public schedule. we are not expected to see him at all. that was "way too early" for a tuesday morning. thank you to kasie for letting me take the helm for a couple of days and thanks to you for watching and for most of your tweets. "morning joe" starts right now. no more machines, oh, my god, what's so private about an election machine? >> i see no basis now for seizing machines by the federal government. >> for two years they have been trying to get this information to the justice department and the fbi. one fbi agent went like this to the witness. >> i think to the extent there's an investigation i think it is being responsibly and professionally within the department. >> the president suggesting that the massive hack may have been carried out by someone else. not russia. >> from the information i have,

you know i agree with secretary pompeo's assessment. it certainly appears to be the russians but i won't discuss it beyond that. >> apparently, there is a bridge too far even for william barr. good morning and welcome to "morning joe." it is tuesday, december 22. along with joe, willie and me, we have white house reporter for the associated press, jonathan lemire, learning to get up "way too early" this week. and washington anchor for bbc world news america, katty kay is with us. we'll get to the slow-moving coup in just a moment. but first, overnight congress passed one of the largest stimulus packages in the country's history. it totals $2.3 trillion and it includes not only the $900 billion coronavirus relief bill, but a full government funding package as well. the combined bills which include direct payments and unemployment benefits tops out at nearly

5,600 pages. it was only given to lawmakers to read yesterday afternoon, due to some technical issues. in the house it passed 359- 53. in the senate, it passed 92-6. two republicans missed the vote while six voted against it. many of them citing the cost of the bill. mercy. >> we have deficit hawks now. >> oh, my goodness, where have you been all my life? >> how cute is that? they run up the biggest deficits in u.s. history. even before covid. the biggest debt in american history, mika, now they're deficit hawks. well, how convenient that they're deficit hawks again with a democrat coming into the presidency because they weren't deficit hawks when george w. bush was president. >> now they don't like mean tweets. and they don't like it when anyone uses naughty language. >> don't like curse words.

>> no. >> i have some breaking news, guys. there's going to be a lot of hypocrisy from the very people who brought us donald trump and aided and abetted the last four years. you have ron johnson the other day saying, guys, we can't give people $1,200. we're not a piggy bank. all of a sudden they found their fiscal discipline. jake sherman is with us, also an msnbc contributor. good morning. how did this come together in the final hours and why did those six republicans who voted no vote no? >> well, you put it well. they are regaining their religion let's say on debts, deficits and discipline which i imagine will be a -- will sweep through the republican party over the next couple of years. but listen, i will say this. this does show -- i mean, to the extent if we could take anything good from this, the last eight months it does show that the

congressional leadership is still working in some way, shape or form because at the end of the day if you think about it it's tuesday. last tuesday was mitch mcconnell and nancy pelosi's first meeting. so they were able to over the course of a week put together the second largest stimulus package in american history. only second to the one that they put together just before that. so it's a massive package that will deliver much needed but delayed relief that joe biden has termed only a down payment for what's going to happen next congress which will be just really quickly the most busiest legislative session that i think we could ever -- any of us can imagine with the slimmest margins in the house and the senate. >> you know, jake, it's very interesting. we got information last week that this was moving forward. and been following some of the key players for quite some time who have been -- we're going to

get this done. all while mitch mcconnell was sending signals that it wasn't going to get done. and you look at joe manchin, mitt romney, susan collins, even lindsey graham in there, jeanne shaheen, while mcconnell were saying no no no, the moderates in the republican party and rep -- republican and democratic party were going we'll get this done. it ends up that, you know, the majority and minority leaders don't have a complete strangled hold on their parties. if they decide they want to move together and forge consensus, they're going to do it in the last couple of week -- and the last couple of weeks prove that. >> it did. it proved there was a center of the senate that still works like you just indicated and what the center was able to do better than anything was create a menu from which the leadership was able to eventually choose.

