calling for an end of the first in the nation tradition. don't have iowa and new hampshire, they say it's an archaic tradition that doesn't match the america of today. that's "the boston globe." a local paper for so much new hampshire residents. >> all right. mike allen, live in d.c. thanks, mike. we will be reading axios a.m. in just a bit. sign up for that newsletter at signup.axios.com. >> i'm yasmin vossoughian alongside ayman mohyeldin. "morning joe" starts right now. members of the congress, i have the high privilege and the distinct honor of presenting to you the president of the united states. the high privilege and distinct honor. >> the high privilege and the dis tichkt honor. >> the high privilege and the distinct honor. >> the high privilege and the distinct. >> members of congress, the president of the united states. >> with a snubbed handshake,

then that altered intro ending up with a ripped up speech. there was no love lost last night between the president and the house speaker. good morning and welcome to "morning joe," it is wednesday, february 5th. along with joe, willie and me we have msnbc contributor mike barnicle, white house reporter for the associated press jonathan lemire, former chief of staff to the dccc adrienne elrod and historian, author of "the soul of america" jon meachum. he is an nbc news and msnbc contributor. >> just an overview of this thing, willie, it's very interesting there were some people last night who were saying that, well, you know, donald trump, this is -- whether you like him or not, this was a really great speech for him.

i mean, that's like me giving a speech this morning to red sox nation saying not only did we keep mookie betts, but we got manny machado, he will be coming in a couple months and aaron judge has decided to be a red sox and the yang yeast aren't going to be playing. how do you qualify something as a good speech if it's fed by lies and these are lies that are so easy to uncover on the google machine, whether it's donald trump saying that republicans are fighting for preexisting conditions when they're fighting to kill preexisting conditions for people like my son with type 1 diabetes. and the jobs creation quote, mika will be saying it in a little bit, it's just absolutely preposterous that donald trump suggests that had he not turned things around from barack obama this economy would be in terrible shape. when he's riding the obama wave. it's an 11-year recovery, barack

obama creating far more jobs over his last three years in office than donald trump has created in his first three years. the lies were preposterous, and for some reason the press keeps feeding into this hype that somehow his economy is so much better than former economies. it's a lie. >> well, the lie he has been telling from the beginning is that he inherited a mess from president obama, which is objectively untrue, steve rattner is here with charts to show that's not true. mike barnicle bowed his head when you mentioned mookie betts' name. the president programmed the state of the union like a tv show. in some ways it was like an episode of "ellen" you had a military reunion, a fourth grader receiving a scholarship, the medal of freedom to rush limbaugh, actually held the

ceremony in the middle of the state of the union. it was very theatrical. for my money all the no handshake, the not saying the distinct honor and high privilege and ripping up the script at the end is not what the country needs. i know those will be viewed as sick burns or michelle caruso-cabrera drops or something in the far reaches of each side's teams but i don't think the country needs that kind of stuff right now. >> well, by most accounts it was a state of the union unlike any other. we can at least say that. with an impeached president addressing a bitterly divided congress while also seeking reelection. those divisions were on vivid display last night from the president looking away from the house speaker's outstretched hand to nancy pelosi ripping up the speech when he finished. at times it felt more like a campaign rally than a formal address when republican lawmakers chanting four more

years. and democrats jeering the president for his remarks on the economy and health care. trump's showmanship was also on full display, surprising a military family by reuniting an army sergeant with his wife and kids, promoting school choice by announcing a scholarship for a pennsylvania student, and in a nod to his base awarding rush limbaugh with the presidential medal of freedom. also notable, the president did not mention impeachment once during his speech. a little bit of a show of discipline there. >> jon meachum, the president certainly showed discipline when it came to stage craft, not going on angry rants, but, again, i guess we can hand it to him for not losing his cool like he usually does and not wandering off into the fields, rhetorical fields, but again, the lies about the economy, the

lies about preexisting conditions, the lies about so much of what he said up there really it wasn't meant for the american people, it was meant for an alternative universe, his alternative universe of voters. >> it really wasn't a state of the union and, like you, i suspect you know more about states of the -- state of the unions than you want to admit out in the world. and enjoy not only the spectacle, but the idea that, in fact, this is a moment where the branches of the government are supposed to have a conversation both with each other and with the rest of us about where we are and what we should do. this was not about the union and it was very much about trump's political state and his -- his folks. that's been the consuming story

of the last five years now. he's never -- he's never wanted -- if he's wanted to he's never been able to act on it, to reach out beyond the people who already sent him. and one of the many tragedies of the era is that he has refused to learn from a presidential history that suggests presidents who are remembered for big, bold things are presidents who bring their supporters along to a place where the supporters didn't think they wanted to go. nixon in china, reagan in the cold war, clinton and the new democrats. you have a history of surprising us, and there was nothing surprising about last night. it was in some ways the

apothiosis of what we have been living through to some extent for the last five years. the limbaugh moment is very interesting. limbaugh is an emblem. reflexive partisanship of the era to the point when he was supporting -- talking favorably about pat buchanan back in 1992 and buchanan, as we know, is really in many ways with george wallace the forerunner of trump. he was -- he helped drive buchanan to almost beating george bush, a sitting president in the new hampshire primary. so sometimes in history it's not that hard for those of us who do this. if you want a moment, if you want a couple days that represents the extremes and the polarities of this era, write about last night. >> here he is on preexisting conditions and the economy.

>> i've also made an ironclad pledge to american families, we will always protect patients with preexisting conditions. and we will always protect your medicare and we will always protect your social security. always. i am thrilled to report to you tonight that our economy is the best it has ever been. if we hadn't reversed the failed economic policies of the previous administration the world would not now be witnessing this great economic success. >> okay. let me bring in steve rattner for some charts and fact checking. i want to do a little fact checking myself and i put it

through the "morning joe" super computer, the size of a city block, i tell you. the president saying that he's going to protect preexisting conditions. my super computer it spit back out the fact this is a damnable lie, republicans have been feverishly working to kill the preexisting conditions protection that would be afforded to people like my son with type 1 diabetes. also, steve rattner, two other things. first, the economy is the best that it's ever been. this is particularly maddening not because the president saying it and lying about it, and not because republicans in congress are repeating that lie, but because the media -- and i've been complaining about this for a couple years now -- the media parrots the president -- well, it is one of the best economies

ever. economic growth under jimmy carter was higher than it is under donald trump. economic growth under jimmy carter in '79, the malaise year when things were supposed to be so bad was about a third higher than it is under donald trump in 2019. donald trump's economy grew at 2.3%. that is a trump slump that is weak, that is anemic, and i know that everybody on wall street they are all loving it, everybody -- the rich are getting really, really rich, but 2.3% growth is pathetic. under kennedy it was 5.7%, under johnson 5.1%. under jimmy carter who donald trump has trashed before, 3.2%. under bill clinton 3.8% and the

trump slump throughout the three years the trump slump puts it at 2.5% and last year after all of those tax cuts from multi-national corporations and the very richest americans in the land, the economy only grew last year by 2.3%. steve rattner, it's hard -- it's hard to sort through all the lies from last night. i know a lot of people say, well, you have to admit it was a great -- great themes. yes, great themes if you're cool with the person speaking lying all the time, but donald trump saying if we hadn't reversed the failed policies of the past administration, oh, we would never have this great economy. we are in the middle of an 11-year obama economic recovery and all the lines are going like

this, whether it's job growth, whether it's gdp. it's ridiculous. steve, we've got you on so you can fact check, show us your charts and let's pick apart the lies that the president said last night to his supporters because it makes me sad that he lies this way to people who support him and makes me sad that they are like, well, he is the president so he must be telling the truth, but he's not. he's lying. tell us why. >> when i was watching the beginning of that speech i felt like i was living in a parallel universe, like i was in some other country, he was talk being some other country because everything he was saying made me of so little sense. it reminded me of the line every word she writes is a lie including the and and the buts. i will show you some lines. let's start with job growth and he bragged a lot about the job

growth, but as you can see here what we're trying to show is that job growth under president trump which has been significant was actually lower than job growth under president obama over the same 35 months, the end of obama's term versus the beginning of trump's term. the idea that there's something unprecedented happening here is ridiculous. >> wait. wait. wait. hold on a second. i'm confused. you're telling me that the gray that we are looking at right now is job growth under barack obama, his last three years in office, and the red is job growth under donald trump his last three years in office and actually donald trump is doing worse than barack obama. let's forget about why donald trump lies. we know he lies. why doesn't the media report this more? why do they let donald trump keep going -- this is the media that is actually cooking the books for donald trump by

looking at the dow and looking at unemployment, which, by the way, was going down in this direction under barack obama, why do they keep spreading this -- why does the media spread this lie that donald trump has somehow created the greatest economy when he's doing worse than barack obama in job creation? >> you have to ask the media that, but under obama there were 227,000 jobs a month created during this 35-month period. under trump it was 191,000. so 227 went to 191. trump brags about lowering the unemployment rate by 1.2%. obama lowered the unemployment rate by two full percentage points. any way you slice it this is at best continuation of the obama recovery and at worst the slower version of the obama recovery. so we can turn -- >> go to the next chart. >> we can turn if you want to wages because he bragged about wages last night. >> wow. >> indeed wages have been going up as you can see by the blue

line up at the top here but when you adjust for inflation which is a really important thing to do because obviously what matters is what workers have in their pockets at the end of the day, which are these bottom lines here, you can see that, in fact, once again, real wages after adjustment for inflation rose slower under trump than under obama. under obama they rose at an average of 1.1% and under trump they rose at an average of 0.6%. so you had faster growth in wages after adjusting for inflation under obama than you had under trump. >> okay. so that's a lie as well. wages adjusted for inflation are actually worse under donald trump than they were under barack obama. again, not a surprise. just a surprise that the media keeps letting donald trump get away with this lie as they have for the past several years. it's just lazy. they listen to what donald trump says, oh, yeah, wages are going -- no.

no. and, you know, look at gdp, if you will, because that's -- i mean, you look at our economic growth that tells us not just how the richest of the rich are doing on wall street. that tells us how everybody is doing. so give us the story on gdp. >> so last night trump in his first or second paragraph said he wanted to talk about the incredible results in the economy that he has achieved. the incredible results amount to gdp going up by 2.5% during his watch. again, we're comparing the same 35 months end of trump -- end of obama versus end of trump. obama it was 2.4%. so call it statistically a tie but essentially this is simply a continuation as you said earlier, joe, of an 11-year recovery and the growth rate under trump is no higher than under obama, job creation has actually been weaker than under obama and so -- >> wages. >> and wages have actually been

weaker under obama as well. so when you check the big boxes that's what you get, but there's -- there was so much else in that speech that were just lies on top of lies. he claimed, for example, that he made us independent in oil and gas production. both of those things happened before he took office just to give you one thing that's -- >> yeah. i mean, willie, it is incredible what it guy claimed. again, things that happened before he got into office, he just grabbed any good headlines from the past decade and used them in his speech. so of course, again, i just -- the media needs to make sure they don't go around talking about what a great speech it was because it really wasn't. it was packed with lies. >> it was. and the one about preexisting conditions is particularly galling considering the administration literally is in court fighting to overturn the obamacare. jonathan lemire, everything that

steve rattner said is true, he has the charts to prove it, but the president walked into the room with a new poll showing 49% approval in the gallup poll, 42% approval among independents and 63% approval on the economy. he probably could have gone in and said unemployment is at a 50 year low, inflation is low, consumer confidence is high without making up the lie that he inherited a mess from president obama which of course it did not. >> that's right. and the speech certainly is worthy of a robust fact check and steve did a great job, there were many falsehoods in the president's remarks. the poll numbers -- polling from gallup is the highest of his administration, today of course he is likely to be acquitted in the senate for his impeachment trial which will draw that chapter of his administration to a close. and i think that what we saw last night is the donald trump that republicans love and republicans wish they would see more of. he was the show man, he was the reality tv star. the scholarship to the student,

the presidential medal of freedom to rush limbaugh, a divisive conservative figure, the tearful reunion of the soldier coming home to see his family. he stuck to the script. did he not go on tangents attacking the mess, the democratic mess in eye warnings he did that on twitter earlier but stayed away from that on the peach, he also did not mention the word impeachment once following the model set by bill clinton in 1999 when he also did not talk about his impeachment trial there. he was able to restrain himself for the time being. the president has shown moments of discipline before, they tend not to last very long. i think we will hear from him on those subjects later today. there is some talk from the white house the president might be making remarks later on the impeachment matter. we saw last night also the extreme partisan rancor that has enveloped trump's washington since he got here in january of 2016. the snubbed handshake with the house speaker at the beginning,

the chants of four more years from republicans when democrats sat on their hands and booed him when he talked about the economy he inherited from president obama and when speaker pelosi store the speech in front of the president. this is the second or third viral moment she has created from the speeches and she told reporters later that it was the appropriate thing to do as she was sort of channeling the frustration and anger from democrats after a speech that she believes says and we can fact check as well was full of lies. >> so, mike barnicle, yesterday wasn't a particularly good day for democrats. the past 24, 48 hours not particularly good time period for democrats. in fact, some could argue perhaps their worst. you do have the president in one poll at 49%, you have him about to beat impeachment because of a lot of republican senators say what he did was outrageous and

terrible and impeachable but they are not going to vote to impeach him. and then let's just pile the mess up high on top of that. iowa. you were smart not to go to iowa because it ended up -- i mean, the results -- who is going to believe the results when they finally come out? things are so chaotic right now and they still have only given us 71% of the returns. we are a couple days in, they are not communicating, they're not transparent. at first they told us there was nothing wrong with the app, it ends up it was a big app problem. how can we trust them when we saw in realtime -- in realtime on monday night the rules being broken. them going through a first round and then asking people who didn't qualify to the 15% threshold who are you going to. oh, no, we're going to find more people to stay in. >> mess. >> it was a chaos.

