blew himself up while his people blow up on the ground. what they did. i'm not able to confirm anything else about his last seconds. can't confirm it one aor anotwa another. >> and fictionalized story about the killing of isis' leader. >> as if the killing of isis wasn't enough. you had to add to that. >> add color to that. >> now america's defense secretary is refusing to endorse the plresident's claims about te specific threat against u.s. embassy posed by iran. >> the president didn't say it was -- didn't cite a specific piece of evidence. he said he probably, he believed. >> are you saying he didn't have one? >> i didn't see one. i'm saying i share the president's view, my expectation they would probably go after our embassie embassies. >> because in the end, killing

of soleimani probably most influential military leader across the middle east over the past 30 years. that wen enougasn't enough. you had to make things up. of course, they made things up from the very beginning. the attack was eminent. they were coming for us. >> the past secretary of defense does not have -- >> you could see last weekend. president trump administration, by the way, why do you send people on sunday shows? it's not like everybody ever leaves and they're like, wow. that worked out well for us. every week! john thnathan lemire? why? every week. by the way, the patriots still out of the playoffs. >> they didn't let us back in. >> did not let you back in this weekend, but -- i should say, last weekend, you actually could tell from pompeo's answers, that they were making up this stuff about him and pompeo was having to push back and -- it became

very obvious after his 14th interview that sunday that -- that -- there was nothing imminent about it, and now we, of course, find out that, from the sec def that donald trump was making stuff up, yeah, they were going to attack 87 embassies. no truth to it. >> from the beginning of this administration one of the things the the president prize s most s the littlingness of aides to kpend him. even if it's a falsehood. top aides, pompeo and this week esper gone out and done the sunday show circuit to make their case, try to have to reverse engineer and justify a decision the president has already made. seen in the past outright lies, stephen miller and others go on sunday shows and talk about the number of votes. >> say to one of our children, i will not say which one it was -- why do you lie?

when telling the truth would be so much better? >> and unnecessary. as you say. no one is going to question the killing of baghdadi. but make him look tougher and the enemy look weaker, details of the crime. no one could confirm there's no audio for the president to have heard that. in ways they are smaller things than this. this is justifying a military attack that could and still could have and still could have detablize the region. and now seemingly falsifying evidence. senators and others say they were not presented with any evidence about threats. >> and getting a report in from the family desk, actually saying that, about a cousin. mother said that about a cousin. expanding. >> as you can see, we have lemire, steve kornacki, adrian arod is with us as well and

national security expert tom nichols author of "the death of expertise" and you are writing about trump as pertains to the truth. john benn. >> it's remarkable. because they had a compelling nair tifb. and they had a narrative that would have worked. you could argue it was an unwise policy, shouldn't have taken their shot. but said bad guy, took him off the battle field. that's what we do. other presidents wanted to do it. we're the guys that actually did it. instead added an argument, falsified, turns out to be wrong they're in trouble because they've staked everything on this imminence. loot goi like talking about ieds. reasons for taking out of saddam hussein. start lying -- an administrations that is lying when it doesn't have to. >> we've heard, steve kornacki, and dries me batty, people

saying, doesn't matter. gets away with it. it's as if the 2018 election didn't happen. it's as if democrats didn't win the largest landslide ever by vote total in the history of the american republic for a mid-term election. it does matter. look at polls on the killing of soleimani, and people are asked whether they support it, whether they feel safer about where they are now because of the killing of soleimani. and it's a landslide. donald trump loses. they don't -- they don't feel safer. they didn't support it. i'm not saying that would have changed the calculation for a lot of people. not looking at both, but there is an impact to all the lies. whether it frustrates people in the democratic party and/or the media, or the democrats and the media or not. there is an impact, and that is

that people don't trust him. he's lying about it. so it makes him feel like, hey, you know what? i'm not feeling especially safe about my commander in chief blowing up the most powerful military figure in the middle east right now. >> impact of the entire trump style is on your screen. approval rating, 43% in the abc poll overall average now is about 44%. somebody who got elected not winning the popular vote. somebody with majority disapproval rate, certainly it's possible he'll get re-elected this year. >> his handling of the situation with iran and only one out of four voters think that america is safer now. because of the killing of soleimani. >> and his approval rating overall as president, read the graphic wrong. approval rating, average, 44%. right along that. tracking with basically opinion of donald trump and his performance as president right there. this has been true for three-plus years. a president who is capable of getting elected by the slimmest

of margins. i would say capable of getting re-elected by slimmest of margins, but also capable, possible it can all fall apart. look where opinion is on the state of the economy and things like that, approval rating not tracked with it. >> by the way, right now, we've got record high markets. record low unemployment. he's sitting at 43%, 44%. advisers need to cross their fingers. i'm hoping the economy stays strong but i really hoping. if not, katie bar the door. speaking of katie bar the door, something howard cosell might have said in 1971. katie, bar the door. the kansas city chiefs, man. so we're flying up here. and it's 24-0. we get out of jfk and you know if you ever land at jfk and the delta terminal it's about a 40-minute walk. go down ten exits -- i mean ten

gates. swear to got, 24-7. ten more gates. 24-14. ten more gates -- >> it's jfk. >> we get in the car, go ahead and half time. incredible game! >> it was. they'll be a decision here by the houston texans that's second guessed forever. up 24-7, their side of the field faking a punt which didn't work. handed the chiefs good field position. go in for a touchdown and the floodgates opened. i mine, mahomes and that chiefs offense so lethal. they scored about 300 consecutive points after being down -- >> actually 304 consecutive points. >> thank you for that fact check. >> a fantastic record, titans upset ravens. some of it pretty happy about. >> who else did the titans upset? >> well, yes. less happy about that one. >> tennessee titans aren't supposed to be that great of a team beat the patriots. and then, my gosh.

they beat the ravens. and half way through the season everybody saying patriots or ravens would win the super bowl. i was sure the ravens would be there. >> yeah. lamar jackson, the mvp. put up 500 total yards in that game but turned over the ball three times and give the titans credit. derrick henry can run the ball, roll tide. by the way, also college football tonight. hoop are you rooting for? >> tonight? i always get got to root for the s.e.c. and playing for the national championship, first time in my life and i rooted for -- here's the deal. this is just like, letting you know what i live with every day. so lsu and alabama. that's like the game of the year. >> wonderful. >> right? always game of the year for us. >> yes. >> i'm sitting there. it's the one game i get nervous about. i sit in front of the tv set. >> with good reason. >> and walking past.

sitting there nervous. mrs. brzezinski walks in and looks, just, i like in yuramuni. the whole house was cheering for lsu. >> so amazing and they won. i thought it was a good game. it was fun. >> no, it was not fun. a nightmare. >> anyway -- >> and lsu? about you? >> lsu. the fact it's being played in new orleans basically gives them a home game. hard to lose. the president will be in attendance tonight. >> are you a football fan or only talk about david geddes songs? >> feel like i've wandered into the wrong tribe. >> i feel the same way. look. starting my list. not even -- tuned in. >> and what do you think? >> lsu tonight. >> absolutely. >> okay. >> clemson. >> clemson? >> not betting against the champions. >> oh, no, they're great. >> so back to the news -- >> about 1970 songs.

first of all, can't hate on zeppelin and the other side of the spectrum, can't hate on wayne newton's "daddy, don't you walk so fast" a classic. my darling pride. >> and we both agreed david gettis and "run joey run" good as 1970 "death rock" could get. >> hellacious song. responsible for "blind man in the bleachers." >> getting ready for the second half, all he'd say. >> okay -- >> now you got to let me in to play. >> are you going to let me do the news now? word of the day, gentlemen, is -- actually a letter of the day. >> the letter. >> is i. and we've touched on iran. get back to it. we have impeachment to get to. go to iowa. senators bernie sanders and elizabeth warren lead tied for first place according to the latest cnn des moines register media com poll. sanders 25% up 5 points since

november. warnen sits 17% up one point both within the polls almost four-point margin of error. former mayor pete buttigieg follows closely behind with 16%. down nine points. former vice president joe biden has 15% unchanged since november. senator amy cloeb klobuchar at . andrew yang, still at 5% up to. >> i want to bring up, though, mr. kornacki, the new hampshire poll last week. >> yep. >> almost identical for this. had the top four. all basically within the margin of error. this is, if it were a horse ray, like, they're going around the corner, at kentucky derby. you got four horses lined up next to each other. this last week. 20, 19, 18, 15. by the way, elizabeth warren at

15 and in fourth or third place, close behind in the other. man, if you're elizabeth warren you actually kind of are liking that. because her on the ground operation is stellar. and she's the number two choice of a lot of people in iowa, and iowa, that matters. >> so both states, four candidates within five points of each other within five points of the lead from last to first place. that means four candidates are not implausibly set up. can get a couple points in iowa, win iowa get all momentum comes from that. eight-day stretch bean iowa and new hampshire. we all talk about the winner, how it's panic time for whoever didn't meet expectations and roll that into new hampshire. both very fluid. both very bunched at the top. if somebody can get a clear victory in iowa you look historically and say, very possible that person's going to roll that into new hampshire. play it out again. nine, ten examples in the modern era. candidates that won both iowa and new hampshire in contested

democratic nominations races so far are undefeated. that's been unstoppable -- not saying it will be now. a major question of biden's strength in south carolina if he doesn't come through here. the possibility of clearance in the first two exists. >> when t.j. tells you he's coming to you, why you did that? >> no. ali was help me bring my book over. appreciate it. going to thank her. >> all right. so, anyway -- pat buchanan actually, remember, you know, always talk how you'd get $100 million. won new hampshire. it's basically worth $100 million of earned media. >> yeah. >> same thing with iowa. so iowa, new hampshire -- whoever. by the way, as we found in 2008, it doesn't matter if you're in second place by one point or third place by one point. you know. jon edwards campaign. because he was just below hillary -- had a pretty rough

impact on his campaign. so -- yeah. whoever can squeak this out in iowa, the winner is a winner is were ainer. >> and the first one. and adrienne elrod what do you say happening in these two states? iowa and new hampshire given these polls. >> mika, a close race. joe mentioned. ground game could make a difference between the four and five points where the gap exists. ie., elizabeth warren. and to the point you all just talked about with elizabeth warren being the common second choice among a lot of caucusgoers. that is huge. because you've got to keep in mind every single caucus, i think about 1,600 sdif caudiffe caucus locations throughout iowa. to go forward after first round of caucus going you have to get 15% of the vote, of the actual people in that room. 15% of you at least, those people have to be in your

corner. if not. >> i e., amy klobuchar, 6%, 7% of that in the room your people are free to go second round whom ever they want to go to. if your choice is elizabeth warren that could significantly boost her. also in iowa releasing a raw vote total. not just the 41 delegates awarded in iowa but the raw vote total. first time we'll see how many people, who cast a vote for who, and how that raw total, vote total plays out. that's not necessarily going to mean more delegates. not having anything to do with delegates but will show a different kind of momentum. i think the messaging game in iowa is also going to be important for candidates, because you could have somebo e. second place get 18 delegates, or probably not that high, but some variation of that. you have a high vote total you can message that to also try to

show men meant um going into new hampshire. going to be fascinating. also to the point you both mentioned. if somebody, i.e., bernie sanders, i.e. even pete buttigieg pulls out a win in new hampshire, that will be a very different momentum track to change, because that, especially in a large race like this with so many candidates running. if someone can pull off a win in both of those two states, that's going to be very significant, and obviously mayor pete desperately needs something like that right now based on a positively that came out this weekend. black likely democratic voters to vote, my obsession in this entire race because it seems new hampshire and iowa may matter less if somebody that's polling, oh, i don't know, 2% among black voters wins those states. joe biden at 48%. bernie, 20%. pretty good showing for him. elizabeth, 9%.

