the past quarter century, we have reelected three presidents for the first time since the early 1800s, and there's a reason because in early 1996 bill clinton started advertising against bob dole, before bob dole was even the

nominee. he was running ads all across -- i remember one that he was running in panama city, and people said you don't advertise that early. of course we remember the most famous example where barack obama was running ads basically accusing mitt romney of murdering people that worked for him because taking away health insurance. that was while mitt romney was still fighting for the nomination in late spring, and it stuck, and they said we're going to stick this on him before we even get to the general election. well, presidents have that kind of money, but michael bloomberg not a president, could finally level the playing field for democrats whether he gets the nomination or not. >> the big thing about mike bloomberg is the money. it's literally a ton of money, and money buys you momentum in politics no doubt about it. mike bloomberg, though, also has a resume. he has a record as mayor of new

york city, unlike the other billionaire running in the democratic primaries tom steyer who really has no resume to talk about in terms of politics. bloomberg does. but right now, joe, as you know better than most because you've been on the ballot before, we're in the retail version of american politics as opposed to the wholesale version which is nationwide running in 50 states. retail politics is dominant in iowa and new hampshire, and it's proof once again that for a long, long time, politics still remains at that level in places like iowa, new hampshire, and to some extent south carolina, jim van da high that politics is still a people business, and guess what, mike bloomberg has a ton of must oney. tom steyer has a ton of money. people like joe biden. they see him in new hampshire. they see him in iowa in small forums, and people -- it's a people business. people like joe biden.

>> yeah, and i don't think people would describe bloomberg necessarily as a people person. there's a reason he hasn't done many interviews. there's a reason that they've really tried to make this around the advertising and make it just around his sort of success as mayor, and for him to be successful, people are going to have to like him. they're going to have to trust him. they're going to have to believe what he has to say. he might be able to pull that off. he did it in new york. we'll find out. i thought it was interesting in those polls in both michigan and wisconsin is that you just have trump who's been locked at about 42% in those two states for a long time, much like he was before the 2016 race, and i think this election is going to be a lot like the last election, that for trump to win he's going to have to kind of pull a narrow victory in a lot of these states that sort of belies what you might see in a lot of the public polling, and if i'm him and i'm sitting here thinking, the stock market really is crushing it. he's not lying. you do see wages going up, and

he's still locked at 42%, that's one of the things that really worries them behind the scenes despite the public bravado fwl a. >> and unemployment's in the 3s. so we see the head to head matchups, and i just -- i think wisconsin obviously we're going to be up late on those wisconsin results, but i look at nevada, and i see for every gain donald trump seems to be making in the upper midwest, he has more challenges in states that are purple like nevada, states that used to be deep red like arizona, colorado, obviously. he may be winning the industrial upper midwest, but he may be bleeding a lot of support out west. what do you think? >> i think that's right, and the other thing to know about nevada is that just this week for the first time republicans are out numbed bo

numbered by democrats and nonaffiliated independent voters. democrats are on the ground there in large part because of a machine built by harry reid when he was the leader that is far out pacing in new voter registration. the other thing you have in colorado, arizona, and nevada, all three western states is just a more diverse population. the increase of hispanic voters in that state is making a big difference. you have people moving from around the country into those states, college educated whites moving into those states. the ground is changing rapidly in those three states in particular, in a lot of the same ways you saw big changes in virginia over the last two years. i think it's a big problem for donald trump. >> guys, thank you both for being on this morning, great conversation. up next, why u.s. officials believe the plane that crashed in iran earlier this week was actually shot down by an iranian missile. we're back in one minute. e minue and a live bookkeeper's helping customize it for our business.

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and we have bernie and nancy pelosi. we have them all, they're all trying to say how dare you take him out that way. you should get permission from congress. you know, these are split second decisions. you have to make a decision, so they don't want me to make that decision. they want me to call up, maybe go over there. let me go over to congress or come on over to the white house. let's talk about it. we heard where he was. we knew the way he was getting there, and we had to make a decision. we didn't have time to call up nancy, who is not operating with a full deck. >> oh, please. here we go.

donnie, what do you say all the time, that donald trump's either -- it's either confessing or it's projection. there it may have been a little bit of both. >> yeah. >> you know, one thing about mr. trump, the tell is there whether it's a confession or whether it's a projection, and you know, joe, going back to where you started in the previous hour, the mistake that donald trump continually makes is he assumes that people are continually stupid and morons and they're not. and that's going to come back to bite him. >> mika we had talked about this before in 2016 throughout the campaign that -- and after, actually, after he won, that actually the line that was really the line that best encapsulated donald trump's 2016 campaign was what he said actually to black audiences, but it really is how all voters felt, which is what do you have to lose. you've tried it the clintons'

way. you've tried it the bushes way, now let's try it a new way and shake things up. what do you have to lose, well, here we are four areyears later. the economy is doing really well. i'm excited that the obama rekory reko recovery is roaring into its eighth, ninth years, thank you, obama for that, but americans are saying they have a lot to lose. we're in the middle of donald trump's radical trade wars. we're in the middle of a global recession for manufacturing. they have a lot to lose there. they see that corporations like amazon are making billions and billions and billions of dollars, and yet, they're going to work on assembly lines and they're paying more in taxes than amazon or the richest companies across america, the

richest multinational corporations across the world. what do they have to lose with donald trump as president? a lot. and now we showed the poll last hour, a lot of americans thought what he did this past week was reckless. we have been in an endless war in the middle east for 19 years, and there aren't a lot of americans who don't think going out and killing the number two leader in iran is not going to spur more wars in the middle east. what do we have to lose with donald trump as president of the united states? we're learning every single day a lot. >> and they may not follow geopoliti geopolitics, and you know, what's going on around the world every day, but they see that we can potentially lose our place in the world when you have world leaders laughing at the president at world events. they can see that perhaps we do have a lot to lose in terms of our place in the world.

donny deutsch is with us, mike barnicle and karine jean-pierre, and joining the conversation republican strategist susan del percio is with us. also with us pulitzer prize winning columnist and msnbc political analyst eugene robin son. good to have you all on board this hour. the trump administration has cited various reasons for the killing of general soleimani, his past violent behavior, the killing of a u.s. contractor two weeks ago, and an unspecified imminent attack. president trump is now offering this explanation. >> we did it because they were looking to blow up our embassy. we also did it for other reasons that were very obvious, and we had a shot at him, and i took it, and that shot was pinpoint accurate, and that was the end of a monster. >> soleimani was actively planning new attacks, and he was

looking very seriously at our embassies, and not just the embassy in baghdad, but we stopped him, and we stopped him quickly, and we stopped him cold. >> lawmakers say this is the first they're hearing of threats to, quote, blow up u.s. embassies. >> willie, it's been obvious from the very beginning since his killing, it's been obvious that these guys have just been making this stuff up as they've gone long. first of all, they said there was an imminent threat. then you had pompeo going on the sunday shows going, well, come on. imminent, i don't know, he's just a really bad dude. we had to get him. he killed a lot of americans, we had to get him. that's donald trump followed up with that. all of the trump apologists in print, online, on tv were saying he's a bad guy, so let's stop asking about this imminent threat. it's not an imminent threat, and

then we saw mike lee walk out of briefing from white house officials from the trump administration calling it the worst briefing he had heard in his life, in his nearly decade of service on capitol hill, and now donald trump's going to rallies. he's making up new stuff. oh, he was going to blow up the embassy. oh, not only that embassy, he's going to blow up embassies all over the place. if you had that intel, you would have said it on the sunday shows. if you had that intel, you would have had it in the intel briefing to members of the united states senate. if you had that intel, you wouldn't have waited for a political rally to throw it out there, but that's exactly what donald trump did. once again assuming that people who support him are extraordinarily stupid. i would be so offended if i were people in that crowd. >> we began in the hours after the strike that killed general soleimani with the, quote,