it was a mess. and it reflects terribly on this democratic party. they don't have their act together in any way. >> well, joe, the good news is that we will never have to pay attention to the iowa caucus again. it has always been so not a part of the american tapestry. it's fun, nice people out there, it's truly not representative of the rest of the country. to the larger points that you've been making about last night, i think what a lot of people take away from last night, if indeed they watched it or paid attention to it, is that the state of the union is mutual contempt, one party for the other party, and that's never a good sign. you had a president of the united states standing up there and we've gone through just a glimmer of the untruths that he told, but this man has lived and prospered all of his life off of lies and adrian out there in the

country where you still are, you're out there in iowa, i think there was so much in that speech that was offensive in terms of assaulting the truth, but i strongly suspect that most of it a lot of people nodded their heads and liked what they saw and heard. >> yeah, mike, and i think what you just said is exactly why it's so important this morning that all of you are going through a very intensive fact check because, sure, if you are out there in america you tuned into the state of the union, you listened to donald trump deliver this very red meat heavy speech, delivering a strong message to his base, not doing frankly much to attract independents, but delivering a strong speech to his base, you might think everything is going great, this president is sounding -- you know, is sounding -- you know, is sounding great and this is somebody who i want to support but i don't think he did a whole lot to attract independents and he certainly didn't do anything to try to bring in moderate

democrats not that he's going to have much luck with them anyway. that's, again, why it's so important we are talking about fact checking this speech. if you tuned in as an average american you might think, oh, gosh, everything is so owesy, but a little bit of digging into the speech reminds us that this is a president who has been trying to reverse obama since he came into the office, he's done nothing as steve mentioned really to raise wages. a lot of americans we may have low unemployment but a lot of americans are not feeling the economic benefits that many other americans are feeling because they haven't had a raise in a long time or are working a job that is beneath them or a job that they don't want. so that's why i think it's so important that we're doing this and, you know, we've got to hold this president accountable. >> joe, to the point that adrian just raised that steve brought out very importantly a few moments ago and you've been talking about, real wages for real people. i challenge you or anyone to go to iowa to watch these

candidates perform, to go to new hampshire and watch these hand cats perform. i've never seen one of them stand up and talk about the average weekly paycheck that normal working americans get and point out that they haven't received a per capita percentage legitimate pay raise in, i don't know, steve, a decade. i don't know. but they don't talk about normal peoples lives out there, they just don't. >> no, they don't. it's crazy. i don't understand why real wages are, as steve said, they are flat. they're where they were the last three years of the obama administration. he is not doing better. gdp is going along about the same. but, my gosh, at 2.3% when you look historically at where the united states is and when you look at what donald trump promised when he was running for president, when he had that massive multi-national tax cut for multi-national corporations

and america's richest billionaires, he promised 4%, 5%, 6% growth. he said the economy was going to grow. well, based on those standards last year was a slump. the trump slump brought it in at 2.3%. mika, there's no -- there's no polishing this for donald trump. he can go out and he can lie and if the media let's him continue to lie and they don't call out the fact that actually barack obama the last three years of the obama economy were in many ways stronger than the first three years in donald trump's economy, maybe he gets away with it. but last night did show, as adrian and everybody else said in the words of paul simon he is a one trick pony. one trick is all he nose. he plays hard to his base, he's going to run a base election like bush did in 2004 and democrats if they ever get their act together -- >> right.

>> -- need to figure out how to play to the middle, pull over independents and they will beat this guy. >> and run elections. still ahead on "morning joe," more on the major developments in the presidential race on the heels of the iowa fiasco. where those results stand this morning and what it means for the battle in new hampshire. you're watching "morning joe." we will be right back. ♪ limu emu & doug [ siren ] give me your hand! i can save you... lots of money with liberty mutual! we customize your car insurance so you only pay for what you need! only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪

what's the time? device: a dime is ten cents. severe cold or flu? take control with theraflu. powerful, soothing relief to defeat your worst cold and flu symptoms fast. device: (sneezes) theraflu. the power is in your hands. a nation divided by an angry,

out of control president. a white house beset by lies, chaos and corruption. an administration that has failed the american people. it doesn't have to be this way. next year we can have a leader who brings people together, solves problems and gets results. mike bloomberg will get it done. i'm mike bloomberg and i approve this message. americans come to lendingtree.com to compare and save on loans, credit cards and more! but with the new lending tree app you can see your full financial health, monitor your credit score, see your cash flow and find out how you can cut your monthly bills. download it now to see how much you can save. to be honest a little dust it never bothered me. until i found out what it actually was. dust mite droppings! eeeeeww! dead skin cells! gross! so now, i grab my swiffer sweeper and heavy-duty dusters. duster extends to three feet to get all that gross stuff gotcha! and for that nasty dust on my floors, my sweeper's on it.

the textured cloths grab and hold dirt and hair no matter where dust bunnies hide. no more heebie jeebies. phew. glad i stopped cleaning and started swiffering.

welcome back to "morning joe." if you are just waking up hoping for the final results from iowa, i'm sorry to say, we still don't have the full results from monday night's democratic caucus in iowa. we've got 71% of precincts reporting and former south bend, indiana, mayor pete buttigieg holds a slim lead over senator bernie sanders. senator elizabeth warren is in third as you can see there followed by former vice president joe biden. of course, these positions could

change once the remaining 29% of the vote comes in. the iowa democratic party is blaming the delay on what it calls is coding issue with the new app that was meant to help speed up the reporting of the caucus results. dnc chair tom perez released a statement that reads we have staff working around the clock to assist the iowa democratic party to ensure all votes are counted. it is clear the app in question did not function adequately. as frustrating as the last 24 hours have been let us not lose sight of our ultimate goal to defeat donald trump, take back our democracy and improve the lives of millions by electing democrats up and down the ballot. this is beyond frustrating for a lot of people. we can't even characterize the race it's too early to call because we don't know what that 29% of the vote looks like. whether pete buttigieg ends up one or two, it remains an extraordinary two nights ago now for him. what's the deal? you are in des moines.

where is the 29%? >> well, willie, party officials do think that they will get the results out probably in totality in the next 24 hours. you know, they're crunching numbers, making sure that every single batch of results they put out is accurate and they're double, triple checking the accuracy of what they put out. look, this has been a disaster, this has been a mess, a colossal mess from the standpoint of the iowa democratic party and from the standpoint of the overall primary process. you know, look, i think it's -- i applaud the notion of maybe trying to, you know, create a technological benefit, an advantage by creating an app that can process results more efficiently as opposed to caucus leaders having to call in those results and whatnot, but this failed. i mean, this was inexcusable. the fact that there were not triple checks on this app to make sure, you know, in the weeks before the caucus that

there were no flaws, no systematic failures that came forward in the app. this was really a major, major set back for the iowa democratic party and frankly a major set back for the caucus system. you know, look, we watched in realtime on monday evening even before we were talking about the results coming in how the caucus process works and i think a lot of americans out there were thinking, you know, i'm not sure that this is the way that i would want to show my support for a candidate. that's by the way one of the reasons why the democratic party, national democratic party has been so focused on reducing the number of caucuses. we now only have 12 states in the nation that caucus. what we saw on monday night is one of the reasons why quack cusses are so antiquated, so outdated and we should move to a full on primary system. >> they really are antiquated and outdated. how preposterous, here we are a day and a half after these caucuses and we still don't know

the results. we still don't know who has won. as far as getting an app to pass along information to the iowa democratic party instead of using a phone, use a google spreadsheet. use -- i mean, text it. it's just so preposterous, mika. i don't know where to begin. especially when you consider how much was riding on this election. >> so much was riding on it and it seemed like even in the process of covering it you could see that they didn't understand the process. >> right. >> they were trying to pull new people in, reporters didn't understand the process so they were sort of covering something that wasn't working the right way. it seemed like a mess from the get-go, just watching it all go down and it's turned out to be a colossal disaster, an embarrassment the democratic party does not need right now and a real sort of -- a real bump in the road in the

democratic race to the nomination that democrats did not need right now. >> so, jon meachum, this was a wonderfully quantity idea 1976, jimmy carter comes in second behind uncommitted, but it launched him and it launched his presidential campaign. got him to the white house. but you look at the last three -- we've been talking about this for a couple days -- the last three elections whether it was santorum and romney, whether it was hillary and bernie, whether it's this year. they just haven't kept up with the times and we've had three glitches now in the last three presidential caucuses there. >> this is almost like an inadvertent historical reenactment drama because this is the way elections were for about 150 years, you know, this he would start voting sometime in october and you would find out by december. so in that sense it is a return to something.

you know, churchill was often quoted as having said democracy is the best form -- the worst form of government except for all the others, but, you know, even churchill can be wrong. at some point the basic common sense of a primary election where you go in and you vote and they count it and then that result is reported, you know, perhaps the old way is the best way. >> yes. >> i think mike is right, i suspect that we will be seeing alternative strategies going forward. there's the racial and ethnic question obviously, and there are a lot of states who are going to present themselves saying, hey, we know how to count, send us in. >> it's inexcusable, mika. you realize that over the past three years we've been talking about election security, we've

been talking about a loss of confidence in institutions, we've been talking about a loss of confidence in election results and now you have the democrats showing their face -- >> it's so painful. >> -- to america and the first step towards putting somebody up to challenge donald trump and really because they botched it the way they did, the only real winner out of this probably is a guy who didn't even go to iowa and that's michael bloomberg. >> and donald trump. >> donald trump, yeah. i'm talk being on the democratic side. >> that's true. still ahead with iowa kind of sort of behind us, we will take a look at a slue of new polling out of the next battle ground state, new hampshire. we will go live to new hampshire at the top of the hour and "morning joe" will be right back. we made usaa insurance for members like kate.

a former army medic, made of the flexibility to handle whatever monday has in store and tackle four things at once. so when her car got hit, she didn't worry. she simply filed a claim on her usaa app and said... i got this. usaa insurance is made the way kate needs it - easy. she can even pick her payment plan so it's easy on her budget and her life. usaa. what you're made of, we're made for. usaa for adults with moderately to severely active crohn's disease, stelara® works differently. studies showed relief and remission, with dosing every 8 weeks. stelara® may lower your ability to fight infections

and may increase your risk of infections and cancer. some serious infections require hospitalization. before treatment, get tested for tb. tell your doctor if you have an infection or flu-like symptoms or sores, have had cancer, or develop new skin growths, or if anyone in your house needs or recently had a vaccine. alert your doctor of new or worsening problems, including headaches, seizures, confusion and vision problems. these may be signs of a rare, potentially fatal brain condition. some serious allergic reactions and lung inflammation can occur. talk to your doctor today, and learn how janssen can help you explore cost support options. remission can start with stelara®. garcyre cost support options. young woman: yeah, thanks mom mother: of course and i love these flowers young woman whispering: hey, did you bring the... the condoms? young man whispering: what's up? young woman whispering: condoms young man whispering: what? young woman whispering: condom father: condoms charlie. she wants to know if you brought any condoms. young man: yeah i brought some. announcer: eargo, a virtually invisible hearing loss solution with high quality sound and lifetime support.

introducing a razor that works differently. the gillette skinguard has a guard between the blades that helps protect skin. the gillette skinguard.