mike bloomberg 4%. cory 4%. yang 3%. mayor pete and steyer, 2%, which, again, i just -- i mean, eddie -- >> we have a debate -- >> found the widest places, this item oslo, or nantucket, mass, massachusetts, maybe where they do the next caucus for the democratic party after these two. i'm sorry. i love the good people of iowa and new hampshire. i love you. love you so much. >> what do you mean by this? sounds a little condescending. >> you're so great. i love you. best people in the world, but there's no way that you should have iowa and new hampshire the first two contests for the democratic party. it is insanity. insanity, because what it's going to do is make their results less relevant unless biden wins. now, if biden wins he's off to

the races. >> yeah. >> because he's -- strength in south carolina and the super tuesday states. if not, like, i still -- there's still that wall for mayor pete. i don't know how he cracks it. >> i don't either. there's a report out in the root this past weekend by michael harriet talking about mayor pete and the race and his police department in south bend . >> if that makes people feel better, saying that's why he's not getting votes in south carolina churches. if you got 'em, smoke 'em. you know? whatever. okay. >> and "washington post" poll 62% of black respondents said they would support mayor pete even though he was gay. right? so -- and some folk. >> you believe that? >> 36% said they were uncomfortable with voting for him as we. >> so what do you believe? >> it's complicated. >> it is complicated. >> it is complicated. >> and people go, oh, no. that has nothing to do with it. when i've had so many black

preachers tell me, oh, yeah, that has everything to do with it. >> right. it's complicated generally. plays itself out in black xmunts communities in particular ways and white communities in particular ways. mayor speet a representative of a desire for a change election. it's not only his youth but also his identity, sexual identity that attracts folks as well as generates questions and uncomfort -- >> this is a generational thing, too, steve. right? like i know young kids and, you know, a lot of people love mayor pete. they just don't even think about, you know, the fact that he's married to a man. they just don't even -- doesn't even get -- like -- show up on radar. sometimes older folks do. whether they're white, whether they're black. whether they're hispanic. i think there are a couple barriers he's running into. >> another one, true among african-american voters and see it abong blue collar white

voters. his appeal skewed to his sort of upper income liberal cohort we're always sort of talking about. where buttigieg appeal has been from the very beginning. look inside this "washington post" poll. fascinating. half as known, buttigieg is, among black democrats, but his negatives are higher than everybody else in the field. joe biden's universally known. negative among black voters 13. sanders, universal 15. buttigieg less than half, 18. >> uh-huh. >> pretty bad. >> look, i also think even though in many ways those who have studied him closely might find him to be tremendously qualified and maybe more qualified than most candidates in terms of knowledge, but he's 37? is he 37? his age? >> 37. mayor of the fourth largest city -- >> in the middle of this iran crisis i think people ultimately are not really looking at who he's married to. looking at age and they just at this point if you're done with trump, or you never were with trump you don't want to make

another mistake again. i think age plays into that. age and experience. >> well, i mean -- >> whether fair or not in this case. >> again it does matter to some people. ly i will say, though, tom if you're really wealthy, art trader on the upper east side, you may be able to afford to take a chance. with a 38-year-old former mayor of south bend, indiana, who, you know -- >> you're going to take a chns wi chance with anybody who's nos donald trump. the cold feeling in the pit of my stomach is who stays home because of which potential nominee? coming at it from, like you, from outside traditionally outside of democratic party. >> right. >> i'm just looking for the candidate who accumulates 207. >> right. >> and each of these candidates, i mean, i think -- steve's point about buttigieg. he'd win the twitter primary.

do really well in the twitter primary but twitter isn't a state. doesn't have electoral votes. >> just because i like when people get really mad at you. on -- on twitter. >> which the is every day. >> and you actually fight them. like what are you doing? right? >> talking about indian food -- >> come on. you just fight them. my grandma said never get in a fight with a pig! because you both get dirty. and -- >> this elevates -- >> the pig likes it! why are you fighting the pigs in the sewer? >> it triggers my professor gene. someone says, sweden is socialist. i get out my -- eddie has the same -- okay. >> i love sweden. >> no, that's not correct. you know, you have failed this midterm. let me explain to you why you're wrong. and it's just the way we're -- >> to make everybody angry in the democratic party especially charlie, like charlie, hoping you're feeling better.

>> charlie, feel better. >> so what democrats do you think what democrats scare you the most as a former republican of not being able to get the votes needed to beat donald trump in wisconsin parks , i'm trouble moop sca trouble. who shares you the most? >> the obvious one is sanders but some, in the rust belt actually picks up where he loses. the probably warren scares me the most, because i think that campaign, when people keep talking about, she's really run a great campaign. i keep asking what was the great part? the dna test? the medicare for all? you know -- what -- >> any other candidates that scare you? >> of those who are left, you know, i think -- i agree with everybody here. pete buttigieg, great future in politics. just not now. >> amazing. >> you know i think that's going to -- i really do.

i don't -- eddie would understand the voting patterns butter than i do, but i worry about, again, a candidate like buttigieg depressing some of the, some of the vote as well. i'm not worried about trying to gain -- we've said this so many times. not trying to convert trump voters or bring them back. hoop would vote for a democratic candidate who decides to wash their hair that day and say i'm just not going to vote. >> got to go. steve kornacki have to finish up the conversation and go to vaughn hilliard next block and talk more about 1970 pop "death rock." >> no, we're not. >> so, steve, i disagree with my good friend tom here on one point. bernie sanders is a wild card. >> yeah. >> like -- i get it. like, elizabeth warren. i'm going to say it. i don't think she's going to play as well in the general, in wisconsin, michigan, pennsylvania. i just don't. >> no. >> listen, maybe picks up

georgia. maybe picks up arizona. maybe picks up a couple other states, and balances out. i don't know. but there's something about bernie sanders in the industrial midwest. the north discreet midwest. he's a wild card. you can't just say, hey. because he's a socialist, he's not going to win. it's a weird thing. he is a socialist. he's -- i think his views on a lot of things are batty. regardless, this guy connects with blue collar voters in the upper midwest in the rust belt. doesn't he? >> one of the reasons for that the thing that drives democrats about him. what is the first thing you hear? he's not a democrat. distance from the democratic party and distance from familiar faces in the democratic party gives him an authenticity with those voters. one thing i'll say, that's the word. authenticity. >> bernie doesn't give a daamn.

like trump, doesn't give a damn. bernie doesn't give a damn what anybody thinks about him. >> if you're mad at the system, at the establishment, want to pregs th particular es that dettonette button he's the one. if sanders wins iowa leads in the register poll, how does he not win new hampshire talking the black vote in the south. 20% is 20%. it's not nothing. a favorable rating with black democrats. what does it look like if he wins iowa, new hampshire and biden seems having lost ---ants could win in nevada. >> 3-0 what does south carolina look like? >> right. >> john kerry won the nomination in 2004 didn't have to win the vote, get to do a tie. that's what he did in iowa and new hampshire. >> the tweet, bernie doing well. wow. what does this all mean. stay tuned. to which bernie retweeted with comment, it means you're going to lose. so we'll go live to vaughn

hilliard in iowa next. back in july president trump described when he "took over the military." >> yeah. >> well now he claims to be selling the protection of american troops to foreign governments. >> how do you feel about that small government conservatives? says he can do whatever he wants. he says he's taken over your military. he says he's taken over your country. when he took over country. says he has the power to do whatever he wants to do because of article 2. stephen miller says the president's authority cannot be questioned. how does that make you feel, small government conservatives? just checking. we'll be right back. if you have moderate to severe psoriasis,

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all right. maybe talk to someone who spoke to bernie yesterday. joining u. ining us now from de iowa. vaughn hillyard. fill us in. >> did he yell? go, vaughn! i'm groing to win this thing! what did he do? >> reporter: sounds pretty much like the same man around the last couple years. the rallies in davenport yesterday, iowa city yesterday, exact same bernie sanders that i heard on the stump back in 2018 back here campaigning for congressional democrats back in 2015 doing this the first go-round. this is the first time des moines register cnn poll released friday night. the gold standard poll here in iowa. this is the first time that he has sat atop that poll, and there's one number particularly i want to point out from that. that is, voters asked whether they were extreemly newastic

about the candidates they were selecting as nurse choice. 49% says bernie sanders first choice, extremely inenthusiastic. campaign that to pete buttigieg and joe biden. listen to what was said. >> polls go up and down. but what's important to the me the kind of grass roots support we have. so polls are great. some days good. some days not good. i think we're going to win here in iowa, because we have an extraordinary grass roots movement. our goal unbelievably, this month right here in the state of iowa is to knock on 500,000 doors. i don't think any campaign in american history has done that. end of the day, tv ads are great, radio ads great but human contact matter, and we think we have the movement to do that. >> reporter: who was with him

this weekend near iowa on the campaign trail? congresswoman rashida tlaib who represents wayne county. the greater detroit area. one of the members of the squad, and i bring that up because it goes to the heart of the conversation you guys had right before the break. look up in michigan. 37,000 fewer voters from 2012 to 2016 and the presidential election. wayne county, diverse democratic county in michigan. 11,000 votes for donald trump. put the math together. if wayne county turned out same levels as they did in 2012 you could make the case that hillary clinton would have won the nomination. talking about bernie sanders and who he's drawing, look who was on the campaign trail making the case on his behalf. the other point i want to make. go back to 2016 exit polls. out of iowa, out of new hampshire and out of nevada. pete buttigieg and joe biden tried to make the appeal to the electorate they're the individuals that could bring

independents over or the moderates or this affected republicans. go back to the exit polls and who, which candidate actually, bernie sanders over hillary clinton actually polled independents to come out and take part in the caucus and the primary process. bernie sanders. 20% of caucusgoers last go-round identified as independents and went by a 69% margin for bernie sanders. in new hampshire, over in nevada, 72%, 71% respectively. that's where this campaign has been frustrated, because they believe their broad base of support has been misunderstood and believe they, when having that conversation about electability, they're the ones best ready to make that case. >> vaughn hill yaiard thank you much. greatly appreciate it. and steve kornacki, reminds me of the polls we read right 2016, talked to disaffected voters from the rust belt states

moop who would you have voted for if you didn't vote for trump? bernie sanders. always been -- because i've always been either in washington or involved in politics, it's always been so striking to me the people outside of bubble of washington, outside the bubble of media, they are not ideological. it's -- so often it's a gut feeling that trump gave them, that bernie gives them. you say, how can the same person say they're going to vote for trump vote for bernie? it's the same way that bobby kennedy's support after he died went over to george wallace. and the kennedy family all of these years later are still trying to figure out why. >> there's a populist sort of component to it, i think. look at who were the obama/trump voter. flipped to trump in 2016 and swung the election to donald trump. talking voters largely in the

northern tier of the country, northern and western maine, part of bernie sanders, vermont, northeast kingdom of vermontpal minnesota. the heart of it. the voters bernie sanders appealed to for years in vermont. a guy -- vermont. very blue state obviously. look at the sort of peculiar politics of vermont that got him elected in the first place back when republicans were nor conservative. second amendment issue, gun issued, a bow to the right in that state create add weird, different coalition on economic populism, a little bit more, off left on cultural issues and i think there's appeal to that s nationally to the kinds of voters you're talking about at least potentially. >> the idea some who voted for trump and warm feelings for bernie sanders is something donald trump is aware of. the 2016 campaign spoke highly of bernie and understood the

overlap. called his crazy bernie but in respects understands bernie appeals to some degree the populism the president himself tapped into. particularly in those sort of rust belt states. adrienne, on the idea of bernie sanders. for a while he and elizabeth warren, progressives in the race seemed a mutual defense agreement. wouldn't attack each other at all. that's seemingly changed at least on the campaign level. talk to us a little about the bernie sanders aides pting o put talking warren fund-raising after it and now bernie doing defense. >> bernie sanders, if he wins the democratic nomination needs elizabeth warren supporters. that's simply the way the math works. he's needs those supporters and has to tread this path carefully. i give props to both the way bernie sanders and elizabeth warren handled this so far, because bernie sanders made the first move.