and i think that is an important thing here. they showed that there was support for a variety of proposals that then mitch mcconnell and nancy pelosi got into a room and narrowed down. so i think -- i mean, despite it being very late and not including everything that anybody wants, this is a good sign that shows that there is some functionality left in the institution in the post trump era. i think in -- i think "the new york times" wrote this on the front page today. it does show for the first time that there is a road map for joe biden, which is to create some heat and some action in the center among the people you just mentioned. joe manchin, jeanne shaheen, some of the moderates and functional members of both parties, create some sort of action from which the leadership could then build upon. >> and katty kay, let's go over the names again. we have talked about it here for a couple of weeks. you have mark kelly coming from arizona. kristen sinema who may have a

different image, a different constituency, but she and joe manchin vote together about 95% of the time. hickenlooper is coming in. you have mitt romney, you've got susan collins who seems like she has something to prove this year. which is she's pretty powerful and can forge consensus if she wants to. lisa murkowski who's always been very independent. pat toomey who has struck compromises before with joe manchin on some difficult issues and you have jeanne shaheen jumping in and lindsey graham. they overwhelmed their own leadership and one thing i noticed in these negotiations, oh no, it's going to be dead because there's not the state and the local aid. oh, no, it's going to be dead because they don't have the liability shield for the corporations and time and again,

these -- we'll just call them the solution caucus said no, no. okay, listen, we'll just put those to the side, let's talk about the aid and then we can address those other issues. they really are -- not to be too glib here, but it is a problem solvers caucus. they actually were focused on getting something done instead of just bitching about the other side and we wake up this morning and actually they got something done. regardless of discouragement from the top. >> yeah. and they met separately. they went away from capitol hill to have their meeting in one of the senator's house and we said, we'll come up with the bill, we won't come up with the concepts or principles, but come up with the legislation. sometimes congressional leadership doesn't love the gangs because as we have seen they can get themselves a whole load of power by being solution oriented people that can get

things done. they can act in a bipartisan way. we thought bipartisanship was totally out of the window in this congress. we just had our first demonstration of it. it will be interesting to see two things. if democrats were to win the georgia and have the slimmest of majorities, do we still see some of those republicans coming over in that situation? and once joe biden is president do we still see as many of those republicans again coming over and working with democrats. does that caucus manage to hold because either way, whether the democrats take georgia or not they'll have a tiny majority. that caucus could have a huge amount of power as joe biden goes in to a legislative session that is going to have massive hurdles and need to do big, substantial legislation of the kind of infrastructure and second stimulus bill he's already talking about. no way he can get that done without this centrist group from the other side as well. >> well, you know, even with georgia, if for some reason --

it's highly unlikely, i still believe it's highly unlikely, even if both of the senate seats go democratic, you're sitting at 50-50 and then you have chuck schumer's worst case scenario a month before the election and that is a 50-50 senate where the tiebreaking vote is not the vice president. tiebreaking vote is joe manchin. so regardless of how this shakes out you'll be hearing a lot of the exaggeration it will be tend of the world if it breaks one way or the other. no, you'll have the ten moderate conservatives in the center and they're going to be striking some compromises over the next two years if this country is lucky at all. if we actually get some legislation passed instead of just having executive orders signed. >> just get through the next 30 days. let's turn now to the ongoing trump coup. still desperately seeking ways

to overturn joe biden's election win. here's how the lead in "the washington post" describes things, quote, with his baseless claims of widespread voter fraud rejected by the judges, he has turned to the rag tag group of conspiracy theorists, media hungry lawyers and other political misfits in a desperate attempt to hold on to power after his election loss. the president's orbit has grown more extreme and his more mainstream allies including attorney general william p. barr have declined to endorse his plans to overturn the wills of the voters. trump's election advisory panel includes a felon, a white house trade adviser and a russian

agent's former lover. >> so willie, these are a confederacy of dunces that you would not want around your basic household appliances and certainly wouldn't want them cleaning your shotguns on the back porch. they really are a rag tag group of misfits. >> what a mess. >> yeah. that's putting it kindly, i think, a rag tag group of misfits. i mean, you have a qanon congresswoman, so qanon officially is in the office, sitting next to the president in the white house, offering her counsel. >> by the way, can you explain the underlying theory for those who don't understand qanon's theories on cannibals and whatever else? >> bottom line, it believes there are elites, members of the media, democrats mostly, members of a satanist cabal that engages

in pedophilia. she got elected to the united states congress and gets meetings with the president. sidney powell appears to be at the right hand of president trump, even though rudy giuliani is saying on tv, no she's not on the team. well, she has been to the white house three times in the last four day and the island is shrinking and president trump is bringing on whoever will join him in the final charade to overturn the election. one person who is not, attorney general general william barr. he refused to support the president in his quest to overthrow the election results and he announced new charges in the bombing over scotland. he began with this comment on the hunter biden investigation. >> i think to the extent that there's an investigation, i think that it's being handled

responsibly and professionally. currently within the department and to this point i have not seen a reason to appoint a special counsel and i have no plan to do so before i leave. >> okay. so no special counsel on hunter biden. then this from the attorney general on the reported push to seize voting machines. >> i see no basis now for seizing machines by the federal government. >> do you believe that there's enough evidence to warrant a special counsel to investigate that perhaps sidney powell or somebody else? >> if i thought a special counsel at this stage was the right tool and was appropriate, i would do -- i would name one but i haven't and i'm not going to. >> so no special counsel, not going to seize the voting machines and finally this on the claims that russia may not have been behind the massive federal attack on agencies.