so, hey, mike barnicle, big news yesterday about mookie and also the mets. phil griffin beyond himself that the mets still may be breaking -- falling through

again, but mookie, he wouldn't stay in boston for $350 million, so he went to l.a. tell us about it. >> well, it's for me personally -- and i realize in the large scheme of things it's way down the scale, but it's enormously depressing to see a generational player, arguably the second best player in major league baseball, a franchise player to be moved to the los angeles dodgers last night in a swap basically for two -- two unproven baseball players, largely because of money. the red sox felt that at the end of this season he would hit free agency, which he will, and that they would have difficulty resigning him so they didn't want to end up with nothing, so they did trade him and, jonathan lemire, i have been talking with you about this possibility for two or three weeks, i think i gave you an indication over this past weekend that it is

imminent. now that it's happened i still don't believe it. >> it's extraordinarily depressing, mike. i'm with you. first quickly on david price, i think who was also part of this deal going to the dodgers, red sox fans have been grateful for his playoff performance in 2018 but he was up and down inton off and on the field with an albatross of a contract. i don't think many will be too sorry to see him go, but mookie betts is another story. he was part of that championship team. this comes across like the red sox management and maybe they will be proven right in the long run but right now it seems this was done about money. billionaire owners who make a mint between the red sox and liverpool, because of luxury tax implications and concerns that mookie might leave ended up shipping away a great player and great ambassador for the team and city. someone who plays with a big smile and plays an electrifying brand of baseball at the plate and in the field. my two sons ages 8 and 5 who love baseball, who love the red sox, you know, david ortiz will

always loom largest for them as their favorite player, i believe, but mookie betts was no question their favorite player on the red sox now. they will be devastated to see him go, i think that will be a scene repeat add i cross new england. when they wake up in a little while i dread having to tell them mookie is no longer with the red sox. >> what jonathan just said is key to this not just for the red sox, not just depressing it is for me, someone like me, but mookie's first name, his name is mookie, they're trying to grow in game, trying to get young people attracted to this game. people loved mookie. kids loved mookie and now mookie is a dodger. >> you know, willie geist, you would almost think that this team didn't have young players like xander bogaerts and young players like rafael devers who is probably the best young hitter in boston since ted williams. you know, listen, i loved mookie

and i tell you he was great to kids, he was always signing baseballs, he was unselfish, that's fine, but, you know, we saw with bryce harper some people are not worth the price tag and you give up that huge price tag, that gives you a lot of bandwidth to buy young talented players. was mookie worth $350 million? i guess. was he worth $425 million that he wanted? no. no. he kept saying that he wanted mike trout money. well, do you know who gets mike trout money? mike trout, not mookie betts. speaking of liverpool, the way liverpool won is they didn't -- they bought suarez for 23, 24 million, they sold him for 80, 90 million. they sold torres for 50 million. they sold sterling for 50 million. catinio for 125 million and they got a lot of good young solid

players and now they are on the greatest run in english premier league history. so, i'm sorry, i just think the price tag way too high for mookie betts. as much as i love the guy. >> he may not be worth mike trout money but he's pretty close. he's pretty close, he is a he that good. even as a yankee fan i can't gloat this morning because the red sox traded away their derek jeter, young guy, the leader of the team who the fans love. i took my kids to fenway this summer and they fell in love with mookie betts because of the way he played, because of the way he carried himself before and after the game. i will not gloat as a yankee fan except to say this may be the greatest off-season in yankee history with the astros gutted by cheating, the red sox losing their manager and the best player, it's us and the rays in the al east. >> you never know. >> you have to play the games. >> everybody thought the nationals would never get to the

playoffs because they lost bryce harper. they ended up winning it all. i will just remind jonathan lemire, jonathan, there is a guy named nomar and when the red sox got rid of nomar the red sox fans couldn't believe it, three or four months later they won their first world series since 1918. >> that was a trade that was very unpopular at the time. i remember being very angry about it among the fans but it was the right decision. it obviously helped win the -- the players they got back helped them win in 2004, first title in 86 years. i keep coming back to this, mookie betts is not just an electrifying and popular player, but the prospects they got back the red sox hope they can be half as good as mookie betts and this feels like a decision -- you're right, joe, he is not mike trout, no one is, but this is someone -- this is someone you build your team around and it's a sad day to see him go. all right. still ahead the latest on impeachment. senator susan collins tries to

make herself feel better about the acquittal vote she will cast later today, but it's immediately undercut by the president. we will explain that ahead. i remember thinking about things i did and wondering if that was the last time i was going to do that thing. coming to cancer treatment centers of america, they treat the whole person.

everything is here. imaging, infusion. i don't have to go anywhere else. they cared about me as a person beyond just being a cancer patient. they're my second family. get care like no other. call us at cancer treatment centers of america. you want a fresh-smelling home, but some air fresheners use heavy, overwhelming scents. try febreze one; a range of innovative air fresheners with no heavy perfumes that you can feel good about using in your home

to deliver a light, natural-smelling freshness. febreze one neutralizes stale, stuffy odors and releases a subtle hint of fragrance like bamboo or lavender & eucalyptus. to eliminate odors with no heavy perfumes, try febreze one. brand power. helping you buy better. (sensei) beautiful. but support the leg! when i started cobra kai, the lack of control over my business made me a little intense. but now i practice a different philosophy. quickbooks helps me get paid, manage cash flow, and run payroll. and now i'm back on top... with koala kai. hey! more mercy. (vo) save over 40 hours a month with intuit quickbooks. the easy way to a happier business.

the best of pressure cooking and air frying now in one pot, and with tendercrisp technology, you can cook foods that are crispy on the outside and juicy on the inside. the ninja foodi pressure cooker, the pressure cooker that crisps.

54 past the hour. presidential candidate mike bloomberg is doubling spending on campaign ads in all the places where he's on the air a campaign official told nbc news. according to the "new york times" bloomberg authorized his campaign team to double spending on television commercials in every market where he is currently advertising and expand his campaign's field staff to more than 2,000 people. the move comes after the chaotic

outcome of the iowa caucuses and as he tries to win the democratic primary by ignoring the first four states in february but aggressively contesting the larger states that begin voting in march. steve rattner, obviously you know a lot about this, managing his money, but is this doubling down on spending because of the chaos in iowa? >> i think in part but i think the broader picture is that this primary season is unfolding much the way mike hoped it would to create an avenue for himself in the sense that bernie sanders obviously very strong. i think people pay frankly a little bit too much attention on iowa to the question of whether bernie or mayor pete won by a point. the two big take a ways is that mayor pete outperformed but most importantly for mike bloomberg joe biden as best we know at the moment had a terrible night and there needs to be a mainstream candidate, i think, and i think a lot of other centrists believe to counter the continuing very

strong performance of bernie. what mike is seeing happening is exactly the set of facts and the lay of the land that he thinks works to his best advantage and, of course, what happened in iowa does justify his decision in a way not to go there because look what happened. it ended up not being a caucus or primary or anything really but a mess. >> a complete mess. >> i just want to circle back to what we were talking about before. you sent me an interesting statistic. barack obama created 1.3 million more jobs in his last 35 months than donald trump did in the first 35 months of his presidency. that's a lot of jobs. >> yeah, that's another way to look at this fact that this economy is not performing any better than it was under obama. let me just say one other thing about mike that came to mind, last night i got four or five or six emails just being on a list, nothing special, from the bloomberg campaign doing their own fact checking of donald

trump. i didn't get a single email from another campaign doing fact checking on donald trump. i think the plume beboom berg c i say this as a partisan, is an incredible machine with an unlimited budget and now it has an opening. >> steve rattner, thank you very much. still ahead, it has been a dramatic week in our nation's history and it's only wednesday. a huge technical error leaves no clear winner in iowa. an impeached president gives the state of the union address and a divided congress is about to acquit him. we will get to all of that, plus we will talk to michigan governor gretchen whitmer who gave the democratic response to the president's speech. you're watching "morning joe." we will be right back. ♪ limu emu & doug [ siren ] give me your hand! i can save you...

lots of money with liberty mutual! we customize your car insurance so you only pay for what you need! only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ month after month i'm doing it all. the supplements... the veggies... the water. but i still have recurring constipation, belly pain, straining and bloating. my doctor said i could have a real medical condition called ibs-c. for my recurring constipation and belly pain from ibs-c... i said "yes" to linzess. linzess treats adults with ibs with constipation. linzess is not a laxative. it works differently. it helps relieve belly pain and lets you have more frequent and complete bowel movements. do not give to children less than six. and it should not be given to children six to less than 18. it may harm them. do not take linzess if you have a bowel blockage. get immediate help if you develop unusual or severe stomach pain.

especially with bloody or black stools. the most common side effect is diarrhea. sometimes severe. if it's severe, stop taking linzess and call your doctor right away. other side effects include gas, stomach area pain and swelling. i'm doing it all. and i said "yes" to linzess. ask your doctor about linzess. ♪ ♪ ( ♪ ) only tylenol® rapid release gels have laser drilled holes. they release medicine fast, for fast pain relief. tylenol®. the best of pressure cooking and air frying now in one pot, and with tendercrisp technology, you can cook foods that are crispy on the outside and juicy on the inside. the ninja foodi pressure cooker, the pressure cooker that crisps. he made up a lot of stuff,

like saying that he was trying to protect preexisting conditions. i think he assumes that our preexisting condition is amnesia that he tried to destroy protections for preexisting conditions, but he also hit on one of his favorite lies, socialists are coming for you. >> 132 lawmakers in this room have endorsed legislation to impose a socialist takeover of our health care system, wiping out the private health insurance plans of 180 million very happy american americans. >> you just heard the single clap of the only person in america who likes their health insurance company. >> welcome back to "morning joe," it is wednesday, february 5th, only wednesday. still with joe, willie and me we have msnbc contributor mike barnicle, joining the conversation pulitzer prize

winning columnist and associate editor of the "washington post" and msnbc political analyst eugene robinson is with us. former aide to the george w. bush white house and state departments elise jordan and author and presidential historian doris kearns goodwin. and in manchester, new hampshire, msnbc national affairs analyst, could host of "the circus" and editor and chief of the recount, john heilemann. >> we know you are in new hampshire, but sort through you spent a great deal of time in iowa, sort through the latest there and also let us know how that's impacting the campaigning where you are now in manchester. >> yeah, well, you guys have been on it all morning, joe. i think as chaotic and crazy as the last 24 hours were, i think yesterday -- the thing is the verdict on iowa now as you guys have said is a debacle and the

notion that we still don't have results, it's wednesday, nobody knows when you have the results, the party is saying you might have them by the end of today, a full 48 hours after the caucuses. s it's not like there is any part of the legitimacy of what happened on monday night that is to be saved at this point. they are trying to take care when they get the results to us that we can have faith and confidence in them. i don't think at this point there's anybody who really has faith and confidence in the results that will come out of iowa. what's the affect of that? i think, you know, the first thing is that for those candidates who performed well in iowa, bernie sanders and pete buttigieg, both of them have suffered from it. neither one of them has gotten the kind of bump that we in the media, which is what this is all about, it's not really -- in the long run it's all about delegate, in the short run it's all about what kind of momentum do you get coming out of iowa and what those two guys got is nothing like what they would have gotten if a normal iowa

caucus played out where the next morning, yesterday, people would have said it's essentially very close to a tie with bernie sanders winning the popular vote in some way but more importantly pete buttigieg winning narrowly at least what we think now on the basis of what we know now winning narrowly in terms of delegate equivalents coming out of the state. those guys should have gotten a giant bump out of that. they did not. nothing like the kind of advantage they should have gotten. on the other side you have joe biden who seems to have performed about as badly as those of us who were pessimistic about his performance on monday as we thought he might perform. he would have been, we think, on the basis of what we now know would have been a fourth place finisher in iowa which would have been a body blow to that campaign. instead they are, you know, making all kinds of news about litigating, casting even further doubt on the caucuses and they are essentially trying to buy themselves a mulligan, in the same way that sanders and pete buttigieg have been damaged by not getting the positive verdict, the momentum in the positive bump out of it they

should have gotten, biden has sort of gotten a little bit of a mulligan. he comes here now and gets to try to reboot here in new hampshire in this incredibly intense now seven-day what's normally an eight-day stretch from the monday to the next tuesday he's now got these seven days to try to put his campaign back on its feet, to right the ship and to get past what happened to him on monday, but let's be clear, even though biden has not suffered the kind of damage that a full on media -- a full on media condemnation or a full on media verdict of failure would have given him, a lot of the eyes of the political world they saw what happened on monday night for him and i think that puts him in a very precarious position because in the world of donors and in the world of the rest of the political world, they saw that as a fourth place finish and so for joe biden new hampshire now becomes something close to if not a must win, a must finish very, very strong. >> yeah, must not finish in fourth or fifth place for joe biden.