then sort of blamed it on a staffer. a lot of people work on my campaign. you know? i have a lot of respect for elizabeth warren. not sure who put these out. elizabeth warren on the other hand made a very direct you know, showed she was directly frustrated with bernie sanders for doing this. he's my friend. knows better to do this. around nine i received a fund-raising email solicitation from elizabeth warren's campaign trying to raise money off of what bernie sanders is doing. so this is kind of working well for both of them right now, but i think we all knew eventually this non-aggression pact would have to break. we have, of course, the debate. we assume is still happening tomorrow night on tuesday. so i'm looking for the way bernie and elizabeth warren sort of handle this, this situation they're currently in right now. of course, also looking to see how vice president biden and bernie sanders both draw contrast on foreign policy.

but i think this might be the first time that we really see bernie sanders and elizabeth warren having a direct, you know, confrontation on the debate stage, which we haven't seen yet. >> and john kerry by the way, all over the weekend campaigning for joe biden in iowa. adrienne elrod, thank you very much. coming up, new reporting that president trump authorized general qassem soleimani's killing seven months ago. now the timing is raising questions about the trump administration's justification for taking him out. nbc's carol lee joins us with that, next on "morning joe." what'd we decide on the flyers again? uh, "fifteen minutes could save you 15%

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i can reveal i believe it would have been four embassy and i think that probably baghdad already started, but i think it would have been four embassies. could have been mailitary bases could have been a lot of other things too, and then all of a sudden he was gone. >> the president didn't say it was a tangible -- didn't cite a specific piece of evidence. probably, he believed, could have been. >> are you saying there wasn't one? >> i didn't see one with regard to four embassies.

i'm saying i share the president's view, my expectations he where going to go amp our embassies. >> the defense secretary had no idea what the threat was and openly said he did not see a threat. >> did not see it. four embassies now. >> but that he has to believe the president. okay. so as the trump administration's justification for the attack that killed iranian general soleimani continues to evolve, nbc news correspondent carol lee has new reporting this morning that trump authorized soleimani's killing seven months ago -- >> well, i mean -- >> -- with conditions. >> seven months. that's somewhat imminent. >> carol? >> carol, tell us about your reporting about this not so imminent decision to kill soleimani? >> reporter: right, guys. my colleague courtney kube and i cold by five administration officials current and former that basically last summer the idea of killing soleimani came under serious consideration in the white house and john bolton, the national security adviser at the time urged the president to

take out soleimani after iran shot down a u.s. drone last june, and at that time the president said, according to the people we've spoken with, no. that's not what we're -- not basically doesn't correspond with the action that iran took, but he did agree that he would authorize the killing of soleimani if iran took out -- or killed an american. and that decision came with a condition also that it wasn't just military leaders that they, if they found soleimani and could take the shot they could take it, it was they could come back, give him the option and have him sign off on any final operation. so the timing of this, as you mentioned, raises questions about the justification, or key justification for killing soleimani ten days ago because they said an imminent attack. this shows something on the president's radar far earlier and he agreed to do this if iran took that step and cross eed hi

red line as recently as last summer as opposed to responding to a potential imminent attack. >> jonathan lemire, the white house isn't even trying. this is amateur night in dixie, man. they're not even trying. oh, imminent threat? well, it's not imminent threat. doesn't matter if it's imminent threat. "wall street journal" ed court page, doesn't matter if it's eminent threat or not. divert your eye it's over here, and now it's like, trump, i -- by the way, with -- amazing amount of spray tan. look away. needs to take the goggles off the eyes. apply that -- that's a side bar. the big other point, which is, donald trump telling everybody four embassies. four embassies he's planning to blow up four embassies and then it's like, you know. they're not even trying. what's going on? do you talk to people inside the white house and say, could you just try to get your lies lined

up a little bit, a little bit better? >> first of all, the culture reserves references today, terrific. >> thank you so much. by the way, we've got blind man in the bleachers. daddy don't you run so fast. wayne newton. >> what else? >> "run joey run." >> it's not even 7:00 a.m. >> i know. >> in terms of the white house, we've seen this before. that -- his aides strongly defend what the president says. the narrative keeps shifting but also we're seeing a by-product of the national security team. far less pushback than when mattis or mcmaster or kelly or even bolden was there. esper or o'brien, the president has a strong kinship, much more willing to enable his impulses. carol, on the times of this. reporting is terrific. told the press corps on air force one a week ago he had eyes on soleimani he said up to 18

months and another strike. right? another attempt to get another member of the iranian revolutionary guard's in recent weeks. how does that play in and does that further undermine the idea this was being done because of the immediate threat to our embassies? >> reporter: a great question. it shows this was something broader. it wasn't just this narrow retaliation for the killing of an american contractor in iraq. it wasn't narrowly focused on just qassem soleimani. it was broader than that. the president, soleimani -- our reporting, our understanding, that soleimani came on the president's rare dar very early in 2017, within weeks of when he took office when then director mike pompeo came to him with new intelligence showing that soleimani was planning attacks. those peak attacks never came fruition, the seed planted for what we saw happened ten days

ago. given something broaders, what else will we see in this space? what other types of steps is the president going to authorize that are similar to the failed strike that didn't take out another irdc leader, but where it is this going is the main question. >> exactly. the length he'll go to take action like that. nbc's carol lee, thank you very much. with us now, a member of the house homeland security and veteran affairs committee democratic congressman max rose of new york. he's a veteran of the war in afghanistan and a recipient of the bronze star and purple heart. he recently published and op-ed in the "new york times" alongside virginia congresswoman elaine loria ob wn why they vot against the war powers resolution. why don't we start there. why did you vote against? >> first, thank you for having me and happy new year. when i think about the killing of qassem soleimani, we've all

been searching for justification. first of all, justification i can give you 600 points of justification, 600 soldiers. he killed over the course of the last -- >> the white house and the president why not just say that? >> the point i'm trying to make. >> why does the president lie? give more false stories? is that justify justification right there? 600 troops? >> there has been a justification foyer killing this individual the last 10, 15 years. why else would george bush or barack obama considered killing him? this administration made two mistake. didn't inform the gang of eight previously and haven't had that bipartisan justification or credibility. second mistake, overstated what imminence means. in the run-up to 9/11 our intelligence agencies claimed an imminent attack was coming without targeting. you don't need specific targeting to claim imminence.

the question, those, amidst all of this is not legality or justification, it's whether this was wise. and part of that determination centers around what did we do after an inevitable iranian retaliation? what we did after, de-escalation. saying this as a democrat. that's something i supported. so at a moment where the president did something that i believe was legal and justified and then subsequently de-escalated. i don't think that was the moment with a non-binding resolution that restated preexisting law to send the message to the american people we are going to war or at war nap . that is politics. >> ask you this question. iranians have been provoking not only the united states, allies across the region for some time. why would you allow the iranians to shoot down -- not you -- why would the president allow the

iranians to shoot down a u.s. drone and not respond? why would america allow the iranians to blow up oil refineries in saudi arabia and not respond? why would america give the iranians the belief that just as with barack obama, you know, we're going to draw red lines and then you walk over them and we're going to do nothing about it. >> sure. >> why -- isn't an ounce of prevention worth and ounce of cure? why not stand up to nthem in these smaller incidents instead of blowing up soleimani? >> right. >> which -- again, we don't know the consequences. there's a lot of cheering this weekend. >> you're 100% right. a lot of cheering this weekend, because the iranian government's facing protests. i think that's a good thing. but this is a marathon. as we've learned with iran. since 1979, this is a marathon.

>> and what i think we're talking about here is questions of carrots and sticks. what we have seen and self intelligence experts have said this in the last 24 hours when it comes to iran and general leaders in the region is that when you establish a red line and then enforce it, it is respected language. and we should probably do a getter job of articulating what those red lines are, what the response will be and then enforcing them, but here's what i will say as well in regards to all of this, these intelligence reports, what the cia director is saying and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff is saying. two career public servants. this administration cannot point to them as say, believe them, believe them, look who's talking, and then the next day, the next week, as pertains to russian interference in our elections or anything else, say that's just the deep state talking. you cannot have your cake and eat it too. we should be respecting the words and the reports, but

verifying of these career public servants. not demeaning them then the next month when it doesn't suit our own interests. >> right. >> congressman, those attacks on the intelligence community really wear down the president's credibility. do you think he could have pulled some of that back by simply making the direct and legitimate argument that you just made. to say, any day you take this guy off the field is a, he's a legitimate target. this is, this serves the national interests in the following ways. could he have repaired some of that damage with congress by just telling the truth? >> absolutely. >> this isn't that difficult. >> and bringing in key congressional leaders beforehand. the unfortunate truth when it um cans to congress, if you brief the entirety of congress you might at well brief everyone sitting at this table. it's all going to leak. irresponsible to say we should have a high-level classified briefing for all of the members. >> the gang of eight leaked? >> never has. exactly that's the point i'm trying to make. >> ask you another question, too. about the gang of eight, if the

president had gone to the gang of eight, listen, this guy's killed 600 u.s. troops, done more to spread chaos across the middle east in the past 30 years than anybody else. we have a shot at him. who would have protested that gang of eight? >> shouldn't have. >> i don't think any of them would have, just like they didn't protest when george w. bush's people laid out what they wanted to do after 9/11. >> i see this unfolding in my district right now where it swung back and forth. i said it's a patriotic districts, not one with a -- they think it's all politics, don't trust anything. with every decision, centered around my opposition to the resolution. every decision we make and the ways in which we execute those decisions we have to think about the fact that the american people do not trust this process. they think everything is defined by people's political affiliati affiliation. >> yeesh. congressman max rose. thank you very much. great to have you on. >> thank you so much. up next, nbc's stephanie

ruhle joins us with new reporting on mike bloomberg and the possibility that he'll spend a billion dollars on the general election, even if he is not the democratic nominee. "morning joe" is back in two minutes. i remember thinking about things i did and wondering if that was the last time i was going to do that thing. i thought...i'm not letting anything take me away from my family, that loves me and needs me, without a fight. when i came to cancer treatment centers of america, it felt... so different from any other hospital that we'd ever been to. whether it be spiritual, physical, emotional... they take it all into consideration, in healing you. infusion, imaging, everything is here. i don't have to go anywhere else.