imminent threat. then it morphed into the death of the american contractor last week. then it became the images at the green zone at the u.s. embassy in baghdad, what was happening there, a reaction to that, and then last night we heard from the president of the united states that this stunning claim that there were imminent threats to the embassies, that they were going to be blown up by forces directed by general soleimani. that came out of the clear blue sky to republicans and democrats who were in that intelligence hearing two days ago who heard nothing about that, and then the president just introduced it yesterday. vice president pence was on morning shows yesterday, on the "today" show he didn't say anything about the embassies being blown up, but the president feels like, i think, he needed a justification. he felt the back and forth. he heard some of the criticism, so he spintroduced ralast nightt the threat was against u.s. embassies. >> if i didn't know better, i'd say the president was just

making it up. i don't know better than that. he is just making it up. >> gene, i will say that line was scripted at the rally last night, so it wasn't like hi threw it out just to get the cheer from the crowd. it was something that the white house arrived at and put it into his speech. >> it's extraordinary, willie. it's extraordinary that they would have that briefing, the one that senator mike lee is just having -- still having a conniption over as are some other senators who attended that farce that was given two days ago and there was no mention of any threat to the u.s. embassy in baghdad or to these other unspecified embassies that the president apparently referred to last night. this seems, again, absent evidence to the con tratrary to completely made up for a gullible public, just to try to

put some sort of gloss on this after the fact. in that briefing they heard of no imminent threat. they did not hear of an imminent threat. that's what they all say. >> this is from adam smith, the democrat who's the chair of armed services in the house. he said, quote, nobody i've talked to in any setting -- and i've talked to quite a few people in the white house -- has said that about an imminent plot against u.s. embassies let's bring in msnbc correspondent garrett haake. you had an exchange yesterday with senator lindsey graham yesterday bt a tabout the brief soleimani's killing. >> general milley was compelling and chilling about what was going to happen and what had happened, so i think a third grader could have believed that there was an imminent threat coming from the man that we killed because the man we killed was a walking threat. he had dedicated his life to killing americans.

>> compelling and chilling isn't the same as specific, though. does the administration not have a duty to disclose some of what they know specifically when they come to congress? >> the way we found this out, we'll never tell anybody because it was magical, and we're not going to compromise it. >> what'd you make of that answer, garrett? >> the eighth harry potter movie has taken a weird turn. i was totally unprepared for that answer because i've never heard anything quite like that on capitol hill, and i've been doing this a little while, and lindsey graham was later perhaps undercut bey the president if there's more information about what we knew about soleimani and what he was plotting and what have you. graham is going to stick with the president on this war powers question, on the ability to strike iran absolutely to the hilt. this is something where he has been as hawkish as you can possibly be on iran. he's in one corner with folks like tom cotton who have been very aggressive in backing up the president here, and then the

defections from the other side, the mike lees, the rand pauls. it's still possible there's a small handful of republican senators who will vote with democrats when tim kaine's war powers resolution comes to the floor tuesday or wednesday of next week. this is an open debate within the republican conference. once again, lindsey grandma goi -- lindsey graham going to extreme lengths. >> listening to fwar residegarr interview with lindsey graham, i spoke to two united states senators in the room for the briefing, and each individually described it the same way as the evidence that was put forward in the briefing was tissue thin, not paper thin, tissue thin, and largely they thought behind the scenes driven -- the decision was driven by the secretary of state mike pompeo. >> and we know mike pompeo has been very hawkish. there were reports that he was the one driving this along with vice president pence. what i also find so amazing that

they didn't even try to explain in this tissue thin briefing is that if it was an imminent threat, you would say i took out the general and knees x amouthe of people who were going to do it. imminent means they were at the gates, if you will, so you need to stop it right now. that didn't happen either, so obviously they're trying to back themselves in it. donald trump wanted to take an action, he uses this language i took the shot with pinpoint accuracy. why does he do that? because he's insecure, and he's trying to show how strong he is when actually he's just a weak and ineffective leader, and he'd just rather have his bravado out than the facts. >> you know, willie, though, what i don't -- what i'm having a little trouble grasping here is why donald trump allowed mike pompeo to push him into this

attack because not being glib here at all, it's exactly what happened. you know, we criticize donald trump for a lot of things, but it's fair to say that for the past 20 years, 30 years, his entire adult life, donald trump's had an american first instinct, american first as the sort of nationalist right wing viewpoint on foreign policy, which is obviously protectionism, and also, you know, fortress america, keep americans home, keep americans out of this forever war in the middle east, don't start new wars. avoid fights in syria, even when things are going extraordinarily well. ignore one iranian attack and one iranian slight after another. get out of our -- i mean, that's been his instinct. he criticized barack obama ceaselessly for possibly

attacking iran, and he's done this, and i don't -- i don't think it goes along with what he naturally does, and i don't think it fits with his ideological grounding, at least with his very isolationist foreign policy view. so i'm just saying, i'm really shocked that he let mike pompeo push him into this. >> well, he had mike pompeo around him. he's had john bolton around him, obviously both hawks to their cores on the question of iran, but perhaps we saw some soft that instinct from the president when he came out and made his remarks and did not escalate when the missiles were launched into bases in iraq. maybe secretary of state pompeo

encouraged him to, but he did not. i would also point out that yesterday vice president pence was out saying we can't talk about the imminent threat because of sources and methods, sources and methods he said again and again, you know, this is a very closely held intelligence question that we can't divulge to the public, and then president trump goes out onto a stage in front of a roaring audience and says they were about to bomb the embassy in iraq, mika and they were about to bomb other embassies. try as they may, people around the president to keep this tihe always going to go on stage, he's always going to go on tv and let it rip despite whatever their strategy may be. >> do you remember when steve bannon was on the cover of "time" magazine and you said wow, that's probably the end of steve bannon. it's so counterintuitive to what trump's premise is, he was pushed into it by pompeo, and you just wonder how this thing will start to negatively affect him, how does that play out in the relationship. this was pompeo obviously pulling the strings. one message to the media out there, trump's claim that they

were going to blow up our embassy is the equivalent of a weapons of mass destruction in the iraqi war. we can't let the 24/7 news cycle take us past that. we should be probing, pushing, where did that come from. tell us more about that. let's not let today just move on. that was a big statement that he took out soleimani based on the fact that they were going to blow up the u.s. embassy. the press needs to chew on that like a bone and not let it go. that is a big, fat lie. >> well, gene robinson, your latest piece in "the washington post" is entitled "the best iran crisis explanation? trump's obsession with obama." and in it you write in part this, president trump's ahas been like obsession with erasing the legacy of barack obama almost set the middle east on fire this week. it might still. the tell was trump's false and slanderous claim that the missiles fired last night at us

and our allies were paid for with the funds made available by the last administration. seriously? does obama take up that much space inside trump's head? i'd ask you to answer the question, gene, but i'll answer it for you. yes, he does, absolutely 100%. it's almost a strange obsession, but it seems to almost backfire. it may work with his base, i guess. >> i think it does work with his base, at least to the extent he keeps his 40%, you know, rain or shine. but look at his big initiatives trying to kill the affordable care act because it's named obamacare. remember, he was for universal health care before he was against it, president trump was, and he has nothing to replace it with, but it's obamacare, so he wants to get rid of it. everything obama does he wants to undo, and so he wants to take

this, you know, obama did not take the shot at soleimani, neither did george w. bush. but trump wants to do it, not just to show he's tough, but to show that he's not -- he's not obama. you know, if i can just put in a word about general soleimani, you know, i think that -- i think the assassination was reckless and wrong and that we may ultimately pay dearly for it. it was a wrong thing to do, but i do not mourn general soleimani. i was a "washington post" correspondent in buenos aires in 1992 when the israeli embassy was blown up, 29 people killed. it was about six blocks from my office. i heard and felt the explosion when it went off and rushed over to see rescuers sifting through the rubble. that one of the -- of many