>> that's right. >> i agree. i agree. joe biden did get a mulligan, bernie sanders and mayor pete's people have every reason to be angry at the fact that their momentum was stripped away from him. the longer this plays out the longer we go where they are not given that momentum -- they are not given that push, they are not given what pat buchanan always described as that $100 million free earned media coming out of iowa with a victory. so we will see what happens. doris, though, if mayor pete does end up winning iowa because he was the second choice of many people in the caucus, you said -- you've said that he would be in very, very good company, a guy named abe lincoln also had that luck in his caucuses. >> true enough. abe lincoln actually made an

appeal by letter and through his campaign managers to the delegates to say i know i'm not the first love where i go, maybe except in my home state of illinois, but if you can't get your first love, come to me, i will be your second love. and it worked. he didn't attack the base, the more radical, more conservative elements and after the first ballot when sewer didn't win or neither of the others did, people scramble arnold and who is this guy that's been pretty good to you? he was also centrist versus radical conservative and could win the battle ground states. familiarity, this echos everywhere in my old history. >> well, and also the time -- the time that we find ourselves in, this chaotic situation we find ourselves in, i go back to bully pulpit and you describing a time of chaos, mass chaos, and of course you had t.r. and later taft that stepped in, but here we find ourselves in a time of

economic turmoil, the rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer, all because of this new economy that is still new, that continues to change radically, leaving a lot of people behind and, let's face it, the 21st century's versions of trusts, whether it's facebook or google or a lot of these other companies that have unprecedented power over information about us and our life and nobody in washington has the nerve to break them up. >> i mean, there's such a similarity, again, between the continues of the industrial revolution and the conditions of technological and global revolution today. they both have shaken up the economy much as it happened at the turn of the 20th century. this gap between the rich and the poor, you had immigration coming in from abroad, you had people shared by new inventions, imagine what it was like to suddenly interest telephones and tell graphs all around and at the same time the primary system

begins. it used to be the conventions you went in the summer and chose your person and fall was the campaign and it was over. i sometimes wish to have that constricted period of time, but teddy wanted to run against taft in 1912, he needed the primaries because he needed the votes so they set up 13 prim ears, he wins them, taft gets the delegates, this he fight like hell with each other, "the new york times" writes an editorial saying if this is the first example of this new founded primary system we sincerely hope it's the last. foreigners must make us blush. we are a mob. we don't look like a rational procedure. go back to the old system. so sometimes i'm thinking, oh, my god -- and then it got even worse, there were 103 ballots when you got to the convention in 1924. we think we have taken a long time, it took nine days to get the candidate to come out of the democratic convention in 1924 in the blistering heat of new york. at least we didn't have that for

this one. it's not nine days yet. >> not yet. with less than a week until the new hampshire primary, we have several new polls from that state. umass poll shows senator bernie sanders at 25%, joe biden at 20%. statistically tied. senator elizabeth warren follows closely behind with 17%. sanders is at 24 in the "boston globe" wbz-tv suffolk university tracking point, and buttigieg is tied and bide n side. another poll sanders and biden tied at 19%, buttigieg with 14%, down 11 points since november. in a new emerson college news tracking poll sanders has a 15 point advantage sitting at 32%, biden and buttigieg are statistically tied for second place. wow. >> willie geist, yesterday

charlie pearce, esquire politics, said that we mentioned the name ricky bobby more than we mentioned the name of elizabeth warren. he was right. he could have added lloyd christmas to that list as well as frodo, luke and han. we mentioned a lot of people's names more than elizabeth warren and that was actually to her benefit. along with biden she gets a mulligan, too, because she finished a disappointing third when she was supposed to win. the one consistency in all of these new hampshire polls, though, are that elizabeth's numbers, senator warren's numbers are low in every poll. you have bernie at the top, you have biden or buttigieg next, but, man, in fourth place in all of these polls, third or fourth place and really distant the last one elizabeth warren. man, i always considered this to be her home state, that she and

bernie were going to be fighting it out for first here. >> well, it is her home state, but unfortunately for her it's also bernie sanders' home state. remember in 2016 he beat hillary clinton who would become the nominee of course by 22 points in the important state of new hampshire. so to see him at the top of the polls is not surprising. i think the new hampshire polls is reflective of a national trend where she has slid a bit since her peak in the fall. gene robinson, as we look at these polls we should also point out first of all we don't know the final result in iowa on day three of the iowa caucuses, there's still 29% out there. i say that to make the point that iowa is not priced into these polls because they were taken over the last couple of days and people in new hampshire don't know what happened exactly in the state of iowa. they know that pete buttigieg and bernie sanders did very well, that so far from what we've seen it doesn't look like joe biden did very well, but the iowa result which usually catapults us into new hampshire is not there.

>> no, iowa usually has an impact on new hampshire. we may have new hampshire before we know what happened in iowa, right? so there's not the sort of carryover effect. one thing i did notice, you know, sitting here in the evening coverage and watching steve kornacki at his map, which is just awesome and so we see he has the counties of iowa color coded and you see counties that are colored for buttigieg and for biden, you see counties for klobuchar. >> yeah. >> you saw no counties for elizabeth warren. now, she finished higher than klobuchar in terms of delegates and the popular vote, but there was no place where she was -- she was the first -- she finished first, basically. and that's got to be worrisome for her. these polls that you just went through, those are frankly surprising to me.

so i don't know where she goes. you know, after this she's not really thought to be on the map in nevada, she's not really thought to be on the map in south carolina. the money starts to dry up. i think this is a critical time for her. >> yeah. i tell you what, i will be the first to admit i'm completely surprised, completely flum uksed by the drop in the polls for elizabeth warren. she had through most of the spring and summer ran really just a great campaign, remember those selfie lines where just thousands of people were lining up, she was there waiting, she was energized, she was excited, she had a real connection with people, and i know, yes, she put out the numbers for her medicare for all plan, but, my god, look at bernie sanders. bernie is not even bothering with numbers, yeah, trillions, i don't know, what are you going to do? like that's his explanation how he's going to pay for it. and that is his expansion on how

he's going to pay for it. so i still -- i just don't get elizabeth warren continuing to drop, especially in new hampshire. another thing i don't really get looking at these polls leading into iowa, elise and also now looking at new hampshire was joe biden in that the last month there was one poll after another that either had biden in first or second place in iowa. he seemed to be on a surge. and then caucus night just collapsed. i will tell you i'm looking at these polls that show him in second place and i wonder if people are just being nice to pollsters. do we trust these numbers? is he really sitting at 15%? is he really in second place? or is he going to underperform again? >> joe, the numbers in new hampshire they seem a little bit all over the place and i'm wondering if iowa is going to be the come to jesus moment for democratic voters that when they

go to new hampshire they are going to have to choose a primary to choose a nominee that is going to be able to beat donald trump and is the flirtation with the far left going to continue or are they going to come home and get practical and be pragmatic and that's what joe biden has to generate that kind of enthusiasm if he has a chance. as of now you look at how iowa went down. i don't know if it's going -- because the role of that caucus was so out of whack this year, i don't know if it's going to play the role in winnowing the field and so everyone is still kind of wandering -- wandering aimlessly a bit. >> and, john heilemann, let's get to biden for a second. one of the things we talked about were all those biden polls that showed biden in first or second place going down the home stretch. you said people on the ground in

iowa didn't believe that a lot of biden's own people didn't believe it, but there we are. now we're looking at new hampshire polls that show him doing pretty well in some of them in second place. do we believe them? does it feel that way on the ground or is he going to underperform again? >> i will tell you, joe, you know, the one pollster who had joe biden right in iowa turns out to have been ann seltzer whose iowa poll got spiked on saturday night because of screwed up call sheets. when those leaked numbers got out to reporters like me, turned out she had joe biden in fourth place and that's where he turned out to be. we all saw that his organization was weak in iowa and we all saw that his support was not -- was older, traditional democrats on the older end of the age scale and if you had a younger caucus electorate that he would have trouble. that's what happened. now you fast forward to new hampshire, if you look at all of these polls and they are all over the map in new hampshire, the reality is that i think everyone would concede one thing, bernie sanders on the

basis of 2016 and the aggregate of all of these polls is the clear front runner here. now you have among the other four candidates kind of a race for a strong second place. is joe biden in a position to finish not just in second place but to put some distance between himself and the other candidates in this field? i think there are some pretty significant questions of the kind you're asking. big turnout here in new hampshire, if you got a lot of these young professionals, especially some of these independents and republicans who can vote in the democratic primary, who are likely to not want to vote on the republican side because no one takes the race with donald trump seriously, you will get an influx of voters he think with southern new hampshire, the kind of suburban voters, those voters, i think, many people here think are more likely to end up voting for someone like a mayor pete or elizabeth warren if they are more aggressive and may not be as attracted to joe biden or bernie sanders, but bernie sanders has such a big lead it won't affect him. the stakes could not be higher

for biden. if he does not finish in a strong second he will have wind taken out of his sails on the back of the poor performance for iowa. >> so as the democratic party in iowa look for that 29% of the vote. the president was giving his state of the union address last night as an impeached president of the united states. he addressed a bitterly divided congress while also seeking reelection. those differs on difd display from the president looking away from the house speaker's outstretched hands to nancy pelosi ripping up a copy of the speech when the president finished. at times it felt like a campaign rally with republican lawmakers chanting "four more years" and democrats jeering the president for his remarks on the economy and health care. president trump's showmanship on display surprising a military family by reuniting an army sergeant with his wife and children, also promoting school choice by announcing a scholarship for a pennsylvania student and a nod to his base awarding rush limbaugh the

presidential medal of freedom. also notable, the president did not mention impeachment a single time during his speech. doris kearns goodwin, you have watched a lot of these state of the unions. >> unfortunately. >> how does last night stack up? we pointed out in our earlier hour all the lies about the economy, the lies about protecting preexisting conditions in health care, but as a performance how did the president do last night? >> once upon a time there were state of the union messages in the old, old days that used to put forth a governing message to the congress of what they wanted from the congress. they've been taken over now by all these little side lights of all the stories and the emotional ones which as we were talking about do make a difference, but what it struck me a couple things, number one, we all wondered would he speak about impeachment? we knew clinton when he was in the same position having had impeachment in the house but not yet the senate chose not to do it at all and just took forward about where we're going from here. we know that nixon when he was

already under condition of trouble because the hearings had happened, the saturday night massacre thought he wouldn't talk about impeachment, either, but then he comes up to a line where he's supposed to say we hope to displays the discredited welfare system and by mistake said we hope to displays the president. he said one year of war is enough, i will go on my own decision as to when i go, i will stay with you forever. he chose not to do that which i think was wise. the instance of the division in the house is greater than in previous times. when president reagan gave his first state of the union message and it was a real change, a complete change from the new deal and at that time tip o'neill went up to him and handed him -- mr. reagan handed him the speech and tip o'neill took it and he just said in a kind of sarcastic manner, good luck, mr. president. and they said in the president it was two heavy weights wishing themselves good luck before it all began. there was a sense of respect

back then for the two parties, even though they were violently different in what they were saying, the new deal versus the re began supply size economics and i miss that. these are moments of ritual, you like the idea that all guys are together, one guy is disappearing, maybe i'm just getting old that there is a ritual. you want some semblance of the moment when two parties come together, what is the state of the union, what is bad, what is good. >> gene, your writing this morning about the state of the union, the president continues to tell the lie that he inherited a mess interest president obama and the economy, that's not true. he talked about protesting preexisting conditions even as his administration fights it in court. >> to get rid of it, yes. >> the affordable care act as unconstitutional. but republicans, conservatives, his base perhaps independents watching last night liked the performance, if you watched the reaction. they liked those moments up in the balcony, they liked the way he talked about -- >> absolutely. >> -- his administration.

>> we could spend the whole show and most of the rest of the day fact checking that speech, right, because it was -- it was full of lies and distortions and just stuff that was outright made up, but the thing that donald trump is really good at is reality television and i thought i was watching an episode of the donald trump relity tv show, you know? mr. president or whatever. so of course he in the middle of the ceremony presents the medal of freedom for rush limbaugh and reunites the military family and gives the -- that cute little girl a scholarship. and of course at the end speaker pelosi added some reality tv of her own by tossing shade as she ostentatiously ripped the speech, obviously something she had planned. >> do you think ripping the script at the end, tossing

shade, plays great on twitter, it plays very well to some very enthusiastic progressives, i guess. does that help matters to have the speaker of the house lower herself to the president's level? >> you know, i don't know. nancy pelosi is good at politics and whenever i say she's done something that, gee, i wonder about that, it usually she saw -- she saw its impact better than i did. it seemed clear to me that after he had thrown shade for 78 minutes she was going to throw some shade of her own after he refused to shake her hand. she was going to make a statement. the way she did it, it was clearly intentional, meant to be seen, meant to be taken in. >> of course. >> she ripped it three times holding it up so you could see exactly what she was doing and did it very slowly. you know, he spent more than an

hour stoking his base and she's got a base to stoke, too. and she had sat there watching at members of her caucus and not just the squad, but members of the -- other members of her caucus stood up and walked out at various points. that's another factor. she keeps her caucus together. >> i'm not sure she was throwing shade. i don't think this was about that. i don't think nancy pelosi thinks of twitter and trending. i think she sat there and listened to a pile of lies and the only way to communicate that visually was to rip up the speech which was useless because it was full of lies. and she's fed up. i'm not sure what else you can do to point out that this man in front of her, the president of the united states, was not only using the state of the union as a campaign rally and to play to his base, but was lying to the american people time and time again, over and over again. that is just a symbolic way of