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we have confidence in our case that it is impeachable and this president is impeached for life regardless of any gamesmanship on the part of mitch mcconnell. we feel very proud of the courage of our members to vote to impeach the president. there's nothing the senate can do that can ever erase that. ten months from now we will have an election if we don't have him removed sooner, but, again, he will be impeached forever. >> yeah. >> here's another cultural

reference we learn from james bond. diamonds are forever. impeachment is forever. >> nancy pelosi clearly knows how to set up president trump in the because it was in his head. "why should i have impeachment attached to my name when i did nothing wrong". >> i love how he keeps going, read the transcripts. first of all, not a transcript, but even the white house's version of the quote transcript, the conversation, was enough to scare the hell out of everybody, jonathan lemire. it started him on the path to impeachment. >> do us a favor, though. that's the line from the original transcript/rough memo. not an official transcript. that's it. that remains an issue in the white house to this day. the president feels that completely cleared him . others reluctant to put that out

because it was take than way. released that, the firestorm began. the impeachment began when they came out. >> are we ever going to see those files that were moved inappropriately? >> you mean into the secret server? >> for political reasons, the secret server. political reasons. not intel because the president so embarrassed himself and possibly committed illegal acts? are we ever going to see them? >> would be helpful. >> tom can speak to legality behind classifying this stuff. it's the president decision. if it's in the server, they can keep it from the public eye at this point. >> some graduate student after declassification in foia will probably be able to literally pry it out with an ice pick. >> when will that happen? >> when we're all shuffle boarded and retired. >> redacted -- >> shuffle board. are you any good? >> don't. >> the twitter shuffle board community will come after me

now. >> ask the folks in -- shuffle board. >> i love boca. >> okay. keep it locked up forever. >> you can see, we have white house reporter for the associated press jonathan lemire. national security expert at "usa today" tom nichols and professor at princeton university eddie jr. and joining the conversation, msnbc news anchor stephanie ruhle with new reporting on michael bloomberg we'll get to in a moment. political reporter for the "washington post" and msnbc political analyst robert costa. moderator of "washington week" on pbs. and in des moines, iowa, msnbc national affairs analyst co-host of showtime's "the circus" and editor and chief of "the recount" john heilemann joins us. >> keeping score at home, brought up three early '70s pop songs. two of three played. only one not played yet.

>> "blind man in the bleachers." >> exactly. "blind man in the bleachers" yell bingo. you're a winger ewinner if you that. senator bernie sanders and elizabeth warren lead the polls in the cnn des moines media com poly. sanders, 21%. up five points since november. warren 17% up one. both within the poll's almost four-point margin of error. former mayor pete buttigieg follows closely behind with 16% down nine points. former vice president joe biden has 15% unchanged since november. senator amy klobuchar is at 6% and andrew yang sits at 5% of support up two. with less than a month to go, 11% of iowa's likely democratic caucusgoers say they are unsure of their first choice. that's up six points since november. more from the poll now.

45% of likely democratic caucus goe caucusgoers could change their month about who to support and 46% said their vote is locked in. and senator elizabeth warren second choice followed by mayor pete buttigieg at 15%. both former vice president joe biden and senator bernie sanders both sit at 12%. >> stop right there for a second. john heilemann, if you could, start with an explainer for our audience, why is this graphic so important? why are second choices so important in iowa caucuses? >> reporter: right. joe. the graphic is important you're looking effectively at a four-way tie for first place in this des moines register cnn poll. any of those four candidates at the top now are really within the statistical margin of error. any could win. i think i've been, spent a

decent amount of time in december before christmas. been here the last few days, talking to people, seeing the candidates and people have been through a lot of caucuses. a few things of true. expecting record turnout north of what barack obama and hillary clinton brought out in 2008. that's going to have huge impact. two, everyone says jump ball between the four candidates. no one surprised by any of the four winning. now, amy klobuchar, cory booker, andrew yang, people asking for all of the fall of 2019. would any of those candidates have a chance to have a late surge in iowa in january? if you believe the des moines register numbers and pretty much everybody believes this is the gold standard out here, it looks whoic because you got to have 15% of caucus attendees and every individual caucus has to make the qualification threshold before the second round where actual winners and loserser

determined, looks like amy klobuchar at 6%, andrew yang at 5% none will clear the 16% threshold. could in a few individual caucus sites. after that first round of voting, klobuchar, booker, yang voters, free to align with some other candidate. what does that say? it says, first of all, everyone here takes bernie sanders really seriously. everyone theirs the sanders organization here operation here is one of the best two. he almost won caucuses in 2016. he has incredibly high enthusiasm and commitment on part of his voters. see it if you dig into the poll. bone e bernies voters enthusiastic and committed. few say of the young, booker steyer voters, likely to shift to bernie sanders on caucus night. so mayor pete buttigieg, joe biden, likely, or at least in the best position to pick up -- that's a large chunk of vote.

add those up, talking 15% of the caucus electorate shifts allegiance after the first round on caucus night. a reason to think that pete buttigieg, joe biden, even though there's, again, no gain saying momentum and strength, those guys as well as elizabeth warren on caucus night could blow back bernie sanders and win here. >> mr. costa, jump ball. been out there a good bit. followed pete buttigieg and his campaign from the start. buttigieg is down nine points in the des moines retgister poll. what's going on? >> mayor buttigieg has a lot of appeal in iowa. many voters even sanders supporters like pete buttigieg. und underscoring his credentials, a

veteran, and following the iran crisis, some turning in the democratic party more towards anti-war voice, like senator sanders other looks for a seasoned hand like vice president biden. look at des moines register poll pay attention to the andrew yang voter. they're an anti-establishment-type voters who want more expansive federal government, because they moved to sanders. and i've noticed about sanders campaign out in iowa. iowa is 90% white. sanders had trouble in 2016 in states like south carolina appealsi appealing to african-american and hispanics voters. people wearing t-shirt, affection towards bernie. getting that other percentage in the state to come out. historic turnout here has not been strong. a variable in the coming weeks

to see how many minority voters come out and who do they caucus for. >> hey,heilemann, it's lamere. you're in iowa. in a few more days far more challenging to get to iowa for candidates in the race. there's about to be an impeachment hearing. those tied up with their day jobs in washington. how will they continue to run in iowa if not there? >> jonathan, very good question. i would say they are going to be trying to do whatever they can. they're not happy about this situation, and i've got to say, whatever all of us and whatever the great minds of politics think about nancy pelosi's decision to hold back those articles of impeachment for all of these weeks, the people in amy klobuchar's world, people in cory booker's world and lesser extent elizabeth warren and bernie sanders's world,

frustrated. decision not to send them over earlier meant they're having to in the last two week spend this time in washington, d.c. they did not want to be there. had she sent the articles over earlier this trial might already be over. doing teletown halls. a lot of surrogates out. last night i saw john kerry out, a five-day swing for joe biden. an example. although the problem doesn't apply to biden. it's a problem for other candidates, too. get their celebrity endorsers, big name political endorsers and use electronics means to try in a way overcome this obstacle. i'll tell you right now joe biden, pete buttigieg in the top tier are two happy guys having iowa to themselves about a week from now when the rest of these, the other two top tier senators, warren and sanders, will be stuck in d.c., at least a week or so.

>> another senator alex reminds me. michael bennet. >> right. >> at belmont, breaks light. come on. keeping fingers crossed. former new york city mayor michael bloomberg is not ruling out, get this, spending billions of dollars of his own money. >> possibility change. >> on the 2020 presidential race. even if he doesn't win the democratic nomination. bloomberg told the "new york times" he would use his political operation to help senators bernie sanders or elizabeth warren win in november. if i was not the party nominee. you reported last week bloomberg's massive campaign of some 500 staffers will work through the general election, going to pay them and they will shift their efforts towards helping elect whomever the party selects to face president trump. wow. >> whoever? >> whoever. >> remember, mayor bloomberg said his number one goal, get donald trump out of office. while he might disagree with

bernie sanders or elizabeth warren on political issues, he's saying this isn't about politics. this is about the future of our democracy. he's absolutely, from his perspecti perspective, in it to win it. last six weeks look at the national polls he's around fifth place. he is now saying, after the primaries, excuse me. after super tuesday, if the democratic voters say, mayor mike, you are not our guy, he will take that machine, six battleground states, 500 employees and more important, this is his digital operation. might not know the name. where all of this political ads are churned out of. where they're collecting all of that important commercial data to then target message as only president trump, right now, take that whoa effort and put it behind whatever democrat is running. for the president, for brad parscale, this is jarring. said behind closed doors let all the democrats kill each other.

we're here with basically an unlimited war chest. not so much anymore. >> wow. incredible. >> this is a game-changer. again, talked about this last week. the first time since the early 1800s we have re-elected three presidents that you have, three presidents who haven't served two terms. a lot of it has to do with the money collected. i remember bill clinton targeting bob dole and republicans in early -- 1996. it happened again with bush in '04. happened again with obama in '12, and now bloomberg is going to be doing the same thing to donald trump and it's -- their goal all year was to become unbeatable by raising $100 million. for bloomberg, he sneezes, and $100 million, like, falls on the floor. i saw four commercials of his within ten minutes on one of the

football games last night. listen, he has said -- >> many criticized him saying why can't he just put his money behind a candidate who could win? right now he's saying i'm going to do everythinging i can to win and if i can't, you can have that money. that money helped flip the house in 2018. remember that. >> yeah. >> would elizabeth warren take it? >> that's the question. >> this is the question. >> if it's third party, doesn't have a choice. >> that's true, but important for us as we, no matter if the money's on your side, there is a general argument to be made that this kind of money in american politics is actually distorting american politics. right? >> those are the rules right now. >> i got you. i understand that, but seems to me, grossly absurd to even think that somebody could spend $1 billion-plus in an american election. >> barack obama spent $1 billion-plus. >> grossly absurd then and it's grossly absurd now. >> this is -- let me ask you

this -- would you like mayor bloomberg to go home and instead invest in another business? or would you like him to spend $1 billion beating donald trump? >> this is the ethical al dile joe scarborough. if you hold the view one of the problems with our current political system is the outsized role of money, whether it's for your side or not, billion declares can -- billionaires can do this. >> these are the rules donald trump is playing by. do democrat is unilaterally disarm? do you allow donald trump to spend the next four years shredding constitutional and political norms? or do you spend the money? >> so -- so -- so i think if bernie sanders or elizabeth warren, or whomever the -- >> by the way a rhetorical question. >> oh, so you don't want an

answer. >> spend the money, but go ahead and tell me why you don't, they would have to make a serious decision. seems to me what sanders and warren has done over the course of this primary is to say they are not taking that kind of money. to inform their -- to inform their campaigns. so this is going to be interesting. >> isn't -- this demem lilemmad dlibersation last nanoseconds, like the end of "arthur." walks back, i took the money. i'm not crazy. >> a good -- >> do you make any pop culture reference on this show after 1990? >> oh, my god. >> no. >> can't do that. >> we'll work on it, but, you know, at some point, of course -- >> not crazy. >> isn't the way out of this for democrats, like joe said. a third party spend. right? it's going to be his organization. he's not dumping money for himself, and isn't there some way that the democrats, i think, sort of soothe their consciences by saying, look, up against a

guy with a flame thrower. we have to have a flame thrower. nobody likes to fight with flame throwers but that money involved get past 2020 then change the rules. get out there and try to stop this. isn't that sort of alleviate this -- >> because we can't change -- >> there are no rules. facebook is where this election will be fought. that's the connective tissue of our generation. >> seems to me, right? the practical matter is that donald trump and his minions will spend billions of dollars, and you're right that democrats will have to confront that reality. but seems to me that if we hold the view that this kind of money in our politics is a problem, we have to -- even if we're going to embrace some of it, we have to say so in a way that suggests that this is deeply problematic. >> these are the rules we're fighting with, and in 2020. win the election. change the rules. it's democracy. don't you feel better?

take his money. robert costa -- robert costa, it's -- >> bloomberg money. a lot. >> i'm hearing a lot of people say mike bloomberg has no shot at anything. sounds vaguely familiar to a self-described bill n ed billio four, five years ago didn't have a shot. somebody winning iowa, a different winner in new hampshire. biden wins south carolina. someone spending $100 million in states nobody else is spending anything, even if he gets 15, 16, 17% of those delegates on that day, man. that makes it hard for anybody to get to a majority by the dnc. doesn't it? >> that's true, and as stephanie referenced recent polls have shown mayor bloomberg ticking up in states along with tom steyer. two candidates who spent an enormous amount of money on

television advertising. the recent polling data shows television ads still work in terms of getting voters interested in your campaign. the challenge for democrats, on the establishment side of the party, if it's a crowded space among moderates, centrists, democrats comes iowa, new hampshire even south carolina where biden has a real base, go into super tuesday with ascendant mayor bloomberg because of television advertising and could have splintered moderate field going into super tuesday. that wing of the party, that's a concern. someone like senator sanders or senator warren could come bursting out of iowa or new hampshire with momentum and start to consolidate the left wing of the party sooner than the moderate wing is consolidating. that could lead, as you say, to not perhaps a contested convention, but a long, protracted primary race. >> john heilemann, you work with bloomberg. you work at bloomberg, i should say. >> for -- for.