atrocities that general soleimani is linked to, is thought to have been responsible for, so count me as one of those progressives who thinks this assassination was wrong but who decidedly does not mourn the passing of general soleimani. >> right. karine, jump in. >> yeah, you know, you were talking about donald trump's obsession with barack obama. it's really just petty. it's insecure, and you know, there's that saying where it seems to be barack obama lives rent free in donald trump's head, but he's also subleasing to nancy pelosi and hillary clinton. i mean, this is where we are with donald trump, and we have to remember donald trump has no credibility at all, and his administration has no credibility at all. you have a president, according to "the washington post," who

has lied more than 15,000 times since he's taken his presidency, since he started his presidency. there was a period where at the end of last year he was lying on an average of 30 times a day. this is a president that lies about hurricanes. that lies about crowd, that lies about the small things and the big things, and you know, we've had about five or six explanations of this attack, and you know, the regular lies that he gives are disgraceful and some are very, very dangerous. the problem is now that he's lying about war, and that's deadly. >> let's bring into the conversation ranking member of the homeland security committee, member of the armed services committee, democratic senator gary peters of michigan. senator, good morning. it's good to see you. i want to ask you about the claim made last night by the president. a couple of times yesterday, actually, that there was, in fact, a specific imminent threat against the american embassy in baghdad and the president said that soleimani was getting ready

to blow up other embassies as well. can you tell us any more about that intelligence? >> well, we did have a briefing with folks, as you know, secretary pompeo, secretary of defense, chairman of the joint chiefs. we didn't hear anything about blowing up the embassy in baghdad. that did not come up during that briefing. in fact, the briefing was -- i think was very frustrating to all of us who were there. it was very thin on details, and i would say that's in a bipartisan way. i know you've mentioned senator lee, but i know other republican in that briefing were also dismayed with the lack of information that was provided to us. i was sitting between two of my republican colleagues, who have rolled their eyes. in fact, one of them turned to me, i won't say his name, but said, wow this is really thin. so it was not a briefing that gave us the kind of information that we should be provided, particularly if the

justification that they were giving was actually backed by evidence. >> so in a 75-minute briefing, senator, the idea the embassies were going to be blown up and that soleimani had to be killed because of that was never mentioned? >> well, i will say specifically about baghdad, certainly a number of potential targets were given to us, but there wasn't any specifics related to what that imminent threat may be, which was frustrating. you know, you know that all of these things could be potential targets. that's the way it is today. it was the way it was two months ago. they're always targets, but there wasn't any kind of specifics provided to us. >> and you can say that at any point over the last 40 years that the american embassies are targets of the iranian regime. >> correct. >> what do you make of the president's claim yesterday that the embassies were about to be blown up given the fact that you didn't hear anything about that during that intelligence briefing? >> i can only base that based on what i heard in the briefing, and that was not provided to us with that kind of specifics.

that was the thing that was so frustrating about the briefing. we walked out of there saying we didn't get the information. in some cases i think we were misinformed as well. i will tell you as we all walked out of there we were all shaking our heads like i can't believe this just happened, particularly something as serious as this and the fact that we are now closer to -- or were at that point certainly, closer to war with iran than we have been in the last 40 years. you can't think of a more serious topic for us as members of the senate as for the american people than this, and to have that kind of briefing that didn't have the substance that this issue deserves is really, really unbleefelievable think about. >> senator peters, given your military background and the communities you serve on, you would know certainly that everyone in the military from a platoon leader on the ground to the commander of a carrier group in the mediterranean, every

action you plan out but always in the back of your mind, you were posed with the question what now. what's next, so that's the question to you. what's now? what's next? >> well, it is, and you're right, you always have to think any kind of action, you know, there's going to be second and third order effects. you want to think that through very, very carefully. what we -- and that was really the question about the action against soleimani, and let me just say, he was a bad guy. he was a horrible human being that has blood on his hands. we're not mourning his loss, but i think it raises the broader issue to your question is what does -- what does the strategic result of that? are we safer? is there more stability in the middle east as a result of that? certainly over the last couple of years through trump policies and pulling out of the iran nuclear ban -- the sense from

that briefing that we had that they haven't really thought through what the second and third order effects are, and that's frightening, especially from a commander in chief and from an administration dealing with a situation as dangerous as what we're seeing in the middle east today and will likely continue to see going forward. >> it is, obviously the danger in the region continues to escalate. i'm curious, though, senator what does america's future in the middle east need to look like? a lot of americans are exhausted by a forever war, almost two decades now. at the same time, our abrupt pull out from iraq, obviously, left a power vacuum that isis filled. donald trump's abrupt decision to leave syria and leave that in the hands of vladimir putin, and

erdogan and assad obviously did not help america's security, so what -- how do we balance these competing interests of wanting to bring our troops home but also understanding that if we retreat too quickly from the middle east, if that retreat is too large, then we'll probably be sending more troops back to clean up messes in the coming years. >> well, i think you're absolutely right about that. there's no question, and you look at who's been benefitting the russians, for example, have been benefitting a great deal as a result of these decisions that have been made by the trump administration. you know, he acts in a very impulsive way without any kind of strategic forethought. it's pretty clear by what we've seen going forward, but i'll say to answer your question, what we need is to lean more into diplomacy. what we have seen from this

administration is a hollowing out of the department of state. we have folks leaving. you have embassies that are woefully under staffed. the president seems to think that it's only the military that projects power. he forgets that soft power in many ways is more powerful than military power, and you have to open up lines of communication and have those diplomatic channels. our diplomatic channels with iran have always been strained. it's been tough, but now they're basically nonexistent. you can't try to move a policy forward and bring stability to a region if you're not talking to fo folks, if you're not using diplomacy. that diplomacy has to work hand in hand with military force. all of it has to be balanced, but if you take diplomacy and the department of state off the table you have a real problem, and that's what we have right now a real problem. >> ranking member of the homeland security committee, senator gary peters, thank you very much. garrett haake, just want to ask you about any efforts to get

the articles of impeachment over to the senate, any updates on that from nancy pelosi's office? >> pelosi is keeping this as closely held as she possibly can. i can tell you it was the most bizarre feeling on capitol hill yesterday. anytime i spoke to a senator of either party about impeachment, they would ask me at the end of the conversation if i knew anything about when the articles were coming over. i think there was a widespread expectation they would be delivered on thursday, perhaps while the senate was still in session. if they come in now on friday over anytime over the weekend, they really don't get taken up until tuesday. watch sunday morning, pelosi's doing an interview on abc's sunday morning show, she's doing it live. that's not something she typically does. when she does sunday show interviews she tends to pretape them. for those of you trying to read tea leaves or divine signals that may be one there's news coming this week. anybody who tells you they know specifically when these articles are coming are not telling the truth. >> all right, garrett, thank you very much. and coming up, we're going to

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33 past the hour, u.s. intelligence officials tell nbc news evidence suggests the ukraine international airlines jet liner that crashed wednesday near tehran just hours after iran's attack on u.s. military bases in iraq killing all 176 passengers on board was downed by an iranian missile by mistake. video taken from the ground appears to show the moment the plane was struck, exploding in the sky. ukrainian airlines flight 752 left tehran headed for kiev. u.s. officials say two minutes later, two missiles fired at the plane sending it crashing to the ground. nbc's tom costello reports that the missiles were russian made. prime minister justin trudeau said canadian intelligence

sources also pinned the blame on iran telling reporters, quote, the evidence indicates that the plane was shot down by an iranian surface to air missile adding, quote, this may well have been unintentional. while iran denies a missile struck the boeing 737 before it went down, reuters reports the u.s. national transportation safety board has accepted an invitation from iran to take part in its investigation into the crash. willie. in australia, authorities are now urging a quarter of a million people to evacuate their homes because of the devastating brush fires. temperatures expected to hit 100 degrees or more in several parts of the country today. high winds also expected to fan the flames that already have left thousands homeless. a round of applause broke out at sydney's international airport for a group of american firefighters who arrived yesterday to help battle the wildfires in that country that have devastated the nation and

killed by some estimates nearly a billion animals in that country with no end in sight. coming up next, republican congressman dan crenshaw is standing by. the former navy s.e.a.l. is applauding president trump's approach to iran as a contrast to the previous administration. the congressman joins our conversation next on "morning joe." can you heal dry skin in a day? aveeno® with prebiotic triple oat complex balances skin's microbiome. so skin looks like this and you feel like this. aveeno® skin relief. get skin healthy™ i need all the breaks, that i can get. at liberty butchumal- cut. liberty biberty- cut. we'll dub it. liberty mutual customizes your car insurance so you only pay for what you need.