saying this is all lies without being rude. >> i will say of all the democratic responses i have seen in my lifetime, that was the most effective. >> yes. >> you know, i guess we can debate back and forth whether it was good for civility. i've just got to say politically, just politically, and i'm usually the one saying, hey, you need to reach out to the center, you need to reach out to disaffected republicans. donald trump is a bully. democrats, i've got to say, democrats just seem so weak. there doesn't seem to be a tough democrat on the national level other than nancy pelosi and, yes, chuck schumer is tough, too, but -- but nancy pelosi is the leader of the democratic party right now and when you are being bullied and when a bully stands in your house. >> and lies. >> and spreads lies not only to

everybody that is in your house, the people's house, i give her -- i give her some leeway to make a point if she wants to about, again, historians will record that as lies, almost all of it lies. for a democratic party that yesterday proved they were too inept to even run an election, i think it's okay for nancy pelosi to show a little grit and toughness. >> so, doris, before you go, tell us about the history channel series you're producing. >> oh, i'd love to. it's been a great labor of love for the last 18 months. it's going to be on old george washington and it's really talking about his journey to greatness. it's a miniseries so there's acting and then there's documentary document, jim meacham is in it, president clinton is in it, general powell is in it, they have good actors playing george and the various people around him but the story

is that a leader like george, like every leader i have ever studied has a time to become a leader that they make mistakes and they learn from their mistakes, they have misjudgments and they have self-reflection. i mean, all they can create a team around them who can argue with him. all the things you really want from a leader that we want to see in a current leader you see in george washington as he grows from a very stubborn young man at 22 and 23 when he is in the british mission to become the revolutionary leader, to become the president who leaves willingly after two terms. he is an extraordinary figure. i learned about george washington really from the first time in this. so it was really a labor of love. i really love documentaries now. >> doris, it sounds wonderful because my one complaint about history's take on george washington is that even though we hear about his flaws, he seems to be bloodless when

standing next to thomas jefferson who was this brilliant -- a man of the millennium as far as individual rights go, a man who was terribly flawed. we know about that as well with his slaves. lincoln, the home spun brilliance, the man who saved the union, the martyred savior of america, but still a man that fought constant depression and doubts. george washington has always seemed bloodless throughout time, almost too diafied. it sounds like you take that on from the beginning of this documentary. >> i think it's very important, i was in a college setting at one point and a student stood up, i was talking about presidents that had already reached the white house and were icons. he said how can i ever become one of them? they are already on mount rushmore. what you have to do is present somebody when they are young

just like other people are, when they're going to overreach, when they're going to misjudge things and do they have that capacity inside eventually to change ambition for self. he starts out very ambitious for himself but eventually that ambition comes for the country. you watch that transformation, you watch him grow, you are part of his journey, plus you see emotion in this guy. that's why it's great to have an actor, there's a very good actor playing the young john, you see his face, that emotion, every now and then with martha you see him smile, you see a dancer. joe ellis said the reason he is so popular is because he is a stud. that's the kind of language you don't usually think of with george washington. i love that that line. history was put a lot of effort behind it and it's been a great project to work on. i feel like i am on a second phase of my life in a funny way because i love this. >> amazing, doris kearns goodwin, thank you so much. we look forward to that. coming up, it wasn't just

nancy pelosi reacting to the president's state of the union address, michigan's governor gretchen whitmer delivered the democrats' official response and she joins us next on "morning joe." - [spokeswoman] meet the ninja foodi pressure cooker, the best of pressure cooking and air frying now in one pot, and with tendercrisp technology, you can cook foods that are crispy on the outside and juicy on the inside. the ninja foodi pressure cooker, the pressure cooker that crisps.

want to freshen your home ♪ without using heavy, overwhelming scents? try febreze one; it eliminates odors with no heavy perfumes, so you can feel good about using it in your home. for a light, natural-smelling freshness, try febreze one.

a nation divided by an angry, out of control president. a white house beset by lies, chaos and corruption. an administration that has failed the american people. it doesn't have to be this way.

next year we can have a leader who brings people together, solves problems and gets results. mike bloomberg will get it done. i'm mike bloomberg and i approve this message.

as we witness the impeachment process in washington, there are some things each of us, no matter our party, should demand. the truth matters. facts matter. and no one should be above the law. it's not what those senators say, tomorrow it's about what they do that matters. remember. listen to what people say, but watch what they do. it's time for action. generations of americans are counting on us. let's not let them down. >> all right.

president trump didn't mention the impeachment trial in his state of the union address but democratic governor gretchen whitmer of michigan did in the democrats' response. and governor whitmer joins us right now. thank you so much for being on. congratulations on a freight performance last night. in very difficult times. you decided to mention impeachment. tell me about what it was for the party, for you, to make that decision, to bring that up in the response to the state of the union. >> well, i thought it was important to highlight, you know, the whole course of my speech last night was really telling people it's one thing to listen to what people say, but the truth is in what they do. and as you all have been fact checking the president's speech all morning, we know that it was full of just talk. his actions are exactly the opposite of what he tried to portray last night and that's why at the end i wanted to highlight that we should judge these senators by what they do

today when they take this vote. this is an important time in our country. we have decisions to make that are going to impact my kids and your kids and all american kids' lives for decades to come and so it's important that we all get active in this campaign. this is about action this year and holding people accountable and ensuring that we have leaders who are truthful, who treat people with respect, to fight for the things that really matter to american families. >> governor, it's willie geist. good to see you this morning. given where you're sitting in east lansing i'm tempted to ask you about mark d'antoni. let me ask you about the state of michigan and how it votes in its primary. we still do not have all the vote from iowa and you have witnessed all the chaos there. there's been a lot of talk that a state like michigan should kick off the nominating process in the democratic party. would you support michigan going first next time around? >> well, i think the reason

that -- you know, this administration and all of the candidates have been highlighting michigan is because we are important in this election and i think that, you know, in 2018 i won with a big margin and it wasn't because i was talking about the other guys, it was because i stayed focused on the dinner table issues and i think those resonate across the country and so, yes, i do think michigan should have a say in what our field looks like much earlier than we do. >> governor, good to see you this morning. you were up late last night so we appreciate your being here early this morning out there in michigan. let me ask you about macomb county, wayne county and the potential nominee for president of the united states, the guy who is leading the pack right now, you may have heard of him, senator bernie sanders. he is for single payer in terms of health care. macomb, wayne county is a huge percentage of uaw families. what's the reaction going to be to him proposing single payer and taking away your health plan? >> well, i think first and foremost, you know, the

president talked about supporting coverage for preexisting conditions and yet we all know he has been in court since day one to try to get rid of the affordable care act. so one of the points i made last night is that every democrat running for president has embraced health care expansion, really ensuring everyone has access to quality affordable health care. so they all may have different plans but the goal is the same and whether you are fortunate enough to be represented by a great union or you are someone who is struggling in an hourly job or two of them and still can't make ends meet, the fact that there's one party that is trying to expand health care, various ways of doing it, but that's the goal and another that's just trying to rip it away is a very stark difference in what democrats offer going into this election. >> right now back to macomb and wayne counties, how do you think right now the feeling is among union people, their families, about single payer? >> well, i think people are concerned, of course.

you know, if you are fortunate enough to have health care through your workplace you don't want to lose it. of course there would be anxiety about wondering how does this play out. and that's why when i ran, you know, i embraced and worked across the aisle to expand medicaid here and also want to continue to do that. so i think people will have questions, but at the end of the day the vast majority of americans want to know that they can have access to affordable quality health care whether you are in macomb county or kent county, michigan, or you are in florida or nevada. >> governor, elise jordan here. you chose what i thought was a smart tack by sticking to issues and not getting into politics of the day in this rebuttal that has always -- has been such a challenge for both parties to always give the response. do you think going forward what is the right balance for the democratic party to hit when attacking trump and attacking

abuse of power versus dealing with the policies of the day? >> well, i think staying tethered to the dinner table issues, that's what i've told every candidate who has asked me, you know, about michigan. when you show up you don't get distracted by nonsense and fights that don't really matter. you stay tethered to the things that people are worried about. you know, child care, access to quality affordable health care, you know, the ability to get a good paying job that you can sustain a family on. the reckless twitter account coming out of the oval office right now has made it hard to be a farmer in the state of michigan, it has put auto workers in stress because of, you know, steel and aluminum prices. so people want to know that we have leadership that offers stability and forward looking and that is going to stay focused on the things that matter to families when they're sitting at their dinner table. >> michigan governor gretchen

whitmer, thank you very much for being on. come back soon. thank you. >> thank you. and now let's bring in former u.s. senator and nbc news and msnbc political analyst claire mccaskill. clair, i want to ask you about the state of the union with impeachment as a backdrop, but also with the debacle in iowa as a backdrop. your thoughts? >> yeah. you know, the iowa caucuses have been troubled for some time. i think we've forgotten about what happened in the republican primary just a couple cycles ago where first they said it was romney, then they said it was san forum, this he finally said it was rand paul and people ended up going to jail for bribery around the rand paul victory. so this has happened on both sides of the aisle. unfortunately for us it was at the moment everyone was watching and it's time to get rid of the caucuses, they are not fair, they're not open enough, not enough people can participate and go to a whole new primary

system with perhaps a different order every year so we have more fairness in the demographics that are represented. it was a mess. it's still a mess. we are in the world of the rest of the results right now. >> yikes. >> yeah. >> gene? >> so, claire, we sat here and we sort of watched this unfold over the last couple of days. we still don't know the final results in iowa. what do you think the impact is on the race going forward on the party going forward? this is not sort of, you know -- if you only get one chance to make a first impression, this one not a very good one. >> no, it was a terrible first impression. a couple things that are clear, once all the final votes are tallied we need to see if bernie sanders delivered this surge of new voters. that's been his theory of the case. i can win against donald trump because all these new voters, all these people who see my extremely progressive agenda as the way forward, whether or not

these new voters materialize. it doesn't appear so far that happened in iowa. the other thing that's really unbelievable about this is think about what mayor pete accomplished. he went from nobody having heard of him, a young candidate, an untested candidate and he ends up potentially at the top of the heap, but doesn't get the kind of attention for that accomplishment that you would traditionally get. terribly unfair to him. >> the same rural, white, iowa voters who would never vote for barack obama would never vote for pete buttigieg, they voted for both of them. >> yeah, as i said before, i remember everybody saying there is no way that white iowa will vote for a black candidate for president. i heard everyone say there's no way that white particularly rural iowa will vote for a gay man. guess what, he won most of those counties that were obama trump counties and so you've got a candidate that clearly is appealing to some of the rural

small town voters in this country and i think democrats ought to take a look at that. i'm not sure he will end up being the nominee and i'm kind of trying to stay neutral in this thing, but it probably was not a good night for joe biden to finish out of the top three, it was a very good night for pete buttigieg. >> claire, you let me to my question which is about vice president biden. finishing it looks like in fourth place. we should wait and see what the 29% of the vote which god knows where it is right now but hopefully it comes in at some point today. if you are on the biden campaign going into new hampshire where they are right now and six days away from a vote there, how are you feeling? what does he need to do in new hampshire to keep this moving? >> well, i mean, joe needs to be joe and joe needs to put a little vinegar in his step. >> absolutely. >> and be a little bit more aggressive in his posture so people have confidence in his strength. i think, you know, strength is a big thing in presidential

campaigns. frankly, donald trump kind of exuded strength, he was kind of a nut about it, and most of it was not true, but strength matters. so we'll see. of course, you know, we can't -- we can't really draw hard and fast conclusions until we see what a more diverse state does. >> so the new hampshire primary we've talked about it some this morning, it is all about joe biden in my mind and if you go up there you will find it's all about joe biden. what's going to happen with him. have you been surprised, your reference to, you know, whatever blank and vinegar, the lack of it in the vice president as he addresses small crowds instead of getting angry about the lack of attention paid to opioid abuse especially in new hampshire which is huge, the lack of energy that he brings to the table each and every day. >> yeah, it's a problem because you have to -- in beating this president who frankly all he knows how to do is market, he doesn't know anything else, he

is a marketer, if you are going to beat somebody like this guy you're going to have to be strong enough to pivot and punch. he has been beat up by this president because the president didn't want to run against him and i get you don't want to, you know, kowtow to his ridiculous accusations that he was getting rid of a prosecutor to protect his son when in reality he was getting rid of a prosecutor because he was corrupt, but i don't think america has heard that anger and emotion from him in a way that resonates strength. maybe that will happen in the coming days and with perhaps a victory in south carolina things turn around, but stay tuned, everybody, because the next month is going to tell the tale of who will be the nominee of the democratic party. >> i want to bring in john heilemann right now on the ground in new hampshire. how is the biden campaign looking there, resonating, what are you hearing? i'm concerned and hearing that