>> better way to put it. you work, like everybody, you work "for e"michael bloomberg. >> yeah. >> what's your thought on how things are developing? and steyer picking up points in the polls by throwing a lot of money at ads and bloomberg hitting 7% in some national polls? where do you see it going? >> right. i'll say two things, joe. one is that i think that there's a consensus i think in politics now that in general television ads are less effective than they've ever been, and you have not seen -- they still move votes on the margin. no doubt mike's spending is helping him in places. certainly helping tom steyer in places like south carolina, nevada. it has a definite effect, maybe a little bit of a limited effect. i don't think there's anything -- one. great veirtues of michael bloomberg, smart and rational. i don't any any of under the

impression eve win all of mike's money that he can win the nomination outright starting as late as he did. i think what they believe is that if there's a car crash in february, as bob costa just talked about. where you get through iowa, new hampshire and nevada and south carolina and there is no clear front-runner especially no clear front-runner moderate side of the party, enough blue states, bloomberg could get 18% to 20% and the effect keep anyone from getting to 1,019 you need that number to be the democratic nominee and force a contested convention in milwaukee and it's really a jump ball on the court. the second possibility, though, i want to highlight, because we've talked a little an bernie sanders in iowa. the other scenario michael bloomberg and his people would love, to see bernie sanders wins iowa and new hampshire.

he's on the rise in nevada where bob pointed out doing better with hispanic voters than in the past. match's bernie sanders wins the first three contests and has a huge head of steam coming out of february. a -- and biden and buttigieg crumbled. a world where democratic establishment looks up and has to squarely confront the possibility that bernie sanders will be the nominee. there will be a huge establishment backlash to that, and mike will then sit there saying, okay, guys. i'm your last chance to stop bernie sanders from being the nominee. a huge chunk of the established moderate party would rally around michael bloomberg at that point because they're terrified of the prospect of sanders as the nominee. >> not only does stephanie know mike bloomberg personally but she, too, worked for him. bringing that insight to the table. did you see what he said asked about ndas signed with female employees? just, hey. there are two-way street and wouldn't want them out either.

sort of -- boom. >> that is most likely going to come back and be an issue for him as he moves forward, but i'm sure in bloomberg's mind, if he makes it to the general election, he probably thinks he's in good shape in that regard compared to president trump. >> yeah. the comparison is definitely quite vast. john heilemann, robert costa, thank you both. >> bob, what are you working on this week? >> pay attention to sanders in iowa. does he start to pick up after the des moines register poll and does susan collins and senator romney and murkowski push leader mcconnell to allow witnesses? doesn't mean necessarily john bolton will be a witness or not. do they say we're not going to let you vote on this rules package, 50% you need for a senator trial until we hear from witnesses. >> and actually murkowski, collins, romney, may actually move in that direction, what are you hearing? >> hearing from people familiar with senator collins and her

talk, she's leader of this small working group. that they do feel mcconnell's going to give them some room on witnesses. not the detail -- details haven't been set. because mcconnell knows people like cory gardner, senator collins, they're up in 2020, tough races. they can't be seen as blessing a trial that many people will maybe say is imperfect or unfair. they need some kind of process including limited witnesses that gives them something to talk about when they go back to their voters. that's great. all right. thank you both. stephanie ruhle, thank you as well. we'll be handing off the coverage to you as always at 9:00 eastern time. right here on msnbc. >> 9:00-ish. we do our best. >> yeah, we try. >> and the 9:00 hour, we'll be waiting, it's just really hard. >> may be a football game or two joe wants to cover, at 8:59. >> and just doesn't know how to stop. anyhow, thank you so much for your patience. before we go to break, it's a busy week at

knowyourvalue.com. kick things off with monday's motivation. let go of fear and say yes and achieve your career comeback. it's a key message from my new book "come back careers." >> comes out tomorrow. exciting. >> a really good book for women over 30, 40, and my co-author, help women who have taken a career break and want to rethink, re-invent success at 40, 50, 60 or 70. katchen on the "today" show in the 9:00 hour. >> and i can get fired. read this. >> or guys can buy it for their wives, daughters, aunts. anyone over 40 or 50. in this situation, a difficult, fearful place for women who want to make a comeback and we really get them through it. also, you've got to check out the amazing lady gaga interview at oprah's 2020 vision tour. did you see this? posted now.

incredible. music superstar reveals she takes dbt therapy for her mental health struggles. incredibly raw and generous interview. talked a lot about it because i take dbt and had a tremendous impact on my life and relationships. it's a mindfulness-based therapy that helps me get off sugar and addressed a long-standing addiction to sleep medication. it's real. i'm practically off it and want everyone to watch this interview. it has the capability to change millions of lives and save many, too. so i'm so grateful to lady gaga for using her platform and her fame to validate the impact of this therapy, which i think should be mainstreamed in schools and businesses. >> really should be mainstreamed. yoids extraordinary how it teaches you to interact with other people. how to be more mindful. this interview is incredible, too. i remember watching kanye on

"david letterman" talking about his mental health struggles. this is something five years ago nobody would talk about. >> right. >> i thought, how great it was that -- that mental health was like being shoved out of the corner and center stage. kanye talked about it, but lady gaga also. really went there. >> so raw and -- >> borderline with dbt. so important for everybody to see it. >> it's raw and specific in terms of what she went through, but you can see how it could help you, too. go to knowyourvalue.com. watch that. you'll see some of the pieces i've written about my experience with it as well. and still ahead on "morning joe," two huge headlines from overseas. president trump brags about deploying troops to saudi arabia in exchange for cash. >> hmm. >> as the iranian government shoots to kill its own citizens, protesting the regime. we'll run through all of it straight ahead on "morning joe. "

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demonstrators in iran shouted anti-government losloga to took to the streets to protest admission had shot down an iran yn passenger jet killing up a 176 people onboard. at first senior iranian officials strongly denied allegations of a missile strike against the passenger plane. framing it was western propaganda. but on saturday iran's revolutionary guard acknowledged that it failed to close the country's airspace and its international airport, even as it waited for the u.s. to retaliate after iran's missile attack on iraqi military bases housing u.s. troops. yesterday marked the second day of protests. the "new york times" reports the unrest spread outside tehran, the capital to at least a dozen cities. security forces fired tear gas and rubber bullets and

eventually live ammunition to disburse gemmen straighters. a day earlier, hundreds gathered at universities in tehran to protest the government's changing narrative, which prompted president trump to tweet in support of the protesters in both english and in farsi saying in part, we are following your protests closely and are inspired by your courage. the president also warned the iranian government to "allow human rights groups to monitor and report facts from the ground" and that, "the world is watching." joining us now, political analyst elise jordan and co-host of npr's newsmagazine "all things considered" mary louise kelly just back from reporting in tehran where she spoke to iran's foreign minister sha badd zarif right after the killing of qassem soleimani. great to have you on.

what did he say about the lack of information that was given to the iranian people, the incorrect information that was given to the iranian people and also the fact they were left rather exposed while this was all going on? >> good morning. yes. absolutely stunning turn of events. i just got home from tehran saturday night and sat down towards the end of the week whenny a was there with zarif and also with a spokesman and advisers to president rouhani and asked point blank, is it possible aaron downed this airplane. looked me in the eye, absolutely not. no cover-up. this will become clear this is a terrible accident, mechanical accident. that was very much the line right up until the point that it wasn't. and because that was the iranian government's line, that is, of course, the line that is making its way through all of iranian media. so that is the line that iranians were getting and that is part of what's fueling these remarkable protests that we're

seeing now where people are shouting "death to the supreme leader" that gets you sent to prison if not worse in iran. people are so frustrated being told one thing three days and turns out that something very different happened. >> jonathan lemire? >> hey, mary louise. following up on that, i know you're back from tehran, but what sort of energy have you observed there as to how long this could go? real dangerous repercussions for these protesters. the government has been prone to crack down on this. sat the same time as a part b., with these protests going and the government facing such questions about the airline, does this in ways limit their appetite to have further retaliation against the united states even sort of whether it's more subtly, like cyber attacks ob through their militia proxies? >> possibly. their certainly dealing with major domestic problems again, which tends to focus the energy. the energy you have there. it's a country of 80 million

people, iran. so it's substantially bigger than iraq, saudi arabia, and a young population. 40 years ago, a baby boom. significant population in 20s and 30s who have access to the internet through vpns, through satellite dishes reading international media, reading other accounts of the situation in their country. but the turnaround, i landed shortly after midnight last monday, the day that qassem soleimani's funeral procession was making its way through the streets of iran. there were hundreds of thousands if not a million, iranian media put it at, people out on the streets furious at the united states and to see these protests a week later furious at their own leadership and saying trump isn't the problem. our leaders are the problem. it shows the complexity of that society and the deep divisions of public opinion. to see people out yelling "death to iran's leaders" is a

remarkable, remarkable thing. >> and what would normal state department be doing at this point and what do we know about what our state department is doing at this point? >> where do you start given secretary of state pompeo seems to act more like the defense secretary and counseling on military strikes versus actually doing any diplomacy? i'm just curious, mary louise, when you spoke to the foreign minister, how was he addressing the iran nuclear deal, and drawing, and iran's drawing away from the nuclear deal? >> i should note i sat down with zarif the day before, was it the day before the plane crash? no questions about that point about what was going on. so we were focused on what iran's next move would be to respond to the u.s. killing of soleimani, and the nuclear deal. i asked him, is the nuclear deal over? we are hearing that iran is suspending compliance with the

remaining limits of the deal. he said, it's not over. we are willing to go back in full compliance, if our demands are met. i said, this still isn't good news for the nuclear deal you negotiated. he admitted that. but when asked, does this represent iran racing towards a nuclear bomb? he said, absolutely not. if that were what we wanted to do we would have done it a while ago. the term there, suspended. come back into compliance if europe, if the united states, can make moves to help us, because what you do see in iran is the impact of the sanctions. these protests we are watching now are for a different reason. it's anger over the plane crash, but the same grievances in terms of corruption, frustration with government, fuel prices, food prices, all of those factors are intact and now we're watching in our spark ignite that. >> thank you so much. nbr's mary louise kelly, greatly

appreciate it. the cover of the "new york post." saw this on twitter a good bit yesterday. students refusing to walk on the american flag and the israeli flag that -- it's a good -- a good focus. there we go. students refusing -- i couldn't even say. see? this is an american flag here. that's the israeli flag, and the students, there's video all over the place, where students are refusing to walk on those flags. so, tom, i -- it seems to me the situation in iran is far more desperate for the leadership than it was in 2009. in 2009 it was really urban urbane protests from the iranians. more rural, more religious people in iran still supporting the regime. it's cutting across all

demographic lines 11 years later. these protests started actually outside of tehran. but now are sweeping across the country. >> you know, i wonder what we'd be talking about if the iranians hadn't taken down that jetliner? because there was almost like a momentum that was building against trump, against the americans. even here in the united states we kind of -- as congressman -- earlier, we forgot what a bad guy soleimani was and then iranians take down this airliner. a couple things about that that are important, i think. an airliner full of people who are not particularly hostile. first of all, full of iranians bund people like ukrainians, canadiens and others not particularly hostile to the iranian regime and that makes it even worse that this was people who would normally be, have a lot of interaction with the iranian people. i think that mattered. i think in some ways it shows

you that history can really turn on these single black swan moments, like a trigger-happy surface-to-air missile operator who changes the entire direction of the debate. as mary louise was saying instead of a million people in the streets over soleimani, now students are in an active clearly civil disobedience saying i'm not going to step on an american or egyptian flag. >> i thought soleimani would unite iran for some time, and give the government a breather. obviously this missile takedown has changed all of that, but this is, again -- this is an ongoing problem for this iranian government, and it has been -- i mean, they've been facing protests for quite some time. it's coming from rural areas.