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♪ all right it is 40 past the hour. welcome back to "morning joe." a live look at the sun coming up over washington. joining us now member of the house committee on homeland security, republican congressman dan crenshaw of texas. he is a decorated combat veteran and former navy s.e.a.l. who served five deployments overseas. >> congressman, great to have you with us, and let's -- >> great to be here. >> we want to start by thanking you for your service to this country. >> absolutely. >> and are so grateful for that. can i ask you, i just want to ask you a personal question here. i loved admiral mccraven's book make your bed, talking about being a navy s.e.a.l. and the life lessons he learned.

just for people that are watching, what's a life lesson that you took out of being a navy s.e.a.l., something that you didn't know before, something that you carry with you every day of your life? >> that's an interesting question. i'll give you one answer. it's a lesson i call no plan b. go through life understanding that you might have to plan for a different course in life but no plan b means you're not -- you are not letting the option to quit enter your mind, all right? you have a goal, and you're going to pursue that goal, and only you know when you've actually quit. s so no plan b. >> give us an example as a navy s.e.a.l. where that mind-set carried you to success? >> to become a navy s.e.a.l. you know, you don't go through buds -- so buds is our crucible, it's our six-month training course, and you can't get through that unless you believe there is no other choice but to

make it through. you think to yourself, they've got to kill you or break you. i did get broken, actually, the first one, snapped my leg, but then i had to do it again. yeah. >> other than snapping your leg, at what moment in that process did you think i can't do this? i can't get through this, and yet, because admiral mccraven and other navy s.e.a.l.s i've talked to talked about that moment where they said, man, i just can't get through this, and yet a buddy or somebody else pushed them along so they could do what they thought was impossible. >> i think that story is more rare than you might -- than the they're letting on. i'm not saying it doesn't happen. ky i can say it did not happen with me. as soon as that moment of weakness happens, it just builds upon itself. often times the guy who is do

let in that choice. this is about a choice, you either gave yourself a choice or you didn't. when you do let that in, it becomes harder and harder to keep going. sometimes people do come back from it, but more often than not there was never a choice. >> you just don't let that enter your mind. >> no, no. >> which is an extraordinary discipline in and of itself. so we're going to get to iran in a second. let's start at 30,000 feet first, and then we'll get more specific. you know, there's a balance and donald trump this past week showed two sides of himself on foreign policy. there's a balance of trying to end these forever wars in the middle east that have gone on for 19 years, may go on for 20 years, and also not retreating too quickly, not retreating like we did in 2011 from iraq even though a lot of americans, including myself said, hey, we've done enough for iraq. we saw the void that was created when we did that.

same thing with donald trump getting out of syria. we had -- you know, we had a manageable force. i know there's some still there, but we've turned a lot of that over to turkey. so -- and russia. there's a balancing act. how do you advise members of the house and the senate and the white house to move forward where weapon understand americans have had enough of wars in the middle east, but at the same time we need to make sure we don't create a void that a malignant force like isis or a future soleimani walks into. >> yeah, well, that is exactly right. you have to have that balance, and the first thing i would say is there's -- it's not black and white, okay? it's not a false choice between doing nothing and isolationism and full scale war. unfortunately that's the rhetoric that is often used, mostly by politicians and leaders in the media, and what that does is it tells the american people that there's only two choices and that anytime you're involved in

anything you're at war. well, that's not true. there's a lot in between, okay? there's deterrent strategies. there's force protection strategies. there's forward presence necessary. there's the building up of alliances that is necessary. the world is a small place after all, you know, it's a 12-hour flight to the middle east, informs travels even faster. we can't pretend that we can successfully engage in national defense from looking out past our shores. we do have to be around the world, but it doesn't mean we have to be an occupying force in any new countries. that, i think the american people are very sick of, and i think that's what they mean by ending forever wars. it doesn't necessarily mean that we retract completely because that carries with it a whole new set of problems. >> i talk to military leaders about syria, the syria operation that the president i would say has retreated from, and a lot of military leaders thought the tragedy of that was that we had reached that balance, that sort

of sustainable force. i'm not going to -- i don't expect you to sit here and criticize donald trump on an msnbc show right now, but -- >> but i have on syria. >> okay. so on syria, so you would agree with me, isn't that the sort of force that we want to have, a sustainable force, a small force,force of very capable people, special ops people who in that case stopped iranian expansion, russian expansion, syrian expansion, and also much less risky than saying taking out soleimani? >> yeah, i agree. i told the president he has actually struck a very good balance throughout his tenure where we're not nation building, okay? we're not trying to occupy and build this new democracy that turned out to be a little too optimistic for lack of a better word, but i was very much in favor of just a couple thousand

troops in syria that could maintain eyes and ears on the ground and lead to very exceptional operations like the killing of baghdadi. >> congressman, it's willie geist, good to see you this morning. you certainly are not alone in this country in being glad that general soleimani is no longer on this earth to inflict terrorism around the world and specifically on american troops, probably some people you knew in the field, but let me ask you about the justification for it because the white house has been all over the place, first with an imminent threat, then it was a reaction to what happened at the embassy in baghdad or the death of the contractor, and last night the president said at a rally in toledo, ohio, that there was an imminent threat to blow up the embassy in baghdad and he said not just that embassy. do you know anything about that specific claim that there was an imminent threat to blow up american embassies around the world? >> i don't know about the specific of the embassy, but i do know this. you have career intelligence professionals like cia director

gia haspel. you have the dni mcguire, you have chairman milley telling members of congress this is some of the best most exquisite intelligence they've ever seen. it was unequivocally clear that there was going to be an imminent attack within the next few days. i want to say something else, just because there's been given a lot of justifications for this attack, that strengthens the case. it doesn't diminish it, and i think there's a strange narrative going on that because there's been all sorts of reasons for doing this that that somehow diminishes the reason for taking out soleimani, but it doesn't. it strengthens it. they attacked our embassy. we can pontificate about whether they were going to attack an embassy. they already did. all right? they already did kill an american. they already did board a u.s. vessel in 2016. they already did increase massively their ballistic missile program, many of which are nuclear capable. they already did quadruple funding to hezbollah. that is post-jcpoa by the way.