there's not enough campaign folks in some of these important states like michigan, for example. >> right. i was with him yesterday, mika, the first event that he did on the backside of iowa and he was very much like he was in iowa, which is to say -- he gave a fine speech. the thing that characterized biden's performance in iowa was i would say a lack of energy on the part of the candidate. he speaks in a soulful way and genuine way, a lot of people connect with him in a kind of heart-felt way, but what he's not creating is a lot of electricity in the rooms. the crowds that he drew in iowa were notably small. the crowd that he drew why he had in new hampshire was pretty small, especially compared to the bernie sanders event i went to a couple hours later 15 minutes away where sanders had a crowd of 2,000, 3,000 people in a room outside manchester, joe biden would have been lucky if he had 200 in his room. i guess i think if you are a joe biden fan you have to be a little concerned that some of the same things that afflicted

had i'm in iowa will repeat themselves here in new hampshire and as i said earlier, i think this moment in this new hampshire primary, this kind of hot house of intensity in this state, creates opportunities and moments for candidates to really move the needle. we've seen it in the past where there was hillary clinton in 2008 where you can really turn the tide with one electric moment, with one thing that really connects with this electorate, but right now joe biden is kind of turning in that same performance over and over again and the combination of a lack of organizational muscle and him seeming a little bit listless, he's going to have to raise his game in these last few days or he might have the same problem here as he had out there in iowa. >> well, and, my gosh, what actually is over all of that is the fact that unlike bernie sanders, obviously unlike mike bloomberg, joe biden is struggling to raise money. people have been talking about

it for some time. his money -- his fundraising operation just is not up to snuff with what you would expect for somebody who has been vice president for eight years, in the straights senate since the early 1970s. he's running out of money. >> yes. that is certainly the case. you and i have been talking about it for a while. when his fundraising first headed south back in the fall you could see he was going to have a problem when we got to the first quarter of this year. he actually kind of managed to turn it around enough that he wasn't dead broke in early january, which i thought was a possibility. he now in the last finance report at the end of january it showed him with about $8 million cash on hand which is about a quarter or 20% of what all of the following candidates have, sanders, warren and buttigieg, all three of those candidates very amply funded. joe biden way behind in that regard and to go to the thing we were talking about earlier, joe,

something you and i talked about yesterday, it may be true that for america the results coming out of iowa were muddled and so these canned its who wanted to get -- were expected to get a big bump out of doing well didn't get it. it's also the it's also the case that the donor case, the people the biden campaign are relying onto keep him competitive with the bernie sanders and buttigieg, those sophisticated folks saw what happened in iowa and i think the checkbooks are going to stay closed unless they see something really powerful out of biden in new hampshire, he's going to have a real problem on the money front. he's on the brink now. >> right. and that was really what was i think the most devastating for the biden campaign coming out of iowa was that it doesn't matter how you spin this thing, there are going to be fundraisers, people that are going to write the big checks for other candidates that aren't going to write a check for biden because he placed fourth.

he's got to perform in new hampshire or he may even struggle through the next two contests. >> joining us now, we have editorial page editor, the globe's editor. there's an op ed that argues kill the tradition. new hampshire and iowa should not vote first. okay. make the case. i think we're clearly beginning to see the problem with iowa, but explain iowa and new hampshire together. >> this is much bigger than the dysfunction in the app in iowa and the process that we've seen up fold since monday night. it strikes me that today many of us are looking at the u.s. senate and asking that our senators put their parochial interests below the interests of the nation. do what's in the long-term interest in the nation. we're saying our ability to be king makers in endorsing the new hampshire primary is secondary

to the need to call for a better system. the new hampshire primary was the first of 20 states to hold presidential primaries. that tradition now is antiquated if you think about it with both iowa and new hampshire. and that's partially because both those states represent more 19th serccentury, let alone 20t century america. they're 90% white. new hampshire's black population is 1.7 %. we know the nation's black population is more like 12 %. when it comes to representing young people, new hampshire is the second oldest population with a median age of over 43 compared to the country, and when we elect a president, we're looking for the president to address issues of the future including climate change, the deficit, making down payments on education. this way in which the focus on new hampshire and iowa distorts the ways that candidates gain

momentum, it's time for it to end. and lest you think that's meaningless, keep in mind that no president has won office without winning new hampshire and iowa in 40 years with the exception of bill clinton. that's because he was up against favored sons in new hampshire and iowa. >> clare, we've been saying for some time those demographic break downs in iowa and new hampshire fit the republican party nicely. if they want to continue doing that, they can. it doesn't seem to make sense for the democratic party. you wanted to make another point about the joe biden fundraising? >> the thing joe biden is struggling with is online low donations. that is, in fact, the modern speaking of modernizing our party, the modern way to compete is by people giving you ten and $20, and have millions of people do that. joe is not really seeing the kind of online low donations that is 100% fueling bernie and

elizabeth, and to a large extent, fueling mayor pete. so that's where -- that's a real indicator about the enthusiasm at the bottom at the grass roots level. that's where he needs to focus. i wanted to ask the editorial writer, did your editorial also mention how caucuses limit participation rather than open participation for the disabled, for single moms with three kids, for people who are out of town or people who work the night shift? was that included that we should do away with caucuses once and for all? >> well, you're certainly raising great points about the caucus system and what dysfunctional about it. but our view is broader. we encompass the new hampshire system. it's a primary, in our point of view. the reason for that is while we can look at process problems, there's a fundamental deeper problem which is that this selection of the population

whether you think caucuses are fun and interesting and engage young people civically or whether you think the primary has some value because it requires candidates to go to pancake breakfasts and town halls and not just work the national media, those are valid counter arguments to keep that mechanism or process in place. but the broader issue is that these states do not represent either the democratic party or the nation as its changed. so i think it's important to keep in mind that there are ways to do this that are better that would be superior to giving new hampshire and iowa that strangle hold, and that could include having a rotating primary system where groups of states or regions which could take turns sort of being the first in the nation and distribute and dilute the impact of any particular states. we could also look at states like illinois. it's very representative of the country along racial and age lines and important economic factors including the chair of the population in poverty.

contrast that with iowa and new hampshire where the home ownership rate far surpasses that in the country and you realize the ways in which the priorities of candidates, the ways they campaign, and just who gets momentum gets affected by that. >> editorial page editor at the boston globe. joe? >> illinois is a great state. i love starting with michigan. michigan and florida are two diverse states. you have a lot of different things going there. >> editorial page director at the boston globe, thank you so much. thank you so much. still ahead, president trump claims the economy is the best it's ever been, but the actual data says otherwise. >> and other following reports that after the iowa fiasco, mike bloomberg is about to double the already unprecedented amount of money he's spending on campaign ads. "morning joe" is coming right back.

- [spokeswoman] meet the ninja foodi pressure cooker, the best of pressure cooking and air frying now in one pot, and with tendercrisp technology, you can cook foods that are crispy on the outside and juicy on the inside. the ninja foodi pressure cooker, the pressure cooker that crisps.

because you didn't have another dvt. not today.

one blood clot puts you at risk of having another, so we chose xarelto®, to help keep you protected. xarelto® is proven to treat and reduce the risk of dvt or pe blood clots from happening again. almost 98% of people did not have another dvt or pe. don't stop taking xarelto® without talking to your doctor, as this may increase your risk of blood clots. while taking, a spinal injection increases the risk of blood clots, which may cause paralysis- the inability to move. you may bruise more easily or take longer for bleeding to stop. xarelto® can cause serious and in rare cases, fatal bleeding. it may increase your risk of bleeding if you take certain medicines. get help right away for unexpected bleeding or unusual bruising. do not take xarelto® if you have an artificial heart valve or abnormal bleeding. before starting, tell your doctor about all planned medical or dental procedures and any kidney or liver problems. help protect yourself from another dvt or pe. ask your doctor about xarelto®. to learn more about cost and how janssen can help, visit xarelto.com.

members of the congress, i have the high privilege and the distinct honor of presenting to you the president of the united states. >> the high privilege and distinct honor. >> the high privilege and the distinct honor. >> the high privilege and the distipgt honor. >> members of congress, the president of the united states. >> with a snubbed handshake, then that altered introending up with a ripped up speech. there was no love lost last night between the president and the house speaker. good morning and welcome to "morning joe." it is wednesday, february 5th. along with joe, willie and me with have mike barnicle, white house reporter for the associated press, jonathan lamire, a former director of

strategic directions for hillary clinton's presidential campaign, adrian ellerod, and professor at vander build, john beachem. he's an msnbc contributor. >> just an overview of this thing. willie, there were people last night saying donald trump, this is whether you like him or not, this was a really good speech for him. i mean, that's like me giving a speech this morning to red sox nation saying not only did we keep mookie bets, we got ma chau toe coming in a couple months. and aaron judge decided to be a red sock, and the yankees aren't going to be playing -- how do you qualify something as a good speech if it's fed by lies and they're so easy to uncover on

the google machine. whether it's donald trump is saying that republicans are fighting for preexisting conditions when they're fighting to kill preexisting conditions for people like my son with type one diabetes. and the jobs creation quote, mika is going to be saying it in a little bit. it's absolutely preposterous that donald trump suggests that had he not turned things around from barack obama, this economy would be in terrible shape. when he's writing the obama wave -- riding the obama wave. barack obama creating far more jobs over his last three years in office than donald trump's created in his first three years. the lies were preposterous, and for some reason the press keeps feeding into this hype that somehow his economy is so much better than former economies. it's a lie. >> well, the lie he's been telling from the beginning is he inherited a mess from president

obama which is objectively untrue. steve rattner is here in a couple minutes with charts. mike barnicle bowed his head when you mentioned mookie bets' name. the state of the union was like a tv show, like an up soed of ellen. you had a military reunion, a fourth grader receiving a scholarship. he gave out the medal of freedom to rush limb b. held the ceremony in the middle of the state of the union. it was theatrical. for my money, the -- all the no handshake, the not saying the distinct honor and high privilege and then ripping up the script at the end is not what the country needs. i know those will be viewed as sick burns or mic drops or something in the far reaches of each side's team but i don't think the country needs that kind of stuff right now. >> well, by most accounts it was

a state of a union unlike any other. with an impeached president addressing a bitterly divided congress while also seeking reelection. the devices were on vivid display last night from the president looking away from the house speaker's outstretched hand. wow. to nancy pelosi ripping up the speech when he finished. at times it felt more like a campaign rally than a formal address with republican lawmakers chanting "four more years". and democrats jeering the president for his remarks on the economy and health care. trump's showmanship was on full display. surprising a military family by reuniting an army sergeant with his wife and kids. promoting school choice by announcing a scholarship for a pennsylvania student, and awarding rush limbaugh with the

presidential medal of freedom. and he didn't mention the impeachment during his speech. >> the president showed discipline when it came to stage craft. not going on angry rants. but, again, i guess we can hand it to him for not losing his cool like he usually does, and not wandering off into the fields rhetorical fields, but again the lies about the economy. the lies about preexisting conditions. the lies about so much of what he said up there really, it doesn't meant for the american people. it was meant for an alternative universe. his alternative universe of voters. >> yeah. it really wasn't a state of the union like you i suspect you know more about states of the unions than you want to admit

out in the world. and enjoy not only the spectacle but the idea that, in fact, this is a moment where the branches of government are supposed to have a conversation both with each other and with the rest of us about where we are and what we should do. this was not about the union. and it was very much about trump's political state. and his folks, and that's been the consuming story over the last five years. he's never wanted -- if he's wanted to, he's never been able to act on it, to reach out beyond the people who already sent him, and one of the many tragedies of the era is that he has refused to learn from a presidential history that suggests presidents who are remembered for big, bold things

are presidents who bring their supporters along to a place where the supporters didn't think they wanted to go. nixon and china. reagan and the cold war. clinton and the new democrats. you had -- you have a history of surprising us. and there was nothing surprising about last night. it was in some ways the apothiosis of what we've been living through to some extent the last five years. rush is interesting. rush is an emblem of the reflexive partisanship of the era. in 1992 he was talking favorably about buchanan. he was the forerunner of trump,

really. he was able to drive buchanan to almost beating george bush, a sitting president in the new hampshire primary. so sometimes in history it's not that hard for those of us who do this. if you want a moment. if you want a couple of days that represents the extremes and the polarities of this era, all you have to do is write about last night. >> still ahead on "morning joe," you president trump is reaping the rewards of the obama economy. steve rattner breaks it down next on "morning joe." - [spokeswoman] meet the ninja foodi pressure cooker, the best of pressure cooking and air frying now in one pot, and with tendercrisp technology, you can cook foods that are crispy on the outside and juicy on the inside. the ninja foodi pressure cooker, the pressure cooker that crisps.

there's a company that's talked than me: jd power.people 448,134 to be exact. they answered 410 questions in 8 categories about vehicle quality. and when they were done, chevy earned more j.d. power quality awards across cars, trucks and suvs than any other brand over the last four years. so on behalf of chevrolet, i want to say "thank you, real people." you're welcome. we're gonna need a bigger room. wean air force veteran made of doing what's right,. not what's easy. so when a hailstorm hit, usaa reached out before he could even inspect the damage. that's how you do it right. usaa insurance is made just the way martin's family needs it - with hassle-free claims, he got paid before his neighbor even got started. because doing right by our members, that's what's right.