the coming from tehran. it's coming from students. it's coming from working-class iranians. it's a real challenge. again, whatever advantage they got in an attack from america, it was completely wiped clean this past week. >> building for a while, these protests as you say, and different this time around. far more wide spread and diverse in terms of those out in the streets. no question here. in the white house, the administration feels the same way. this whole story took a turn when that airplane was tragically shot down. >> yeah. >> the iranians were united around soleimani those first days after the attack. seems to be an appetite to push back against the united states, against trump and the sddecisio and also seemed the international community was split on whether this was a wise thing to do and european allies upset, certainly not consulted in advance and concerned about the fallout also. the focus shifted with innocent lives lost and with iran making

the mistake. talking about the mary louise interview earlier, hit back. teeli te deal with the domestic problem rather than dealing with the united states. >> fascinating. talk about the iranians not walking on this flag. it's always been so fascinating to me that the governments that have traditionally been hostile two us in iran, in syria, their people have actually been more pro-american than sunni states, where you actually had governments that were, were somewhat positive towards the united states. >> when you have a young, educated population of iranians who are not in step with the regime, and they might not necessarily be rejoicing at all

about the killing of soleimani to them is, oh, hey. this is actually lessening someone who isn't helping iran in the world, and this is -- you know, the fighting competing spheres of political influence. yes, we do see that with these protests and i wonder how long the energy will be able to be sustained before there isn't more of a crackdown from the regime. >> we were talking earlier, before the strike, before the killing of general soleimani, there were democratic movements within iran. bringing pressure to bear on the regime and once we had the strike against soleimani, that in ways it kind of closed the window. here we see, again, those indigenous efforts to open up democratic space. whether they identify with the u.s. or not. these are movements indigenous to iran trying to open up space for individual ordinary people to breathe. under the weight of the economic sanctions and the weight of the regime telephone.

this is an expression of lying, one expression trying to bubble up. coming up, republican specialist warning of a trump political dynasty in his new book "running against the devil." he says if donald trump wins again in 2020 get ready for president don junior. rick joins us next. and chronicles. the rise of the trump and kushner families in building the dynastic wealth and power that pushed the united states to the brink of oligarchy. "morning joe" will be right back. (whistling)

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50 past the hour. joining us now, andrea

burnstein. she's the author of a new book entitled "american oligarchs." >> thanks for being with us. there's this remarkable moment in the book where you talk about how the kushners during the holocaust, the family was about to board a train to be sent off to face certain execution. but at the last moment got a reprieve. talk about that. >> so, this is after the germans have invaded northeast poland where they are living. all of the jews are rounded up on this freezing december day. they are saying prayers. they are crying. the kushner family is put on a line to be sent on trucks to be driven as they find out later to mass graves. while they are waiting to board the trucks, a nazi comes and says is anybody here a furrier.

the family were furriers. they said, we are. the germans needed furriers to make hats and coats for the army as it marched into moscow. they were pulled out of the line and avoided death. it was one of many death defying escapes of the kushner family before they got to the united states. >> that's an incredible story. >> an extraordinary moment. moving closer to the present day, you talk about the trump organization. you have done remarkable work covering this for years now. how it was denied credit by american banks and had to turn to shady international sources of revenue. can you talk about that and where some of the countries might be? >> yeah. this actually happened earlier on than i think most people think. it happened after trump's failure in atlantic city in the casinos. so many banks had lost so much money from investing in the trump family that they wouldn't do it anymore. people that worked for trump started to look abroad. they started to look to germany. they started to look to south

korea. as we now know, by the middle of the last decade, they started to look towards the countries of the former soviet union to invest in them and tried very hard in particular to get russia to do a business deal or to allow a licensing deal to go forward for a trump tower moscow. >> part of the problem with reporting on donald trump is that there's always so much that's so shocking and i feel like that's what you encountered reporting on this book, reporting all of this out. there just is so much there that it's hard to know what to focus on. what did you find to be the most shocking detail or pattern that you uncovered while reporting this book? >> i think what we see is a historical consistency going back to donald trump's grandfather and continuing even in business practices of his adult children, a sense that the truth is for other people, that rules are for other people. and the consistency of this over time is startling.

but what i really tried to do is formulate this into a narrative, a multi-family drama, multigenerational drama that you could read and understand how it is that we got to this place where we are, not only in terms of the trumep familiar by but or democracy and how these two threads meet and match and how if you look at the sweep of history you can see that it makes sense that we are where we are today. >> it seems -- this is extraordinary on so many levels. he is running up against the line of the law, crossing the law. how does he escape? what are the consequences of not being held to account over the course of his -- >> you can see this from the beginning, from donald trump's first deal in manhattan. he was investigated by prosecutors in the eefrastern district of new york. his strategy advice by his lawyer was to invite the fbi agents to his father's office on

avenue z with his wife then ivana and his son and charm the fbi agent. no charges were filed. many times over the years, this pattern was repeated where fbi agents would be charmed or district attorneys would -- their charities would be supported or trump's lawyers would give contributions to district attorneys. so there were many ways in which he tried to make sure he never faced legal consequences. what we see is where we are today, which he does not believe that legal consequences apply to him. that is literally what his lawyers have argued in court, that he is immune from any kind of -- even investigation so long as he is president, it's going to the supreme court in march. >> the book is "american oligarchs." andrea, thank you so much for being on. it's great to have you. >> great to be here. thank you. still ahead, more on the trump administration's muddled

message over the killing of i n iran's top general. so much for the peace pact between the sanders and warren campaigns. the gloves come off with the iowa caucuses just three weeks away. we will have all that. "morning joe" is coming right back. t back

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two small children and blew himself up while his people stayed on the ground. you can dedeuuce what kind of person he is. i'm not able to confirm anything else about his last seconds. >> that is one of america's top commanders. back in october, refusing to echo president trump's fictionalized story about killing of isis' leader. >> killing the head of isis wasn't enough. you had to add to that. >> to add color to that. now america's defense secretary is refusing to endorse the president's claims about the specific threat against u.s. embassies posed by iran. >> the president didn't say it was a tangible -- he didn't cite a specific piece of evidence. he said he believes -- >> are you saying there wasn't one? >> i didn't see one with regard to four embassies. what i'm saying is i share the president's view that probably, my expectation was they were going after our embassies. >> because, again, the killing

of soleimani, probably most influential leader across the middle east. that wasn't enough. you had to make things up. of course, he had to make things up because they made things up from the very beginning, the attack was imminent, they were coming for us. >> how does the secretary of defense not have -- >> you could even see last week -- last weekend -- by the way, trump administration, why do you send people on sunday shows? it's not like anybody ever leaves and they are like, that worked out well for us. every week. jonathan, you should -- why every week, why do -- the patriots still out of the playoffs. >> they didn't let us back in. >> they did not let you back in. last weekend, you actually could tell from pompeo's answers that they were just making up the stuff about imminent.

pompeo was having to push back. it became very obvious after his 14th interview that sunday that there was nothing imminent about it and now we, of course, find out that donald trump was making things up about -- they were going to attack 87 embassies. no truth to it. >> from the beginning of the administration, one of the things the president prizes most is the willingness of aides to go on television to defend him, even when it's defending a falsehood. we have seen this now both of the last two weekends where top aides, pompeo and this week esper have done the sunday show circuit to make their case, to try to reverse engineer, to justify the decision the president has made. we have seen in the past lies. we have seen stephen miller and others walk on the sunday shows and talk about the millions of illegal votes. >> i will not say which -- why

do you lie when telling the truth would be so much better? >> and unnecessary. no one is going to question the question of al baghdadi. the president had to sell it with these and make him look weaker, details no one can confirm. there was no audio for the president to have heard that. those are in some ways smaller things than this. this is just pf justifying a mi attack that could have destabilized a region. now they are falsifying intelligence. senators and others say, they were not presented with anything, even in a classified material, about threats about embassies. >> i'm getting a report in from the family desk. my mother said that about a cousin. >> that's very nice. that's a different story.

we have adrian with us as well and national security expert tom nichols. you are writing about trump as it pertains to the truth. >> they had a compelling narrative. they had a narrative that would have worked. you could argue it was an unwise policy, that they shouldn't have taken their shot when they did, but they could have said, it's a bad guy, we took him off the battle battlefield, we're the guys that did it. instead, they added an argument that if it turns out to be wrong, they are in trouble because they have staked everything on this. it's like going and saying -- talking about wmds. there were 100 reasons to take out saddam. if you rely on one and it's the wrong one, suddenly you are in trouble for lying. it's a remarkable thing to see an administration keep lying when it doesn't have to. >> what we heard, steve, time

and again -- it drives me bat did i. people going, it doesn't matter. he gets away with it no matter what. nothing ever attaches to trump. it's as if the 2018 election didn't happen. it does matter. you look at the polls on the killing of soleimani, and people are asked whether they support it, whether they feel safer about where they are now because of the killing of soleimani. and it's a landslide. donald trump loses. they don't -- they don't feel safer. they didn't support it. i'm not saying that would have changed the calculation for a lot of people not looking at polls. but there is an impact to all the lies, whether it frustrates people in the democratic party and/or the media or the

democrats and the media or not. there is an impact. that is that people don't trust him. he is lying about it. so it makes them feel like, you know what, i'm not feeling safe about my commander in chief blowing up the most powerful military figure in the middle east right now. >> the impact of the entire trump style is on your screen right now, the approval rating, 43% in the abc poll. overall, the average is 44%. somebody who got elected not winning the popular vote, somebody with a majority disapproval rate, it's possible he will get re-elected this year. >> this one, this abc poll is obviously his handling of the situation with iran. only one out of four think that america is safer now because of the killing of soleimani. >> his approval rating overall as president -- his approval rating is 44%. that's tracking with basically opinion of donald trump and his performance as president right there. this is true for three plus