>> from the information that i have, you know, i agree with secretary pompeo's assessment. it's certainly -- it certainly appears to be the russians but i'm not doing to discuss it beyond that. >> so attorney general barr there. jonathan lemire, agreeing with secretary of state pompeo and most cyber experts say it was russia, something that the president has declined to say, suggesting in a tweet the other day that maybe it was china. we should point out tomorrow is attorney general barr's last day in office so that really was his valedictory news conference and he took all of the questions to make the points. >> i think for attorney general barr there's an attempt to sort of reshape or defend pieces of his reputation and legacy on his way out the door and attorney general of course for most of his tenure was seen as being an extreme loyalist to the president from his first days in the job when he shaped and colored the mueller report findings in the most favorable

way possible for president trump, allowing the president to claim falsely he had been fully exonerated. but we saw a clear break with the president on a number of subjects that did not go over well, we are told in the oval office. the president had several heated meetings with barr. last time he accepted the resignation and now the question is what comes next? jeffrey rosen is the acting attorney general and it's not clear how he will respond. the pressure surely coming from the white house to appoint a special counsel about election fraud and they're not inclined to do so but don't know how he'll respond to the demands from the oval office and the potential that rosen could get dismissed if the president wants to install someone else in that post. but we are seeing also, willie, this legal team that's -- this rag tag group of advisers, i mean, there's divisions within

that as rudy giuliani suggesting that sidney powell does not speak for the president right now, but yet powell has been in the oval office in three of the last four days. all of the legal challenges have been met with defeat and they're attempting a last ditch effort when congress meets to certify the electoral college votes they were trying to get the republicans to do the president's bidding. they're underlying some at least in the minds of some americans the legitimacy of biden's election that's what's dangerous here. >> and it is really important for georgia republicans to remember as you go to vote, my fellow georgia natives, understand that kelly loeffler who was on the ballot right now, sydney powell who is with the president in the white house every day now it seems, she

says -- stay with me. that kelly loeffler was involved in a conspiracy with governor kemp to illegally push off and to steal the election from doug collins. all right? so according to the president's closest legal adviser right now, kelly loeffler shouldn't even be on the ballot. she stole the election along with brian kemp. she stole the election from doug collins. so since the president is working with this woman again, just understand that. that you have been cheated and they have stolen the vote from you and you should get your retribution by not letting somebody like kelly loeffler who is involved in this conspiracy

theory get elected. anyway, that's what sidney powell would want you to say. as far as rosen at the white house, mika, after barr leaves i can't imagine the strain that is going to be on him, the pressure that he's going to be under when he's running the justice department. it's going to have to be crushing to his soul to endure that day after day. my god, he may even have to put up with ugly tweets for 16, 17 days. >> what? really? that's a long time. >> we'll see if he's man enough to be able to do that. but seriously, pressure? you call that pressure? 16 or 17 days in a nut house? 1600 pennsylvania avenue. try not to screw it up. not that much pressure. follow the constitution. >> well, pat robertson who at

one time had been one of the president's most ardent supporters called on him to face the reality that he lost the election. >> you know, with all his talent and the ability to raise money and to grow large crowds, the president still lives in an alternate reality. he really does. people say, well, he lies about this, that and the other, but no, he doesn't lie. to him, that's the truth. he had the biggest crowd on inauguration day. he had more people than ever. he was the most popular -- [ indiscernible ]. go down the line of things that really aren't true. and, you know, people keep pointing to them, but because they loved him so much and he was so strong for the evangelicals, evangelicals were with him all the way. but there was something about