they already did foster a civil war in yemen and syria and iraq so there's a lot of justifications for this. >> so congressman, what did you make then of your republican colleagues who came out of that briefing two days ago after 75 minutes, mike lee, rand paul, for example, and were beside themselves saying it was the worst briefing they've ever heard and they got no answers actually about what you're talking about? >> well, i wasn't in that briefing because i was in the senate briefing. >> they were very frustrated. >> i know. i saw those stories. the house briefing was not that contentious, which is actually kind of surprising. i wasn't in there. i don't know what they saw. i do know that their complaints were about not seeing the details of the intelligence. they should know better frankly, just having been somebody who has collected that same intelligence, there's no way to share that responsively. it does give away sources and methods. those sources and methods may be

ongoing. they know that, and i wish they would be more honest habit that. >> congressman, what are your concerns now going forward? soleimani is dead, the concerns that many of your republican colleagues have expressed is it has iranian people who were protesting in the streets, many of them being killed in the streets, as a matter of fact, protesting the government. do you think the world is more dangerous or less dangerous after the death of soleimani? >> it's definitely less dangerous. i think most people even agree on that. the world is better off without soleimani. i do not believe this narrative that the iranian people are now all of a sudden behind the supreme leader, khomeini. they are not. what i would like to see is if every member of congress started tweeting out #freeiran, that would give moral support to the iranian people to continue their fight for freedom. they are not all of a sudden on the side of hard liners. there isn't an honest democratic debate in iran, because the

supreme leader khomeini is the single voice. and that hasn't changed, but he has become severely weakened. more importantly, they've had to recalculate how they deal with the united states. they were increasing their attacks. they were increasing their escalations and violence and they were moving from nonattributable proxy attacks to attributable attacks. that is a huge change because they thought we had no red lines. remember, khomeini tweeted out before that attack to president trump, you can't do anything. those were his words. you can't do anything. so they truly believed this and that has changed radically. with all the information we have, it effectively re-establishes a sense of deterrence. that's extremely important going forward. >> congressman, first of all, thanks for being here. we truly appreciate hearing your point of view. secondly, the papers and the tv

medium has been filled with pictures the past few days of young americans lined up boarding c-58s, bags over their shoulder again probably from third, fourth, fifth time to the middle east. so my question to you is, on behalf of all of the families in your district, the voters in your district, do you think that the voters in your district and the country deserve at least to have a congressional, to hear a congressional conversation about what this country is going to do next coming down the road with regard to deployments and military action in the middle east? >> yeah. and a lot of those troops are being deployed for troops protection areas, they're being deployed to places that we already have troops. they're being deployed in favor of a deterrence strategy and having reestablished deterrence, those troops are safer now than they were before. i think that is definitely true.

congress should always be involved. if we are talking about an actual long-term, full-scale conflict, of course congress should be involved. that is absolutely true. we have to distinguish between that and the necessity to be able to respond in self-defense. and that is always groing to bea complicated matter. >> so let's talk briefly as we continue this conversation about the 19 years we've been in afghanistan. should congress not have another debate, another discussion about what if next 20 years may look like? and perhaps at the end of that debate, it may look like, let's say, korea or germany where we have kept a number of troops in there for 40, 50, 60 years.

>> we should be always having that debate. the reality is we are always having that debate in congress and there's -- the one side isn't strong enough to actually say, you know, develop a new uamf. but a lot of us are open to that, effectively re-establishing or updating a new amf for the future. the urvetd r unfortunate reality is partisan makes it difficult to agree with anything. but there's honest opinions on what to do about that. but the debate does happen quite a bit, actually. congressman, dan chen shaw, thank you very much for coming on the show this morning. great to have you on. >> thank you. thanks for having me. still ahead, u.s. stock futures are set to open at potentially record levels this morning ahead of the december jobs report. we'll get a live report as soon as those numbers cross. "morning joe" will be right back. cross "morning joe" will be right back "1917" is the winner of the golden globe for best director.

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last week, we took decisive action to stop the threat to american lives. we had a shot and i took it. so soleimani directed the attacks that badly wounded four service members and killed one american and he orchestrated the violent assault on the u.s. embassy in baghdad. they were breaking it, breaking it, and they gotten through, we would have had either hundreds of dead people or hundreds of hostages. that wasn't going to happen. and i called up our great generals. i said, get them over there now. in recent days, he was planning new attacks on american targets, but we stopped him. and we stopped him quickly and we stopped him cold. >> president trump, when he

sticks to the script, and when he doesn't. good morning and welcome to "morning joe." it is friday, january 10th. along with joe, willie and me, we have donnie deutsch, senior writer at politico and coauthor of the playbook jake sherman, msnbc political contributor, co-founder and ceo of axios, jim v vandehye and senior contributor kareen. u.s. officials now believe iran shot down that passenger jet near tehran in the fog of war. house speaker nancy pelosi stands firm when it comes to sending those articles of impeachment to the senate. and then the two surprising polls that show billionaire tom steyer surging in two key early states, appearing to qualify him

for next week's democratic presidenti presidential debate. also pete buttigieg is looking good in some of these polls, as well. >> in new hampshire, yeah. the house passes a measure seeking to limit trump's military actions against iran. ahead of yesterday's vote, speaker nancy pelosi criticized the administration for the air strike that killed iran's top general. >> last week in our view, the president, the administration conducted a provocative disproportionate air strike against iran, which endangered americans and did so without consulting congress. we have no illusions about iran. no illusions about soleimani. he was a terrible person, did bad things, but it's not about

how bad they are. it's about on huh good we are. we all would die for our country. we take pride in saying that. but to kill for our country is a pretty traumatic thing. >> so that was the criticism from nancy pelosi, which is similar to what many are saying about the administration's decision to kill seoul manny. but increasingly, some republicans are claiming democrats support the slain iranian general. here is what the president and some of his republican defenders had to say. >> you know what bothers me? when i see a nancy pelosi trying to drchbd this mon sters from iran who has killed 1078 people. when nancy pelosi and the democrats try to defend him, i think that's a very bad thing for this country and a losing argument, too. >> now i see the radical left democrats have expressed outrage

over the termination of this horrible terrorist. and you know, instead, they should be outraged by soleimani's average crimes and the fact that his countless victims were denied justice for so long. >> i never thought there would be a moment in time that the speaks of the house of representatives would actually be defending soleimani. >> they're in love with terrorists. we see that. they mourn soleimani more than they mourn our gold star families who are the ones who suffered under soleimani. >> the only ones that are mourning the loss of soleimani are our democrat leadership and our democrat presidential candidates. >> but at least one republican senator, marco rubio, isn't

following this line of criticism. >> do you think that -- do you believe that nancy pelosi is a defender of soleimani? >> i haven't seen any defenders of soleimani in american politics and i wouldn't include the speaker in that regard. i just think they're wrong about their assessment of why this action was taken and they're wrong about claiming that it wasn't necessary. >> that actually is how debates in washington used to run. yes, we can be tough on marco rubio from time to time where it seems like he puts the interest of the president above had a that of the public. but marco rubio, gosh, speaking for a lot of senators i know and some decent house members, we have a difference of opinion. that's what we have. and by the way, if a democrat had launched this, you would have had republicans being

critical and bringing forward war powers resolution acts. i just want to go down this list really quickly. donald trump saying that pelosi defends soleimani is a lie. it's disgusting and disgraceful. we expect that from him. anybody who believes donald trump is just stupid as hell. if you believe donald trump that nancy pelosi has defended soleimani, let me be very clear. you're stupid as hell. you're one of those people i say should not be allowed around household appliances. you will take off some fingers if not your entire hand. don't be dumb. don't believe what donald trump says when he says nancy pelosi, the radical democrats are defending soleimani and, by the way, rand paul actually doesn't defend sole manny, bsoleimani.

mike lee, he's a conservative republican, actually, and the same there. libertarian party, we're going to be talking to the head of the libertarian party in a bit. they don't defend soleimani, but they don't think the president should be an imperial president and just assassinate people whenever he feels like it when there's not an imminent threat. also, the american conservative magazine, also, they're not mourning the loss of soleimani, but they're very concerned that an imperial president is going around assassinating the number two person and not the government who, yes, is a terrorist. i think he's a terrorist. the majority leader is just sounding stupid. i never thought we would get to a point where somebody defended a terrorist.

gumby, why are they defended the terrorist? how stupid are you? don't be that dumb in public, okay? save that for the cloak room, all right? that's just stupid. most disgusting one -- by the way, nikki haley, how shameful. >> i agree. >> how disgusting, nikki haley. nobody is mourning the loss of soleimani. and the democratic party that i've seen. if they are, shame on them, but certainly not nancy pelosi. but collins, the fast talking collins where he's saying democrats are -- democrats are supporting and mourning the death of soleimani more than a gold star parent, what a liar. what a total liar. what a disgusting total liar. reminds me, george washington said -- i love this quote -- guard against the imposters of pretended patriotism.