usaa. what you're made of, we're made for. usaa you always want to be able to for your patients.f get them out of pain, get them out of pain fast. we have a new product out there: sensodyne rapid relief. if you use it on monday, by thursday, you'll be enjoying that chocolate ice cream again. they can start it, and 3 days later, i know that they're going to have the results they were looking for.

this round's on me.eat. hey, can you spot me? come on in. find your place today, with silversneakers. included in most medicare advantage plans. enroll today by calling the number on your screen or visit getsilversneakers.com how you watch it does too. tv just keeps getting better. this is xfinity x1. featuring the emmy award-winning voice remote. streaming services without changing passwords and input. live sports - with real-time stats and scores. access to the most 4k content. and your movies and shows to go. the best tv experience is the best tv value.

xfinity x1. simple. easy. awesome. xfinity. the future of awesome. let's zoom in on the content of what the president said. here he is on preexisting conditions and the economy. >> i've also made an ironclad pledge to american families. we will always protect patients

with preexisting conditions. [ applause ] >> and we will always protect your medicare and we will always protect your social security. always. i am thrilled to report to you tonight that our economy is thethe best it has ever been. if we hadn't reversed the failed economic policies of the previous administration, the world would not now be witnessing this great economic success. >> okay. let me bring in steve rattner for fact checking. i put it through the "morning joe" super computer, the size of a city block, i tell you.

the president saying that he's going to protect preexisting conditions, my super computer, it spit back out the fact this is a lie. republicans have been feverishly working to kill the preexisting condition protection. that would be afforded to people like my son with type one diabetes. also steve rattner, two other things. first, the economy is the best it's ever been. this is particularly maddening not because the president is saying it and lying about it, and not because republicans in congress are repeating that lie. but because the media, and i've been complaining about this for a couple years now. the media parrots the president. it is one of the best economies ever. no. economic growth under jimmy carter was higher than it is

under donald trump. economic growth under jimmy carter in '79, the malaise year, when things were supposed to be so bad, was about a third higher than it is under donald trump in 2019. donald trump's economy grew at 2.3%. that's a trump slump that is weak. that is anemic. and i know that everybody on wall street, they're all loving it. the rich are getting really, really rich. but 2.3% growth is pathetic. under kennedy it was 5.7 %. under johnson 5.1%. under jimmy carter who donald trump has trashed before, 3.2%. under bill clinton, 3.8%. and the trump slump threw out

throughout three years trump slump puts it at 2.5% and last year after all the tax cuts for multinational corporations and the very richest americans in the land, the economy only grew last year by 2.3%. steve rattner, it's hard to sort through all the lies from last night. i know a lot of people said you have to admit it was a great things. yes, great themes if you're cool with the person speaking lying all the time, but donald trump is saying if we hadn't reversed the failed policies of the past administration, oh, we'd never have this great economy. we're in the middle of an 11-year obama economic recovery, and all the lines are going like this. whether it's job growth or gdp.

we got you on so you can fact check. show us your charts and let's pick apart the lies the president said last night to his supporters. it makes me sad that he lies this way to people who support him and makes me sad that they're like well, he's the president. he must be telling the truth, but he's not. he's lying. tell us why. >> joe, when i was watching the beginning of the salespeople, i felt like i was living in a parallel universe. like he was talking act another country. everything he was saying made so little sense. it reminded me of the famous line attributed to mary mccarthy about lilian heldman. every word she lies is including the ands or buts. it felt like that last night. i'll show you the charts and we can go through other things that are incredible. let's start with job growth. he bragged a lot about the job growth. we're trying to show job growth under president trump which has

been significant, was actually lower than job growth under president obama over the same 35 months the end of obama's term versus the beginning of trump's term. >> wait. wait. hold on a second. i'm confused. you're telling me that the gray that we're looking at right now is job growth under barack obama, his last three years in office. and the red is job growth under donald trump his last three years in office. and actually, donald trump is doing worse than barack obama. let me -- let's forget about why donald trump lies. we know he lies. why doesn't the media report this more? why do they let donald trump keep going? this is the media that is actually cooking the books for donald trump by looking at the dow and looking at unemployment which, by the way, was going down in this direction under

barack obama. why do they keep spreading this out? why does the media spread this lie that donald trump has created the greatest economy when he's doing worse than president obama in job creation? >> well, you have to ask the media. i can tell you under obama there were 227,000 jobs a month created during this 35 month period and under trump 191,000. trump brags about lowering the unemployment rate by 1.2 %. obama lowered it by two full percentage point. any way you slice it, this is at best continuation of the obama recovery and at worst a slower version of the obama recovery. so we can turn now if you want to wages. he bragged a lot about wage last night. and wages have been going up. as you can see by the blue line at the top. but when you adjust for inflation, which is a really important thing to do, because obviously what matters is what

workers have in their pockets at the end of the day, which are these bottom lines here, you can see that, in fact, once again, real wages after adjustment for inflation, road slower under trump than under obama. under obama they rose at an average of 1.1%. and under trump they rose at an average of 0.6%. so you had faster growth in wages after adjusting for inflation under obama than you had under trump. >> okay. and so that's a lie as well. wages adjusted for inflation are actually worse under donald trump than they were under barack obama. not a surprise. just a surprise that the media keeps letting donald trump get away with this lie as they have for the past several years. it's lazy. they listen to what donald trump says and wages are going -- no. no. and you know, look at gdp, if you will. because that's -- i mean, you look at our economic growth.

that tells us not just how the richest of the rich are doing on wall street. that tells us how everybody is doing. and so give us the story on gdp. >> last night trump in his first or second paragraph said he wanted to talk about the incredible results in the economy that he's achieved. the incredible results amounts to gdp going up by 2.5% during his watch. we're comparing the same 35 months end of obama versus end of trump. obama it was 2.4 %. so called statistically a tie. essentially this is simply a continuation as you said earlier, joe, of an 11-year recovery and the growth rate under trump is no higher than under obama. job creation has been weaker than under obama. and so -- >> wages? >> and wages have actually been weaker under obama as well. >> speaking of obama, we'll be joined by his 2012 campaign manager, jim messina.

he sizes up the democratic race for president straight ahead on "morning joe." i'm your 70lb st. bernard puppy, and my lack of impulse control, is about to become your problem. ahh no, come on. i saw you eating poop earlier. my focus is on the road, and that's saving me cash with drivewise. the ups and downs of frequent mood swings can plunge you into deep, depressive lows.

(crying) take you to uncontrollable highs. (muffled arguing) or, make you feel both at once. overwhelmed by bipolar i symptoms? ask about vraylar. some medications only treat the lows or the highs. vraylar effectively treats depression, acute manic and mixed episodes of bipolar i. full-spectrum relief of all symptoms. with just one pill, once a day. elderly patients with dementia-related psychosis have an increased risk of death or stroke. call your doctor about unusual changes in behavior or suicidal thoughts. antidepressants can increase these in children and young adults. report fever, stiff muscles, or confusion, which may mean a life-threatening reaction, or uncontrollable muscle movements, may be permanent. side effects may not appear for several weeks. metabolic changes may occur. movement dysfunction, restlessness, sleepiness, stomach issues are common side effects. when bipolar i overwhelms, vraylar helps smooth the ups and downs.

when bipolar i overwhelms, [ fast-paced drumming ]

if you're just waking up hoping for the final results from iowa, i'm sorry to say we still don't have the full results from monday night's democratic caucus in iowa. we have 71% of precincts now reporting and former south bend indiana mayor, pete buttigieg holds a slim lead over senator bernie sanders. elizabeth warren is in third followed by former vice president joe biden. these positions could change once the remaining 29% of the vote comes in. the iowa democratic party is blaming the delay on what it calls a coding issue with a new app that was meant to help speed up the reporting of caucus results. tom perez released a statement that reads in part, we have staff working around the clock to assist the iowa democratic party to ensure all votes are counted. it's clear the app in question did not function adequately. as frustrating as the last 24 hours have been, let us not lose

sight of our ultimate goal to take back our democracy and improve the lives of millions by electing democrats up and down the ballot. adrian, obviously this is beyond frustrating for a lot of people. we can't even characterize the race. we don't know what the 29% of the vote looks like. whatever happens, whether buttigieg is one or two, it's an extraordinary two nights ago for him. what's the deal? you're in des moines. where's the 29%? >> well, willie, party officials do think they will get the results out probably in totality in the next 24 hours. they're crunching numbers and making sure every single batch of results they put out is accurate and they're triple checking the accuracy of what they put out. this has been a disaster. this has been a mess from the standpoint of the iowa democratic party and from the standpoint of the overall primary process. look, i think it's -- i applaud

the notion of maybe trying to create a technological benefit and advantage by creating an app that can process result more efficiently as opposed to caucus leader having to call in the results and what not, but this failed. i mean, this was inexcusable. the fact that there were not triple checks on this app to make sure in the weeks before the caucuses that there were no flaws. that there were no system failures that came forward in the app. this was really a major, major setback for the iowa democratic party, and frankly, a major setback for the caucus system. you know, look, we watched in realtime on monday evening even before that we were talking about the results coming in, how the caucus process works. i think a lot of americans out there were thinking you know, i'm not sure this is the way that i would want to show my support for a candidate. that's one of the reasons why

the democratic party national democratic party has been focussed on reducing the number of caucuses. we now only have 12 states in the nation that caucus. and i think what we saw monday night is one of the reasons why caucuses are so antiquated and outdated and we should move to a full on primary system. >> they really are antiquated and outdated. and how preposterous that here we are a day and a half after these caucus, and we still don't know the results. we still don't know who's won. and as far as getting an app to pass along information to the iowa democratic party instead of using a phone, use a google spread sheet. use your -- i mean, text it. it's just so preposterous, mika. i don't know where to begin. especially when you consider how much was riding on this election.

>> so much was riding on it. it seemed like even in the process of covering it, you could see they didn't understand the process. they were trying to pull new people in. reporters didn't understand the process. they were sort of covering something that doesn't working the right way. it seemed like a mess from the get go. just watching it all go down. and it's turned out to be a colossal disaster, and embarrassment. the democratic party does not need that right now. and a real sort of -- a real bump in the road in the democratic race to the nomination that democrats did not need right now. >> john meacham, this was a wonderfully quaint idea, 1976. jimmy carter comes in second behind uncommitted but it launched him and it launched his presidential campaign. got him to the white house. but you look at the last three -- we've been talking about this for a couple days. the last three elections, whether it was santorum and romney, hillary and bernie, this

year, they just haven't kept up with the times and we've had three glitches now in the last three presidential caucuses there. >> yeah. this is almost like an inadvertent historical drama. this is way elections were for about 150 years. they would start voting sometime in october and you'd find out by december. so in that sense, it is a return to something. you know, churchill was often quoted as having said democracy is the best form -- the worst form of government except for all the other. but even churchill can be wrong. at some point the basic common sense of a primary election where you go in and you vote and they count it and then that result is reported, you know, perhaps the old way is the best way. >> yes. >> and i think mike is right.

i suspect that we will be seeing alternative strategies going forward. there's the racial and ethnic question, obviously, and there are a lot of states who are going to present themselves saying hey, we know how to count. send us in. >> coming up, we have a first look at a brand new campaign ad for mike bloomberg. stephanie ruhle and bill kristol join the conversation next on "morning joe." as a struggling actor,

i need all the breaks that i can get. at liberty butchumal- cut. liberty biberty- cut. we'll dub it. liberty mutual customizes your car insurance so you only pay for what you need. only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ eh, not enough fiber- chocolate would be good- snacking should be sweet and simple. the delicious taste of glucerna gives you the sweetness you crave while helping you manage your blood sugar. glucerna. everyday progress while helping you manage your blood sugar. through the at&t network, edge-to-edge intelligence gives you the power to see every corner of your growing business. from finding out what's selling best... to managing your fleet... to collaborating remotely with your teams. giving you a nice big edge over your competition. that's the power of edge-to-edge intelligence.

the best of pressure cooking and air frying now in one pot, and with tendercrisp technology, you can cook foods that are crispy on the outside and juicy on the inside. the ninja foodi pressure cooker, the pressure cooker that crisps. doprevagen is the number oneild mempharmacist-recommendeding? memory support brand. you can find it in the vitamin aisle in stores everywhere. prevagen. healthier brain. better life.