him that was good and that god placed him in the office for the time. he's done a marvelous job for the economy, but at the same time, he is very erratic and he's fired people, he's fought people and he's insulted people and keeps on going down the line. so it's a mixed bag and i think it would be well to say you have had your day and it's time to move on. >> pat robertson also said that the president shouldn't run in 2024. saying that it would be a mistake. well, willie -- >> side show. >> i have to say, i have been talking about a lot of evangelical preachers i grew up with and certainly pat robertson came into my grandmom's house every day in pensacola, florida. 700 club. we watched pat day in and day out. every time i was over there, she had it on. i mean, he had a strong, strong voice in the evangelical community for decades, and,

well, this is a guy who at the end several times over the past several months has actually been saying the sort of things that other evangelical preachers should be saying, but are too afraid to say. but there robertson plainly saying, hey, buddy, you have served, time to go. stop this nonsense. >> yeah. i mean, that's a big deal. the 700 club and pat robertson still has a big sway over the huge flock of people who watch his show, so that was a big statement. there is something to this, katty kay, watching robertson and william barr sort of finding jesus, if you'll forgive me, and then standing up to the president of the united states after four years of what we have watched. i guess we'll take it at the end here, given what the president of the united states is trying to do still assembling people to carry out a lame coup, that he's

still fixated on. but you have the attorney general and the others standing up to president trump in the 11th hour. >> yeah. we wondered how long it would take, didn't we, willie? maybe it took this. maybe it took president trump so focused on subverting the democratic process on undermining democracy in america for these people finally to come out and say, actually, this has gone too far. even though they're doing it in somewhat milder language. i think as you said at the beginning, willie, we have to get used to the certain level of hypocrisy over the next few years and months from those who have been stalwart defenders of the president as bill barr and pat robertson have been and saying this is not okay. whether it's on deficits, whether it's on vaccines. i mean, you know, people who has been -- the pandemic skeptics know wanting to jump to the front of the queue for the

vaccinations. i guess the challenge for joe biden is how much does he call that out? how does he use that potentially? what does he do about all of those republicans who had been so in lock step with the president and are now prepared to come out and be less so. the only thing i would say is as we get -- as the president becomes more exclusively focused on nearly everybody in the republican party thinks is a wild goose chase and is out in the fringe, he is surrounded by people who are more extreme. so he's got this very small group of republicans who are prepared to follow him down. people like moe brooks and sidney powell in the white house with him and they're on the fringe of the trump supporters in washington. that kind of leaves the other people like bill barr and pat robertson with a choice to make. do i join them who are way out there or do i say what i have to say and what is obvious now and it seems like pat robertson has come around to that.

>> let me just say, i'm good with the conversions. constitutional norms are on the line, i'm good with death bed conversions. look at jesus' parable of people working in the fields. i don't care if you work in the fields all day or come late in the afternoon. like if you're helping the cause right now, i got a really short memory. i just said that, just to really upset is a lot of people in the audience, but, you know, bill clinton once told me -- yeah, joe and bill clinton talk a lot. no, we were at an event backstage and he was commenting on another president. he said let me tell you something. he said the best thing any politician can have is a short memory. because you're always going to need their vote tomorrow. that's what a lot of republicans and a lot of democrats and a lot of americans need to remember as we move into the new era. we can sit back and grouse and wring our heads over the past 4, 4 1/2 years, not going to do us any good moving forward.

not going to be doing -- not going to be have the americans who are suffering right now. e pluribus unum. let's refocus on that. let's talk about the house and specifically the house leadership because jake, you guys have been looking at what the democrats and republicans are thinking of the leaders in the house and the senate. well, focus on the house. nancy pelosi and kevin mccarthy. what have you been finding as you guys have been making phone calls about the level of support these two leaders have to continue to be speaker and minority leader? >> i think the big dynamic shift when joe biden takes the presidency is a big shift of power back to capitol hill when you have a president that's not taking up so much oxygen so to speak. and what we found in the newest politico morning consult poll 53% of democrats want to keep

nancy pelosi as the house speaker and 43% want to keep kevin mccarthy as the minority leader. and the party leaders get increasingly more unpopular as time goes on, but still a youthful metric to keep an eye on as we get into the new congress and get into picking leaders. nancy pelosi is going to have to get 218 votes on the house floor. we expect that she'll get there, but it will be a white knuckle experience as it always is for a leader seeking the speakership. important to keep in mind as we get into the next congress with all of the power shifting back to capitol hill. >> jake sherman, thank you. still ahead on "morning joe," federal prosecutors say their investigation into rudy giuliani isn't only ongoing, but that it's very active. nbc's julia ainsley joins us with her latest reporting. plus more than 40 countries halted flights from the uk amid

fears of a new strain of covid-19. the u.s., however, isn't one of them. an update on that development when "morning joe" -- >> so we get a new strain here. just in time for the holidays. so exciting. hey, kids, same disease, spreads 70% faster. we'll be right back. faerst we'll be right back. when you'reh with powering through, it's time for theraflu hot liquid medicine. powerful relief so you can restore and recover. theraflu hot beats cold. (kids laughing) (dog barking) ♪ sanctuary music it's the final days of the wish list sales event sign and drive off in a new lincoln with zero down, zero due at signing, and a complimentary first month's payment.