guard against the preposters of pretend patriotism. mika, that's exactly who collins, trump, all of these people are. they should be ashamed of themselves. and by the way, they should be like, in this case, marco rubio where, yes, we can have our differences. i understand why marco rubio believes as he does in this case that the president should have this power and it shouldn't be limited by congress. i understand that. fwu we c but we can have these differences. do not say your opponents who are defending the article 1 powers in defending article one powers are mourning a terrorist. the that is a lie and you know it. >> well, you'll see, though, perhaps a strategy or a reason for holding the articles of impeachment until nancy pelosi is good and ready -- >> she's exposed all this,

right? >> first on of all, we might hear from bolton which i think a lot of people would like to hear from bolton. here is charles pierce who wrote the longer pelosi -- and charles pierce was initially against holding them for a long time. the longer pelosi holds the articles, the more we see how closely every single republican is tied to the president. and the length too far they would all go to protect him from any kind of oversight and from the faintest of consequences. i don't think this can go on forever, but there is one thing i'm sure of. if mcconnell goes ahead with the trial on his own, his days as a majority leader are numbered. sunlight. >> and it's a great quote from charles pierce who talks about what collins said and what all these other people said. now you're seeing for bolton information is coming out. nancy pelosi has played her hand pretty well. these republicans that have gone out and questioned people's

patriotism, they are behavioring like disgusting politicians and they should be ashamed of themselves. >> and those aren't people who are writing posts of the darkest corners of the internet. those are sitting united states congressmen, perhaps presidential candidate in nikki haley and i would add to congressman collins that i can think of only one person who has attacked a gold star family and that's president trump. still ahead, is the impeachment hearing about to be over? we'll have the latest on the showdown with mitch mcconnell. he wanted a man cave in our new home. but she wanted to be close to nature. so, we met in the middle. ohhhhh! look who just woke up! you are so cute! but one thing we could both agree on was getting geico to help with homeowners insurance. yeah, it was really easy and we saved a bunch of money.

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jake you sherman, speaker pelosi also has had to defend her handling of impeachment. she's getting some pressure from democrats.

now looks like she's inching closer to sending those articles of impeachment against president trump finally over to the senate, but on her timeline. here is what she said. >> now, in terms of impeachment, you all keep asking me the same question and i keep giving you the same answer. as i said right from the start, we need to see that the arena in which we are sending our managers. is that too much to ask? i'm not holding them indefinitely. i'll send them over when i'm ready and that will probably be soon. >> jake, on the other side, you've had leader mcconnell who said i don't owe you that explanation. send them over. we'll have a trial. he's already said that he's working with the white house. when will she be satisfied with what she sees? >> it's a good question because she's not going to see anything in the senate.

mitch mcconnell has said flatly, no, i'm not going to show you the rules. it's going to be close to the clinton rules which are obviously out and searchable online. so listen, nancy pelosi's detractors argued that she has wasted two weeks, three weeks, and she could have sent this over a you couple of weeks ago or this week to get this trial started. she's already impeached the president. her allies and her aids have said that she's forced a weeks-long discussion on whether the senate should have witnesses baked into the process. of course, witnesses might or might not be part of the process. they'll be subject to a majority vote in the senate during the impeachment trial. this might make people's eyes glaze over, but that's the reality. and listen, nancy pelosi is going to send these over and she's not going to see the rules for the trial. so it's fair to ask what exactly she's accomplished. but people in her orbit believe that she has at least notched a political victory by forcing this week's long discussion.

but i imagine, based on what she said yesterday, the clip you just showed, she is going to send these articleses, if not today -- i don't think it will be today -- but monday or tuesday who would begin the impeachment trial next thursday or fridayish and then the impeachment trial will get started. >> but what will be different that day, a few days from now, than it is today? >> nothing. absolutely nothing. >> so what will have been her leverage? what will she have achieved? >> leverage is a dynamic when each side needs something from the other side. mitch mcconnell doesn't need anything from nancy pelosi, so the levage are she -- i don't know if she ever said it, but the allies she believed she had, she never had. she never was able to change the rules. mitch mcconnell has a very, very tight grip on republicans in the senate. and he came out earlier this week and said, listen, i have my entire conference, all 53 senators, behind me.

and if you would like to send me the articles, great. if not, i'll move on to passing a trade deal and conserving more justices. it was all imagined that there was leverage and kind of a political stunt, which didn't cost anybody anything. it's not damaging. it's not like shutting down the government. it just put us in a suspended state of pause for two weeks for seemingly little practical reason, although you could argue there was a political reason. >> joe, mitch mcconnell was asked last night about nancy pelosi's demand to see the rules for the trial. he said flatly, yeah, we're not going to do that and kept walking. >> you look at what happened since nancy pelosi delayed this since rushing it through. john bolton suddenly says he'll come forward and talk given the right opportunity. that may get a couple of republican senators to vote to

hear that testimony. also, the last two days have shown, once again, how repugnant some political figures are willing to be on the house side. coming up, 2020 politics. there's a new name towards the top of the pack in south carolina. tom stier is suddenly in double digits. what it means for the upcoming debate, next on "morning joe." n"

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tom stier surges to second place in south carolina. former vice president joe biden sits at 36%. 21 points ahead of the rest of the democratic primary field. there's steyer sitting in second place at 15%, up 11 points since fox's last south carolina poll in october. he's in a statistical tie with senator bernie sanders who has 14% support in the early state. also up by four points. both sit within the polls over

three-point margin of error. senator elizabeth warren rounds out the top four with 10%, down two points. tom steyer also enjoyed a seven-point bump in nevada tying with senator elizabeth warren. vice president joe biden at 23% has a six-point advantage over the democratic field in this state poll, down 1 point since november. senator bernie sanders follows 17%, also down one. since november, steyer is up 7 points in this poll. warren is down 6. former mayor pete buttigieg has 6%, down 2 points. andrew yang sits at 4% support, up one. interesting. >> yeah. jim vandehei, not to make tom steyer's success about mike bloomberg, but this was bloomberg's logic, which was

okay, everybody is spending all of their money in new hampshire and iowa and other people, you know, biden will be focussing on south carolina. i'm going to spend money on the super tuesday states after south carolina. >> and by the way, i have more money. >> this is working for tom steyer. he's spending money in nevada and south carolina and it is having an impact. money still, it seems, is the mother's milk of american politics. >> right. it can't buy an election, but it can buy name recognition which you're seeing work for steyer in those two states. and i think what you said about bloomberg is right. listen, if this thing is tight, like all your polls show, and it heads beyond those four states, bloomberg has not said how much he's going to spend. it's not impossible that he would spend $3, $5 billion.

if you put that type of money against candidates who couldn't even come close to competing against that, it could make a difference, particularly once the campaign heats up and you have to compete in many, many states in a very, very compact period of time. and that's the fact that bloom berg is making. at some point, you have to be yourself out there. you have to go through and be on the debate stage. you have to go through interviews and i think that's what bloomberg probably fears the most. but money is not a bad thing to have right now. >> and by the way, this puts steyer on the next debate stage, des moines regularster. if you're sitting there and you're elizabeth warren or your bernie sanders and you're looking at that south carolina poll saying i spent my entire life, my entire career delivering a message and here comes tom steyer, about a month spending $15 million more than any of us could spend, mike bloomberg and matching in the polls.