i think this is not going particularly well so far, and why is tom perez still the chairman of the democratic national convention? i have no idea. this party needs to wake up. there's only one moral imperative in this country right now. that is to beat donald trump. that's the only moral

imperative. it's the only thing i want to hear. until we understand that, we win every argument. we don't win elections because we talk about stuff that is not relevant. come on, people. we got to have a big election here. we got to take the senate back and we should be able to do it. but we got to get relevant. and this is all something that is not working the way that it needs to work. and the candidates have got to develop some skill. i don't criticize other consultants, but some of the stuff they come up with is insane. i don't know ho thinks of this stuff. >> all right. joining us now, ceo of messina group. he served as white house department staff to president obama and ran his 2012 campaign. founder of defending democracy together and editor at large of

the conservative network, the bull work, bill kristol, and senior business correspondent and msnbc anchor, stephanie ruhle is with us. clare mccaskill still with us along the joe, willie and me. great group. >> james carville said a lot yesterday. what's your take? is the democratic message off right now? >> absolutely. we spent two days talking about process and not the economy and all the lies that donald trump told last night. i promise you one thing, joe. when there's a democratic nominee, they're going to show up at the dnc and say thank you for your service, we have a new chairman. you have no choice. you have to take over the party. that's what we did in '08. that's what they'll do. you cannot have what we've had the last two days. >> how bad was the iowa debacle as a launch for the democratic party? the so-called resistance against donald trump? >> well, look, i think it's

really bad for mayor pete buttigieg. you're seeing the accounts who really moved and there no bounce. we're not talking about him surges or what he's doing. he had an amazing moment and we're still waiting for 30% of the delegates to be counted. it's ridiculous and embarrassing. and it really does go straight at whether iowa should be the first one. you know, we talked about the racial and ethnic issues earlier. we're talking about this issue. i really think it just goes to the heart of how we nominate a president and the dnc is the place you go to do this. >> well, given all that, stephanie ruhle, the winners of iowa don't appear to be bernie sanders and pete buttigieg who should have had a real impactful win if he did have one. but donald trump so he can focus on this weakness, and also mike bloomberg. would you agree with that on bloomberg and if so, explain

why. >> if you think about the week, it has been a win for both the president and mayor mike bloomberg. and the president, if you look at his state of the union speech last night, doesn't want to run against mayor bloomberg. why aren't people talking about the president's lies when it comes to the economy? because the president is really good at show business, not real business. the president's real businesses, trump university, trump hotel and canoe sew, trump entertainment were failures. he is a massive success in the reality show, the apprentice. we have to realize that's where he's great. and a mayor mike bloomberg is a threat to him because he says hold on a second. the president has the air cover because the thing is, we have a good economy. unemployment is really low. we are growing. and he's watching people like joe and me and steve rattner get triggered fact checking him. he knew he was telling lies, but he has the air cover. when the stock market is up 29%

in 2019, that doesn't just serve wall street. firefighters and teachers and lots of ordinary meshes are doing well in their 401 ks and retirement accounts. the president is saying any democrat is going to tank the economy. if he's running against bloomberg, that's a tougher argument. he can say i ran a business and a state. he's going hard after the president. but today mayor bloomberg is launching an ad that goes beyond going after trump. i want you to take a look. he's taken the gloves off. >> been a leader throughout the country for the past 12 years, mr. michael bloomberg. >> leadership in action. mayor bloomberg and president obama worked together in the fight for gun safety laws to improve education, and to develop innovative ways to help teens gain the skills needed to find good jobs. >> at a time when washington is divided and old battles, he

shows us what can be achieved when we bring people together to seek pragmatic solutions. >> i'm mike bloomberg, and i approve this message. >> what he's saying is joe biden, i have a better connection at this point or at least i want to create the impression i have a better connection and respect of barack obama than do you. >> he's going right at the heart of joe biden's campaign. we've been sitting here saying joe biden is going to be the nominee if he can hold african american voters. and mike bloomberg, spending unprecedented amounts of money. he's been doing all economic and now he's bringing in obama and he's alone in the super tuesday states. he's the only one advertising to the people. everyone is focussed on the white state of iowa. he's going and talking directly to african american, young voters in the super tuesday states with unprecedented amount of buys. i think it's a smart move. >> and has doubled the buys. >> doubled the buys.

he has staff on the ground. he has more staff on the ground in missouri, a state that no one is on the air except michael bloomberg. and what's interesting to me is if you look at what he's done so far, he started with health care. spent a lot of money on health care. and that's the biggest lie that was told last night. there were lies about the which i, but the biggest lie was that donald trump was trying to protect people from preexisting conditions. and we all know he's in court trying to wipe them out. frankly, you know, bloomberg, if he can pivot and punch which he can. he's thrown some significant punches trump's way already. it will be interesting to see if he can pull this off. it's never been done this way before. and it will be interesting to see if he can overcome stop and frisk in the african american community. that's the toughest thing for him. >> i think you shouldn't go too fast past the people who won in

iowa. bernie sanders and pete buttigieg. i don't quite buy the notion because it was a muddled result and everyone in the media was unhappy at midnight monday that they couldn't project a winner. voters know. voters will read the newspaper today and tomorrow. donors will know. democratic party activists will know what happened. and what happened was a good night for sanders. a good night for buttigieg. a bad night for biden and probably a tough night for warren. and sanders and buttigieg are going to slug it out in new hampshire and nevada. we'll see if buttigieg can get african american votes in south carolina. the degree to which we were talking before the show, finally i think democratic activists and elected officials are getting alarmed that the most likely democratic nominee right now is bernie sanders. and he will lose to donald trump. and they need to get serious about highlighting aspects of sanders' record and getting

serious about urging voters maybe not telling them who to vote for but making sure he doesn't run on margins in new hampshire and nevada. we'll see if bloomberg or buttigieg. >> you can't undervalue trump's ability to entertain. if you think about what he created with the military family and all he does. juxtapose that of the opportunity lost because of how iowa was muddled. >> i don't know. pete buttigieg emerged. >> think about buttigieg. think about for the lgbtq community. if you're someone in that community over the age of 35, when you were in high school, did you ever think that you would one day be able to get married, have children, go on parental leave and run for president of the united states? that's a moment. the president knows how to create these moments. >> i think that's a moment. >> pete didn't get to have that. >> i don't agree. voters out there know it and they'll know it. i'm less alarmed by the screwup in iowa if i were a democratic.

someone like you, i'd be like what's going on, but at the end of the day buttigieg did well, and i think it could have a real effect in the race. and a lot of -- we were talking about missouri and nevada, a lot of states not only -- the trump campaign is going to be ruthless. they're going to try to get their people to vote for sanders. they're doing it. and they're doing it behind the scenes. the question is whether some responsible republicans will say i can't vote for trump but we need a moderate democratic nominee. >> a couple weeks ago you said bernie sanders was the worst possible nominee for the democratic party. he did well in iowa. we still have 29% of the vote out there. we know he's one or two. he won new hampshire last time by 22 points. he's going to do well in new hampshire. what is the level inside your world of freak out to use a political term right now about bernie sanders? >> pretty high. >> good. good. it should be up. >> it should be. again, and i'll triple down on

this. he's the worst candidate in the general election. i think if you look at the iowa numbers now, there's a number that i really want to focus on that wasn't good for him. his theory is i can expand the electorate and get more people involved. there were not more people involved in the iowa caucus. we had flat turnout. last time it was 49%. this time about 26. he's going to say there's five or six candidates but there were less excited people coming for him. this is the whole rationale of his candidacy. and you start looking at these swing voters and last night i watched focus groups of swing voters in the big three midwestern states who watched the speech. their life hasn't gotten better on the economy. they say what are you talking about? i'm not feeling this economy that you're talking about in places like wisconsin, michigan, pennsylvania. but they go back and there's still health care voters. this is the thing that i think this is the damage bill we're doing when we're not talking about the preexisting conditions. we're talking about iowa.

we're talking about elections. >> this should be $50 million of a democratic group, of ads now saying trump wants to remove preexisting conditions. get that in people's minds now. don't wait for september and october. >> i agree. >> claire was saying this is underrated. don't you think? >> absolutely. gun safety, preexisting conditions, and the women of america will elect someone other than donald trump. >> mika? >> there you go. jim messina, bill kristol, stephanie ruhle, thank you for being on this morning. there's also news from the special election to fill the seat once occupied by the late congressman elijah cummings. last night a former congressman won the democratic nomination for maryland's seventh congressional district. it's the same seat he held before stepping down to lead the naacp in 1996. he won with 43% of the vote

beating out elijah's widow who came in a distant second place with 17%. he will go up against republican kimberly chasic whose claysic wd fox news appearances about blight in west baltimore inspired the president's attacks this summer. democrats outnumber republicans in that district 4 to 1 so we'll see what happens. up next, republican senator suggest president trump has learned a lesson from the ukraine saga. >> really? >> yes. >> what does the president say about that? >> he says, no. the call was perfect, i didn't learn a thing. keep it here on "morning joe." need with liberty mutual. con liberty mutual solo pagas lo que necesitas. only pay for what you need... only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪

♪ applebee's new irresist-a-bowls now starting at $7.99. now that's eatin' good in the neighborhood. [ dramatic music ] there's only one way this ends. last man standing.

this round's on me.eat. hey, can you spot me? come on in. find your place today, with silversneakers. included in most medicare advantage plans. enroll today by calling the number on your screen or visit getsilversneakers.com the best of pressure cooking and air frying now in one pot, and with tendercrisp technology, you can cook foods that are crispy on the outside and juicy on the inside. the ninja foodi pressure cooker, the pressure cooker that crisps.

wow, that was the comparison secretary of state mike pompeo stretched to make last night. tweeting out this imagine from the simpsons after the state of the union. but he seemed to have missed the anti-corruption theme of the episode. >> the city of washington was built on a stagnant swamp some 200 years ago and very little

has changed. it stank then and it stinks now, and today it's the feted stink of corruption in the air. who did i see taking a bribe but the honorable bob arnold. don't worry, congressman i'm sure you can buy all the votes you need with your dirty money and this will be one nation under the dollar with liberty and justice for none. >> maybe mike pompeo should see the whole episode, because it is quite an indictment on the administration that he works for. >> the final vote in president trump's impeachment trial will take place today and ahead of trump's expected acquittal. senator susan collins is among a number of republican senators saying the president has learned a lesson about soliciting foreign assistance. >> i believe that the president has learned from this case.

>> what do you believe the president has learned? >> the president has been impeached. that's a pretty big lesson. >> however, during a tv anchors' lunch at the white house yesterday, trump responded to questions about colin's comments saying he had done nothing wrong that his conversation with ukraine's president was, quote, the perfect call. so does senator collins take back her decisions given the fact the president said he hasn't learned a thing. >> no. willy, what can you say about susan collins and the rest of these republicans. little donny has learned his lesson while he's kicking tantrums on the floor. >> that was breathtaking. the lesson he learned was, he can get away with anything. >> because of her. >> yes. >> and because of the republicans. >> yes. . so not only they're all going to

vote to acquit him to the at 4:00 eastern time on two charges but they didn't vote to allow evidence. in what juuniverse did he learn lesson? >> it's like when you have a petulant child screaming in the middle of the floor and you keep threatening them, time out. that scares them? not even the threat of a spanking. it wasn't taking to a defcon level. >> just remember, susan collins is, and always has been, very concerned. that's what she says about it, she's very concerned. in the immortal words of adam schiff, he will do it again. >> of course. >> at some point, joe, you have to wonder if these senators who seem to have absolutely no shame at how far they will go to

defend this president will somehow pay for it with their consistents. but do you think the constituents of maine will care whether or not trump says it's a perfect call or not? >> yes, they will. so will the citizens of colorado, the citizens of arizona, so will the citizens of north carolina. we don't know how the election is going to turn out. maybe it's a split decision in the senate like it was last time. maybe it's a landslide like it was in the house. could be a 1980, a 1984 sort of landslide. 1974. mike, a lot of different options on how this could break, but it seems to me that all of these senators, who gave their approval to donald trump's corruption, to his extortion, to all of his illegal actions over the past several years, they will ultimately be judged by their voters.

and if they're on the bubble, they're going to lose. >> the one universal in all of this, in the back and forth about impeachment that many people have been paying attention to in and out over the past two or three weeks is the no witnesses. everybody has a certain base level familiarity with the justice system, whether it's their local justice system or whether it's the united states justice system. no witnesses, that resonates. and it's going to resonate as you pointed out in senate raises in places like north carolina, new hampshire and absolute certainty in the state of maine. >> all right. i'm just trying to understand what it takes for a senator, for someone who has served this country so well, as susan collins has, to be able to say he's learned a lesson, when there are dead ukrainians, when people have died in this process and he's put our foreign policy at risk, impacted our national security. this isn't hype. this isn't hysteria.

this is fact. >> you can ask the same of lamar alexander, a guy leaving the united states senate and still said, yes, the president is guilty but i don't want to know how guilty he is, i don't want witnesses, evidence, anything that's going to make me look even worse with my vote. that's what lamar alexander, susan collins, that's what they all did. >> that does it for us this morning. stephanie rhule picks up the coverage. >> hi, i'm stephanie rhule, it's wednesday, february 5th, there's a lot happening today. we're talking iowa, impeachment and the president's state of the union address. all shaping the race for 2020 today. just a few hours from now, president trump is expected to be acquitted on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of congress. he avoided taking a victory lap on impeachment during last night's address