years. this is a president who is capable of getting elected by the slimmest of margins. i would say capable of getting re-elected by the slimmest of margins. but it's also capable of -- it's possible it can fall apart. when you look at where opinion is on the state of the economy and things like that, his approval rating has not tracked with it. >> by the way, right now, we have got record high markets, record low unemployment. he is hitting at 43,%. his advisers need to cross their fingers. i'm hoping the economy stays strong. >> we touched on iran. we will get back to it. we have impeachment to get to. let's go to iowa. sanders and warren lead the field in iowa. both statistically tied for first place according to the latest cnn/des moines media poll. warren sits at 17%, up one point. both are within the poll's

almost four point margin of error. pete buttigieg follows closely behind with 16%, down nine points. former vice-president joe biden has 15% unchanged since november. amy klobuchar is at 6%. andrew yang at 5%. >> we are going to dig more into this in a second. i want to bring up the new hampshire poll last week that was almost identical to this. you got the top four. they are all basically within the margin of error. if it were a horse race, they are going around the corner at the kentucky derby. you have four horses lined up next to each other. this is last week. by the way, elizabeth warren at 15 and she was in fourth place or third place close behind in the other, man, if you are

elizabeth warren, you are liking that. her on the ground operation is stellar. she's the number two choice of a lot of people in iowa. iowa, that matters. >> both states, four within five points of each other. that means that there are four candidates right now who are not implausible to win in iowa. we talk about the winner. we talk about how it's panic time for who didn't meet expectations. roll that into new hampshire. both fluid, both bunched at the top. if somebody can get a clear victory in iowa, you look and you say, it's very possible that person is going to roll that into new hampshire. we have nine, ten examples in the modern era. candidates who have won both iowa and new hampshire in contested democratic nomination races so far are undefeated. that has been an unstoppable -- there's a major question of

biden's strength in south carolina if he doesn't come through here. the possibility of somebody getting clearance in the first two, it exists. a report from iowa on the heels of a very busy weekend there. vaughn hillyaiard is with us ne on "morning joe."

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maybe we should talk to someone who spoke to bernie yesterday. joining us is vaughn hilliard. >> did he yell? what did he do? >> sounds like the same man that's been around the last couple years. the rallies that he had in daf

davenport is the same when he was campaigning in 2015 doing the first go around. this is the first time there was the des moines register/cnn poll that was released here. this is the first time that he sat atop that poll. voters were asked whether they were enthusiastic about the candidates that they were selecting as their first choice. 49% that said bernie sanders said they were enthusiastic about. compare that to pete buttigieg and joe biden, that number was 26%. i want to play for you my exchange with bernie sanders when i asked him about the poll which you would be surprised by his answer. this is what he said. >> polls go up and down. what is important to me is the kind of grass-roots support that we have. polls are great. some days they are good. some days they are not good.

i think we're going to win here in iowa because we have an extraordinary grass-roots movement. our goal, unbelievably, this month right here, in the state of iowa, is to knock on 500,000 doors. i don't think any campaign in american history has done that. at the end of the day, tv ads are great, but human contact is what matters. we think we have the movement to do that. >> here in iowa on the campaign trail, congresswoman taleeb was here. i bring that up because it goes to the heart of the conversation you were having before the break. if you look up in michigan, there were 37,000 viewer voters from 2012 to 2016 in the presidential election. in wayne county, the most diverse, most democratic county in the entire state of michigan. michigan went by just 11,000 votes for donald trump. put the math together and if wayne county turned out at the

same levels as they did in 2012, you could make the case that hillary clinton would have won the nomination. when you talk about bernie sanders and who he is drawing, look who is on the campaign trail making the case on his bow ha behalf. go back to 2016 exit polls. out of iowa, out of new hampshire and out of nevada, pete buttigieg and joe biden have tried to make the appeal to the electorate that they can bring interedependents over. but when you go back to the exit polls and which candidate actually -- sanders over hillary clinton actually pulled independents to come out and take part in the caucus and primary process, it was sanders. they went by a 69% margin for sanders. in new hampshire and nevada, it was 72% and 71% respectively. that's where the campaign has been frustrated. they believe their broad base of

support has been misunderstood. they believe that they, when you have that conversation about electability, they are best ready to make that case. >> thank you very much. coming up on "morning joe," how is this for a title? the bottom feeders, crooked lawyers, gossip amongers and porn stars who created the 45th president. we will talk to the reporters and authored who helped expose donald trump's payment to stormy daniels. that conversation is next on "morning joe." that conversation is next on "morning joe." ♪you got to ac-cent-tchu-ate the positive♪ ♪ e-lim-i-nate the negative ♪ and latch on to the affirmative ♪

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i believe it would have been four embassies. i think probably baghdad already started. i think it would have been four embassies. could have been military bases. could have been a lot of other things. it was imminent. then all of a sudden, he was gone. >> the president didn't say it was a tangible -- he didn't cite a specific piece of evidence. what he said is he probably -- >> are you saying there wasn't one? >> i didn't see one with regard to four embassies. i share the president's view that probably, my expectation was they were going after our embas

embassies. >> the defense secretary had no idea of what the threat was. he did not see it. he openly says he did not see a threat. but he has to believe the president. okay. as the trump administration's justification for the attack that killed iranian general soleimani continues to evolve, nbc new s cor s correspondent ce has information that trump authorized soleimani's killing seven months ago with conditions. >> tell us about your reporting about this not so imminent decision to kill soleimani. >> reporter: what my colleague and i are told by five administration officials, current and former, is that basically last summer, the idea of killing soleimani came under serious consideration in the white house. john bolton, who is the national security adviser at the time, urged the president to take out soleimani after iran shot down a u.s. drone last june.

at that time, the president said, according to the people we have spoken with, no, that's not what we're -- that's not basically doesn't correspond with the action that iran took. he did agree that he would authorize the killing of soleimani if iran took out -- killed an american. that decision came with a condition also that it wasn't just military leaders, if they found soleimani and could take the shot that they could take it, it was that they would come back, give him the option and have him sign off on any final operation. so the timing of this, as you mentioned, raises questions about the justification, key justification for killing soleimani ten days ago, because they said there was an imminent attack. this shows that this was something that was on the president's radar far earlier and he agreed to do this if iran crossed his red line as recently as last summer as opposed to responding to a potential

imminent attack. >> thank you very much. coming up, republican strategist rick wilson is standing by. he says president trump can't win in 2020. the democrats can sure as hell lose. rick joins the conversation next on "morning joe." ♪ limu emu & doug

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now i'm a director at a security software firm. wow, you've been at it a long time. the thing is, i like working. what if my retirement plan is i don't want to retire? then let's not create a retirement plan. let's create a plan for what's next. i like that. get a plan that's right for you. td ameritrade. we're sending more to saudi arabia and saudi arabia is paying us for it. we're doing something nobody has done. i said to saudi arabia, we have a very good relationship. i said, you are a very rich country. you want more troops, i'm going to send them to you. you have to pay us. they are paying us. they have deposited $1 billion in the bank. we are going to help them. but these rich countries have to pay for it. >> the billion dollars?

>> what the president is referring to is burden sharing. it comes in many forms, we talk about contributing more to gdp defense commitment. the president's actions resulted in hundreds of billions contributes by our nato allies. it includes host nation support, foreign military sales, providing troops on the ground and in cases it provides helping to offset some of our operations and maintenance costs, which the saudis are committed to do as they did, offset costs, during the 1990 and 1991 gulf war. >> esper attempting to clarify president trump's suggestion that saudi arabia is paying the u.s. for troop deployment. >> how bizarre is that? to have a sitting president, commander in chief saying, hey, they are writing us checks, we are mercenaries. >> a billion dollars in what bank? where is that checkbook? also, it undermines the

rationale of having allies in the first place. you have allies because you have a shared interest or you have shared values. in the best case, both. in this case, it's alliances, you know, if you write us a check, preferably cashiers check, certified, and it's very mercenary. >> it's shameful. >> should be a democratic attack line. his voters don't like it. they know something is up with it. they haven't liked it for years. if i'm bernie sanders or elizabeth warren, i would be hammering away, why is donald trump so cozy with the saudis? what's he getting in return? >> that's a huge question. it's time now for "business before the bell." what are you looking at? >> we will start with boeing. the embattled giant has a newly minted ceo.

today is his first day on the job in that role. it's the former ceo that's getting a fresh round of criticism and scrutiny. that's because even though he will not receive any severance or bonus compensation for the 2019 period after he was ousted by the boeing board, he will still get around $62 million worth of other compensation and pension benefits. that's according to a regulatory filing made by boeing. we are watching him and the new ceo. america has a new set of sta standards of employer/employee relationships and the legal standings. this is the labor department. it handed down a ruling this weekend that clarifies and defines when a person is employed by more than one company. this is something called the joint employer standard. in essence, what the new framework does is provide tests to figure out if a larger company is also considered responsible for the labor

practices of the companies it uses as contractors. there are fewer scenarios when the larger companies are responsible for overtime and minimum wage if they aren't employed by them. speaking of regulations, california wants its own line of prescription drugs. this is a proposal floated by the governor where the state would actually negotiate with drugmakers on its own behalf for its own line of medications for the state's residents. the intention is to drive down the costs of the drugs by getting drug companies to make its own drugs on its behalf. if this were to pass legislative approval, which it needs, it would make california the first state to have such a relationship with a drugmaker making its own drugs for its own residents. an interesting story. >> it is. >> thank you. john makes his own drugs. >> just stop. >> i'm sure it's -- you will

have to call it your plan when they pass it through the california assembly. more breaking news, very important. academy award nominations, best actor in a supporting role, brad pitt, "once upon a time in hollywood." just stop it right there. al pacino and "the irishman" and and tom hanks and anthony hopkins. this is the first time in years -- i guess because some of these are on tv -- that i have seen the majority. >> i have seen two. >> the transition -- "the irishm irishman" is a perfect example. it would have been a big cinema adventure and now it's part of the screaming landscape. >> sure is. amazing movies there. joining us now, rick wilson. he is out with a new book entitled "running against the devil, a plot to save america from trump and democrats from

themselves." wow. that sums it up. >> this is recovering republicans anonymous. i see four recovering republicans. i don't know if you are a former republican or what. >> i'm very former these days. >> four former republicans who probably voted for republicans their entire life until 2016. >> absolutely. >> it's crazy. >> part of this is that swan song and the final funeral dudue for what we had. >> since we have four former republicans here, you will hear from our good friend charlie pierce that the party was always corrupt, it was always rotten, it was always racist. you are now reaping what you sow. there are times when i have been going, wait a second, were the

liberals right? were the liberals that said gop was racist and -- all the things that i have been my entire life, evangelical, southern baptist, a proud southerner, you just go down the list, right now you look at it and, 95% of the people who voted for me when i was running a very different platform, they are all trump supporters now. >> i think that trumpcatalyzed things that -- >> i used to mock the press for always going for the whacko early in the process. you do that because this reinforces what you believe about republicans. they will never make it. i wrote a column called crazy

never wins. we usually got the mit rt romne bob dole. >> and george h.w. bush. the moderating forces inside the party, the old three-legged stool of foreign policy conservatives, social conservatives and fiscal conservatives, that's gone now. the entire party is dedicated to being -- >> whethn did it happen? >> i think we went off the rails in 2010. owning the libs portion of the republican party and let's be transgre transgre transgressive -- ted cruz said i would rather have 35 real conservatives than the majority. >> they're not real conservatives. how funny, the biggest deficit, the biggest national debt ever, the most bloated budget ever. they have socialist games left and right. $16 billion socialist game to