>> yeah. look, tom steyer has been able to buy his way on to the debate stage and buy ads in those stage and it's helped him in the polling. that has been his strategy and it's working for him right now. we'll see if those two polls in nevada and south carolina are outliers, but i have to tell you, willie, everything is going to change after iowa. iowa is less than 30 days. as we've seen time and time again, whoever is the winner and who are the losers, the polling in all the other states change almost overnight after we see authorize results. and there's something actually kind of different about iowa this year. well, there's a couple of things, but one of them is we haven't seen that many polling coming out of iowa. this is the first time since, like, 2000. it is a tossup in iowa. it's a tossup in new hampshire. we are -- it's really very much

in the unknown. later today, we're going to see des moines's regularster poll coming out, which is a gold standard in iowa in polling for the presidential.ister poll coming out, which is a gold standard in iowa in polling for the presidential. but this is -- it is hard to say who is going to come out on top because i do think it is a tossup. coming up on "morning joe," we are joined by a former white house communications director anthony scaramucci. we'll be right back. anthony scaramucci we'll be right back.

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i didn't even know there were people from virginia. maybe i'll try every state. like alabama, alaska, arizona, arkansas, california, delaware, florida, indiana, iowa, kansas, kentucky, louisiana, maine, maryland, massachusetts, mississippi, montana, nevada, new hampshire, jj jj, new york,

ohio, oklahoma,er or, rhode island, south carolina, south dakota, tennessee, texas, utah, vermont, virginia, washington, west virginia, wisconsin, wyoming. >> i like it. that's pretty good. >> that's good. >> 32 past the hour, a live look at capitol hill. we have breaking economic news now with the monthly jobs report. 145,000 jobs were added. we'll go live to cnbc in just a moment. but joining us now, former white house director of communications anthony scaramucci. also with us, chairman of the libertarian party nicholas sarwar. our panel is back with us, as well. but actually, we do have don right now at cnbc, so let's get those numbers and some context. >> like you said, mika, 145,000 jobs were created in the final

month of the year in december 2019. that does fall shy of estimates economists were looking for 16 0,000 jobs. however, the unemployment rate did hold steady at 3.5%. that's unchanged from the prior month in november. average hourly earnings, so how much more we're all making, 2.9% more than we were at the same time last year. we were looking for about a 3.1% increase in earnings. now revisions to prior months were lower. so that's important here. november's jobs numbers were revised down by 10,000. so net-net over those two months of 14,000 job drop from the previous expectation. that brings the three-month average for job creation in america to 184,000 jobs. the labor force participation rate, how many more people are actually participating in the workforce stays unchanged at

63.2% and then the broadest measure of unemployment goes down to 6.7%. it was 6.9% and that does represent a record low for that unemployment rate. a couple of notes to places that are hiring. retail added 41,000 jobs. leashus and hospitality added leisure and health care added 28,000 jobs. the places we saw more market job losses were in manufacturing. that fell by 12,000. and guys, i'll leave you to this, transportation fell by 10,000 jobs, as well. we're going to crunch through all these numbers, but those are the headlines. guys, back over to you. >> thank you so much, dom. anthony, you're a markets guy. it sounds like more good news for donald trump. unemployment, 3.35%. the wall street at record highs. i know you don't think he deserves re-election, but what about americans looking at this

economy that continues to go full speed ahead? >> joe, good morning. if we're judging it on the economy, the economy is doing quite well, but real market participants understand this has really been induced by the federal reserve. you've had 55 rate rukeductions last year from the coordination of the central banking agency. that is driving the economy. what i'm worried about as a mark of the last three decades is an earnings recession coming this year. and in the last weeks, you saw 17 trillion dollars of sovereign debt that was in a negative interest rate position now down to 11 trillion. so that augers that things are slowing down. you could see a slowdown going into the election, but you're certainly not going to see a recession. >> you know, nick, it used to be that i could get republicans on this show so talk about massive spending, gining up the economy,

overheating the economy at $23 million national debt. republicans only seem to care about deficits or debts when democrats are in the white house. but, man, we're looking at bigger spending and more fiscal recklessness than ever before this year. >> absolutely. you can hear it in that jobs report. you can see the seeds of the destruction. you have to remember, we've done bailouts of farmers that are bigger than the bank bailouts with no congressional approval and manufacturing and transportation are down because the truth is, american manufacturers took a lot of inputs from overseas and the tariff that the president has put on imports cause american manufacturers to go out of business. people who get their inputs and add value here in this country are not able to do that business any more because tariffs are taxes that americans pay. >> i want to jump off where anthony was as far as the economy slowing down. a couple of things, those

manufacturing numbers down is a real, real precursor. that to me is always the big thing in manufacturing. and the important thing for democrats going forward is you have to paint a picture of economies. half this economy is still averaging $30,000 in house hold income. half this country still is struggling when it comes to health care. and, you know, the democrats have to say there is donald trump's economy and then there's your economy. >> that is exactly what people have been saying for a long time. but as somebody who has worked for donald trump, was his communications director for a little while there. 11 days, i think. >> you got the right number. but i did work on the campaign. i was obviously -- >> i know you did. so you understand the politics of this which is donald trump can go out at a rally like he did last nice, but he can say 3.5% unemployment, the lowest it's been in 50 years. the stock market is booming. i've got this economy humming.

we have to keep this going for four more years. >> yeah. but i think the democrats could make the case if you look at the layers of wages in the economy, the bottom 10% is doing a little bit better. some on of that is from the immigration policy. but the middle classworkers and the low middle classworkers have actually not done better. so there's a failed promise there. where the president is doing well, that's why the crowd size is so large is he's literally the avatar for the anger of those people that feel disaffected. so if we can come up with the right policy decisions, he has that right message. you come with the right policy decisions and those people feel that you are in touch with them, that you're part of them, i think you could beat the president. >> can i jump in? >> sure. go ahead. >> i mean, the federal government is adding $1 trillion a year to the credit card. that's the only reason the economy is as hot as it is. and that's not a tax increase on

me or you. that's around the necks of our children and grandchildren and neither the democrats nor the republicans are willing to tackle the fact that we are spending ourselves into before us as a country and it's really exciting while you're able to keep running up the card, but it hurts a lot for our kids and our grandkids. >> yeah. a good point, for sure. anthony scaramucci, i just jump on what willie mentioned, you heading up communications for the white house. what is the white house's communications office? is there one today? >> listen, there essential is one, but the communications director is the president. the reason why you haven't had a press conference, willie mentioned i was only there for 11 days which is 11 days, stephanie has been there, i am 1-0 on her on a press conference. he won't let other people speak on his behalf. that's one of the big issues.

when you have a management style like that, donny knows this from business, when you have a management style like that, you become a bottleneck and everyone around you is wickedly intimidated. on nick's point, when you are spending money like that, you have to monetize the debt. there's no way to pay it back. look at the latin american countries, lower and middle class families are destroyed when they try to correct mistakes like that. >> everybody is not in the stock market. >> 10% of the country is in the stock market. >> there you go. donny is my go to guy on stats. you know trump, you have been with trump. he has bragging rights on the economy, even though bragging rights were born in the obama administration with the recovery, but he is obsessed with barack obama. whether it is out of jealousy, resentment, whatever it is out of, i am unclear on that.