pay off huge agricultural/industrial interests. they have socialist schemes to build walls where trump -- you know, we would walk around with article one buttons when i was in congress, balance the budget, respect checks and balances. it's all gone. >> of course, it's completely shattered. i had a democrat say, well, i can't believe you have written this book. a democrat and a republican, and the republican is like, you are going to back a big government liberal -- i'm like, wait a minute. donald trump is spending money like a drunken sailor on shore leave. >> i change that. donald trump is spending money like a drunken socialist. trump and the republican congress. >> there you go. the idea that we used to say that debt and deficits had any import, that they mattered, it's gone. it's shattered. essentially at this point, i look at trump as a risk to the country on different ways. on the fiscal side, we are headed for a cliff like we have

never seen before. on the side of expansive government and the use and abuse of state power, it's the same thing. he is running us toerwards this model -- if big government was bad under obama, and it's not bad under donald trump, there's a contradiction there. the reason i have written this book is to tell the democrats, here is where the mine feeltd are, the traps are. there's a campaign side. we have decided in our little republican space -- some days i feel like you could sit us around a table, because the rest of the party is so compromised by this guy. the democrats have to see that there's a political side of this that they are going to get mired in if they are not very careful. >> you were laughing. would you like to tell the class what you were laughing about? >> an interesting literary device, i notice that you use throughout the book are tweets from donald trump. is it a new era of american

literature? i don't flow ifknow if i totall it was 2010. i think it was 2008 and obama. i think it became socially acceptable among some republicans that galvanized support among the base to be racist. i think that the racism strain has always been there throughout american politics with both parties. but it really went to another super charged level when obama took office. >> but there's also the sorting taking place in the states of -- it's not -- every time we bring this up, and as you say our friend charlie and others, it's gerrymandering, suppression, republican dirty tru yiy tricks it's people living in different places that made bluer places bluer, redder places redder. the challenge here is, how do

you get the democrats to get away from that constant refrain of, this is your party, it's broke, fix it? i have always for the past year, i said, democrats put up a nominee. that's the way to beat trump. i will support that. but it's almost like they are just completely resistant to it. i feel like we're the guys who show up with the enemy's battle plans and put them on the table and they say, take that stuff out of here. >> that's what this book is about. you are -- you come from the evil empire. you come with all of your evil machinations and you want to show democrats how to beat donald trump. >> they hated me for decades. >> for good reason. >> they hated guys like me because we built a sophisticated machine to defeat them. we used cultural division to defeat them. we used smarter politics to defeat them. >> by the way, ugly. >> yeah. >> i tell people, my frustration looking at democrats is, even

the way they look at a campaign. when i ran a campaign, i wasn't looking to get 51%. i was looking to grind my opponent's political bones to dust and beat him so badly that even their dog would be ashamed to walk down the street with them after the campaign. then after the campaign, we could play nice. this is a different mindset in winning campaigns. >> couldn't be more right. the democrats have this ytd we' ytd we will have a debate and everybody will be inspired. it's for hard people. you have to do that. >> you wrote headline, if trump wins in 2020, get ready for president don junior. wouldn't it actually be president ivanka? don junior is a clown. he makes a lot of mistakes. but she's out there actively campaigning. >> ivanka is trying for the ted

talk speaker circuit style trumpism that's smoother, cleaner. >> do you see where she's going? she's traveling around to all these places. >> she's putting in the work. the republican party for the nomination will respond to the guy who goes out pan pants. >> in front of -- i've seen don junior talk in front of a republican base. he talks the talk. >> he knows the language. >> he knows how to connect. nothing clownish about how he knows how to connect. >> it's a skill. ivanka -- if we were in -- if we were in an environment where her going through the policy checklist, family leave and those things, to try to establish a policy resume, that's one thing. for the republican nomination, they are going to demand, i think, the performative act that

donald trump did. they want someone to set things on fire. they want the crazy tweets. they want the show. >> let me ask you this question. because we have been talking about this for a while. if the american electorate had a choice between someone who argued for a living wage, someone who argued for affordable higher education, argued for universal health coverage and a racist, pathological liar, are you saying if we follow the former, that the country would choose a racist, pathological liar? >> elections are about two big things. every re-election is a r referendum on the incumbent. unless the democrats make this about donald trump, make this about whether or not you want this guy in that office, the power of incumbency is so great that policy will not overcome it. policy is often a delusion that people believe they want to articulate to the people.

people don't make decisions on policy. donald trump's policy fit on a trucker hat. obama's policy fit on a poster. these things are -- people do not -- i have been in 1,000 focus groups over the years. people pretend to understand policy but they don't. they vote based on people and their cultural affinities with those people. if somebody in the democratic nominee can connect with people, the policy stuff is in the background. once you win, do your policy. >> by the way, in the campaign, it's not you -- you talked about these issues. it's not what you say. it's what people think you feel. so if you can say all those things and people can ignore you, you can also say all those things like bernie and people are like, this guy will go and fight for me and blow things up. just like donald trump in '16.

the bobby kennedy supporters -- >> authenticity. >> yeah. bobby kennedy supporters who became george wallace supporters. it makes no sense to us. it made sense to them. made sense to them. okay. that guy was going to fight for us because he was mad as hell. now that guy is going to fight. it's a to step. >> the book is "running against the devil, a plot to save america from trump and the democrats from themselves." >> can you come back and talk about this? we need to continue this conversation. up next, president trump's former attorney michael cohen issued this warning last year on capitol hill. >> i can only warn people, the more people that follow mr. trump as i did blindly, are going to suffer the same consequences that i'm suffering. >> cohen is among the cast of characters chronicled in a new book "the fixers." we will look through it straight

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i am no longer your fixer, mr. trump. >> donald trump had many fixers over the years, dating back to long before he was president. when he entered politics, his fixers were forced into the spotlight and for some that didn't go so well. joining us now, "the wall street journal" investigative reporter joe pal seoul oh, and investigator reporter michael rothfeld. they led a team at the journal reporting on this topic won a pulitzer prize. they're co-authors of the book called the fixers, the bottom feeders, gossip mongers, and porn stars that created the 45th president. >> where do we begin? what's the first question to

ask. what was the genesis of the project, why did you decide to go for this sort of sleazy direction. >> yeah, what was the deal. >> started a couple years ago during the 2016 campaign. we reported on karen mcdougal's deal with the national enquirer, and we realized there was so much more to this world, vulgar circus that we decided we needed to commit it to a book. >> and it is important because i always wonder why the democrats didn't take the one clear crime that donald trump committed, just clear crime when you pay a porn star right before the election hush money and you don't report that. that's a crime that would have sent any senator, any member of

congress, any governor to jail. >> they were definitely looking at that, but that was something where they i think in the end didn't feel they had enough direct evidence against trump in terms of his personal involvement, looked like a smoking gun, michael cohen wasn't a great witness, he had been convicted of lying, and then the ukraine thing came up, and then that kind of took over. >> what did you guys find out about that transaction? >> we found out and reported both in the newspaper and in the book that trump directed these hush money deals, both with stormy daniels and former playmate of the year, karen mcdougal. and essentially the theme of the book he used, michael cohen, david pecker, publisher of national enquirer, for many years used people to do his dirty work for him, keep his own hands clean, they end up taking the fall for him while he sails

on. >> were there questions that the president directed the payment? >> there were in the beginning, when we first started reporting it in 2016, we didn't know the extent of his involvement. >> so how could there be a question in prosecutors' minds. michael cohen didn't have the money to write the check. >> no federal appeals court has weighed in and said hush money equals campaign finance charge, so the only precedent that we have or the closest precedent is the edwards case, and he was acquitted of a charge and hung on the rest. it is not a great precedent for the justice department. >> you mention david pecker and "the national enquirer", his close relationship with the president, the stories he would catch and kill and make go away. they exist somewhere in some safe. will that come to see light of day? >> i mean, the stories about the

safe, that's not something that we personally actually believe there is a safe. we know during the campaign michael cohen was trying to get -- there may have been an archive of old stories, potential tips. >> but you don't think there's a safe. so you're not doing a prime time special where you blow open the safe to see what's in there? >> i don't think there's a safe. >> what a show that would be. >> archives of potential stories they could use to go after people if they felt like it. >> i'm not sure those records exist. we report how pecker and trump back in the '90s started to become close, pecker wanted to get close to him. it was a quid pro quo over the years, tit for tat. there was a lot of favors done. >> you talk about a lot of fixers who have fallen from grace or ended up in prison like michael cohen who a. who are trump's fixers today?

who are the current day fixers that are worth highlighting? >> we end the book on the next chapter. you have rudy giuliani. >> what a terrible picture to have. just go ahead, report to prison if he is your fixer. >> put handcuffs on yourself. i mean, just do it. >> especially after 6:00 p.m. go ahead. >> so then you have the attorney general of the united states who some would argue is a fixer. >> pompeo. >> can we talk about the first, to understand donald trump, read books about bobby kennedy, it is remarkable the contrast between kennedy and mccarthy and roy cone. they worked in the same office. and donald trump has taken on

roy's political personality, throw out baseless allegations, try to bs your way through a fight. >> roy cohen was his model. he got some of it from his father growing up, but roy taught him you say what you want the reality to be, whether it is true or not. all press can be good press. and essentially just manipulate people, try to take advantage wherever you can, and he also introduced him to some of the many tabloid columnists, roy cohen was friends with a lot of journalists. that set trump off in that dl s direction of being a center piece. >> when he was defending trump on racism for fair housing, he attacked the fbi, called them storm troopers or something like that, very trumpian, even 45 years ago.

>> true to our book at the end when roy cohen got aids and was sick, trump abandoned him, steered legal work elsewhere. after he won the presidency, is praising cohen, but then on the other hand tells a story before new year's in 2017 about when cohen was at mar-a-lago and had aids after he left, i had to fume debate the dishes and silv silverware, true of how he treats his fixers. >> the new book. the fixers. thank you very much. >> thank you for doing this very important work. you had to dig around in the muck, glad you did it. >> congratulations. go ahead. >> no, you go ahead. >> to close out the day, jonathan mayor, what are you looking at? >> we say every week this will be a week. this will be a week.

the presidential debate, the democrats are supposed to gather tomorrow in iowa, and the impeachment trial that may start as soon as wednesday, certainly later in the week. >> want to give a shoutout. i was in jackson, mississippi, the nonprofit news organizations conference. it was inspiring to see the great local reporting out of that organization. a reminder we need to do all we can to strengthen local journalism. >> excellent. and tonight, the college championship. clemson or lsu? >> i think i'm going with lsu. can't believe it. >> a mississippi girl going for lsu. >> lsu. >> guys, any opinions? >> no opinion. >> just waves us off. >> with the final seconds to go, check out lady gaga on know your value.com talking mental health. it is incredible.

we're on colbert tonight. stephanie ruhle picks up the coverage. busy day. >> thank you so much, mika, joe. good morning. it is monday, january 13th. here is what is happening. closely watching developments in the united states and iran. two governments that appear to be on the brink of war just a few days ago are facing protests from their own people. nbc has exclusive reporting that president trump authorized the killing of qassem soleimani all the way back in june. now he has a whole lot of people looking more closely at the administration's rationale for launching the fatal strike specifically on january 3rd. and the president's statements are raising more questions than they are answers. first, he said he green lit the attack after a u.s. contractor was killed and the u.s. embassy in baghdad came under attack in december. he