what's your view? why is he so obsessed with barack obama? >> well, i mean, it is a number of different things. you have to start with the central understanding of the president, i never met anybody more insecure, anybody that had so much self doubt, self hatred. you juxtapose that against barack obama who i went to law school with at an early stage of life, he has enormous self confidence, a level of comportment to his personality that people find very popular. the president has found a sleeve of popularity with primarily white diseffected blue collar workers. i wrote about it in my book, addressed that. i came from a white collar family. i had a lot of identity with that. president obama, different guy than president trump. he could never be president obama. he could never be rex tillerson. that's why he throws these people into the volcano of his self hatred, like a human

sacrifice of professional careers. he want to abrogate what appropriate did because of that hatred, that's the component that people have to understand. running against him can unspool him if they understand the level of self hatred and level of insecurity he has as a human being. >> let's talk about a topic that's come up this morning, the imperial presidency. it has been growing for quite some time. you brought up the $16 billion unilateral bailout of farmers that donald trump took upon himself. we talked about donald trump illegally, unconstitutionally declaring an emergency and seizing money from the pentagon to try to build his wall, that was unconstitutional. we could talk about last week where he took out the number two person in iran's government, second most powerful person in

the iranian government, and just yesterday when you had republicans and democrats alike talking about protecting article one powers to make decisions when a president decides to take the country to war, you actually had trump supporters suggesting that they were defenders of terrorism and defenders of terrorists. seems this republican party has embraced the imperial presidency. what are the consequences for america? >> i think the consequences for america of this idea that these powers should be put in the hands of one person, and that the most important thing is that's a person from my team or your team. the path for president trump to do unconstitutional action and not get called on it started in the last administration, and the path there started in the administration before that, and that's where the libertarian

party has a really different take on this that these are structural problems, not personality problems. it is not a matter of you didn't hire the right guy to push a button, drone murder somebody on the other side of the world with no check or balance, the framers designed a constitution where we don't put that awesome power in the hands of one person because it is not about whether they're good or bad, it is about you can't commit american children to die in other country's civil wars without debate. and give credit to mike lee coming out of the briefing and saying this is not right, this is not our constitutional system. i know how much it cost him or matt gates to vote against expansion of war with iran, but we've been standing up to stop this war and stop all these wars. the iraq war is old enough now to get drafted to go to the iran war, although apparently not

able to buy a pack of cigarettes. >> nick, susan del percio talking about the libertarian party, you have the nominating convention over memorial day weekend, i believe. have you seen an increase of people becoming more interested in the libertarian party, especially people who are republicans who are just so upset with donald trump and are looking for another solution? >> we have seen a lot of that, we've seen a lot of voters tired of team red, team blue, back and forth. they want a party that stands for free trade and reducing the national debt and having america at peace with the world and ending the failed war on drugs. these are policies that neither party has really touched for decades and they've been too busy scoring points against each other. we're also seeing interest from candidates who are not being welcomed in their own parties,

both on the republican and democratic side in primary processes that are rigged either with the democrats making rules up as they go along, or the republican side where they're cancelling primaries or in wisconsin, the president ordering people to have a ballot where only one name is on it soviet style. the libertarian party, we're a little smaller than the other two, but we have an open and fair nomination process where it will be decided by delegates at convention in austin in may. >> hey, anthony, this is careen. i wanted to ask you, you know the president clearly well as mike barnicle stated earlier. the question is why does the president lie so much? he lies about the big things, the little things, he lied before becoming president, now he is lying during, he lied when you were there. what is that about? what can you tell us about kind of the way he thinks? >> i just want to state for the record according to the

president he doesn't know me at all, even though somehow i managed to be on the executive transition team, he doesn't know me at all. here's the thing. he lies in the moment, it has to do with some of the real estate experience and lying about condie sal condo sales and release properties. i can't tell you who, there's a guy in the oval office went to the president, said okay listen, it is 86%. he went into the rose garden, gave the speech. he said it is 90%. comes back in. why did you say 90, 86 was a pretty goo number. he said well 90 sounded better. that's his personality. you're not going to change it at 73 on his way to 74. and it is the little lies as we know from kindergarten that ultimately get us in trouble. when you're in a crisis, iranian crisis, war crisis, and presidents do a lot. eisenhower lied about the crisis

in the '50s and was called on it, we know politicians will lie, but he is lying in a way we are glazing our eyes over as human beings saying we can't necessarily trust him when we essentially need to trust him. that's one of the biggest problems with the administration. >> anthony scaramucci, thank you very much. good to have you on the show. as well as chairman of the l libertarian party. >> come back. before we go to break, there's a great new feature in the upcoming issue of cosmopolitan magazine. it is called am i getting fired? i joined forces with the co-author of the know your value book earn it, and we're giving a lot of advice, dos and don'ts for women jumping into the work force, trying to keep their jobs and grow within them. for all women heading back to work after a career break or

two, there's come back careers for women over 50 and beyond, my new book out next week with my sister-in-law ginny. it is packed with important advice for how to rethink, refresh, and re-invent your success at 40, 50, and way beyond. you can learn much more, get your own copy now at knowyourvalue.com. still ahead, our next guest stars with anthony hopkins in a powerful new film, actor jonathan price is with us to talk about oscar contender "the two popes." keep it here on "morning joe." o two popes. keep it here on "morning joe." it feels like i'm just wasting time. wasted time is wasted opportunity. >>exactly. that's why td ameritrade designed a first-of-its-kind, personalized education center. see, you just >>oh, this is easy. yeah, and that's >>oh, just what i need. courses on options trading, webcasts, tutorials. yeah. their award-winning content is tailored to fit your investing goals and interests.

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the netflix film "the two popes, joining us, jonathan price, he stars at pope frances in the film with anthony hopkins who plays pope benedict." >> thank you for having me. >> you said the mountain top is "morning joe." here you are now. >> thank you for having me. >> tell me about the phone call

for the role. it's not a small task to take on the role of pope. what did you think as you first contemplated the role? >> i immediately thought i was quite nervous about it, ever since the pope was created, the internet has been full of images of the two of us together. me and the pope on the high spiral, there was an inevitability they might come to me. >> for people that haven't seen the film, what part do you capture, so much to say about the catholic church and everything else, what is this particular story? >> i think it is why i was first attracted to this particular pope. i am not catholic, not religious, but i have political points of view, and he was a pope talking to me and millions like me about things we wanted and needed to talk about, the environment, the economy, the

refugee crisis, and all these things are discussed in the film. yes, faith is discussed a lot. and it's kind of interesting. i was listening earlier you talking about the arguments between red and blue and how it is very black and white. this is a film about two men with very different viewpoints who can debate reasonably, can talk about the issues reasonably, have respect for each other, and still maintain their differences, here and in england it has become very partisan. you can't argue reasonably with your opponent. >> you know, both of you, you and anthony hopkins, provided spell binding performances in the film, and you just indicated you're not a religious person, yet obviously the string, the theme that pulls you through the

movie with the spectacular performances is kind of faith based, and there's a lot of theology involved in the dialogue back and forth. did you feel any sense of wondering more about your faith or lack of faith as you played this? >> well, tony and i were asked in london when we first met to talk about the film whether we were religious, i said no, but i expect to be by the end. and certain things did happen. you do obviously, whatever role you take on, it has some effect on you, and i remember being when i was leaving buenes aires, he worked with pope francis there, he came and asked if he could bless me. and it was the first time since i had been baptized as a child

anyone would bless me. it was quite an overwhelming emotional experience. it was to do with having worked amongst people and having represented. i know the director came up after the film thinking there's something out there. yeah. >> one of the scenes, obviously you should see the film, it is extraordinary, but when pope benedict, anthony hopkins, indicates he can no longer hear god, he can't hear god's voice, he felt it diminished him as a pope, a human being, it was an extraordinary segment. >> it is. and tony is a powerful actor to bring that off. i do have faith, but my faith is

in people and that's what pope francis says. i am a huge fan of his. >> joe has a question for you. >> yeah. jonathan, obviously pope francis has been beloved by hundreds of millions across the globe. this film does deal honestly with his past in argentina and it doesn't put a halo over his head. he deals with it bluntly, doesn't he? >> yes, and i think we had a huge screening in buenes aires for the film, people thanked us for the honesty with his life. it makes the man who he is today, a man with doubts and weaknesses. >> the film is deserving of the

praise it is getting and you as well. congratulations. see the film on netflix "the two popes." jonathan pryce, thank you. that does it for us on "morning joe." see you back here tomorrow. stephanie ruhle picks up coverage now. >> thanks so much, willie. hi, i am stephanie ruhle. it is friday, january 10th. here is what's happening today. this morning, we're getting brand new details about a phone call between secretary of state mike pompeo and the iraqi prime minister. in that call iraq asked the united states to send a team in that could start the process of withdrawing u.s. troops from their country. this all comes amid a split screen thursday night. in toledo, ohio he praised the takeout of general soleimani, while in d.c. the house voted to pass a war powers resolution. that resolution limits the president from taking any