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what i want to say is we owe these folks an awful lot. the scientists and the people who put this together and the frontline workers we owe you big. we really do. and one of the things is that i think that the administration deserves some credit getting this off the ground with operation warp speed. i also think that it's worth saying that this is a great hope. i'm doing this to demonstrate that people should be prepared when it's available to take the

vaccine. there's nothing to worry about. >> president-elect joe biden received his first dose of the covid-19 vaccine yesterday. >> and willie, did not even flinch. can i ask you a question. we have seen the president-elect get it, and the current vice president get it. as we talk about people key to the america's economy, i know there's off track betting ecosystem that are waiting for you and me to get our shots because it has not been the same obviously since there's been social distancing. yes, yes, maybe we've gone in one or two times too many, but at the same time, i think we should be next in line for that. >> yeah. i think so. i think we have to protect that element of the american economy. frankly it's carried us through this pandemic.

we were out front creating the app and you don't have to be inside the betting parlor, you can place your bet on your phone for aqueduct. >> okay, idiots. >> you got my heart skipping a little bit. harness racing at aqueduct and we love betting the doggies. mika, we need to take you -- >> no. not interested. >> no, i'm telling you, we need to take you there. we need to take you to the dog track. there is -- you know, willie and i, we try to participate in much of life's rich pageant as possible and you need to go along with that. >> dog racing? >> you need to get your vaccine. i think we can get one for you. if you'll go to otv and dog racing with us -- >> i will adopt all of the dogs. >> no. >> there will be no more dog racing. more than 40 countries halted flights from the united kingdom

amid fears of a new more infectious strain of the covid-19 circulating there. parts of london were placed in a new lockdown as prime minister boris johnson warned that the new coronavirus strain was 70% more transmissible. but u.s. public health officials are reportedly are not advising a similar ban of travelers from the uk. >> well, that seems to make sense if you want 70% -- >> dr. anthony fauci warned against quote overreacting to this situation, but governors across the country taking matters into their own hands. washington state's governor jay inslee issued a proclamation yesterday calling from travelers from the uk, south africa and other nations where the new strain is reported to quarantine for 14 days and andrew cuomo has

called on the federal government to ban travel from uk and has asked airlines to test travelers from the united kingdom to the states. and scott gottlieb says he doesn't think a travel ban will prevent the mutated strain from coming into the united states because he believes it's already here. >> okay. >> terrific. >> great news. katty kay, what are your holiday plans looking like? >> hiding in a closet? >> with a -- with fog machines. >> in washington, d.c. >> exactly. this is really a tough, tough run for boris johnson. a guy who early on in this process, he and his cabinet trotted out the idea of herd immunity. he has been a skeptic for some time. he got it, struggled with it. i mean, mightily. and seemed to find religion a bit. but still, you know, saying he was going to open things up for christmas, then he had to shut

christmas down. now this 70% number certainly having to be very jarring to the people of great britain. >> yeah. you know, do not mess with brits and christmas. it's sort of going to keynesian over there. and people are furious, he has little support because the government is seen to have handled this not very well. the first indications are that the scientists saw this new strain back in october and i think scott gottlieb is right. it seems to me almost impossible if it was there in october and we have been having flights to and from the uk and is 70% more transmissable it seems like that all you need is someone to bring it on a plane and i think we have a strong chance we might see this cropping up in the u.s. anyway. look, the first version of the coronavirus was so much fun they decided to give us another one

that was so efficient. and this is the plot twist 15 minutes before you have the vaccine and racing to get it out and then you get hit by a new strand that is going to potentially overwhelm our health services. for the uk it feels like armageddon. i have family members stuck in different places nowhere they wanted to be and i have family members who have been looking after my dad, because my mom died, they're saying no, you're not allowed in. we have thousands of trucks stuck at france, they can't get inin and at the same time, this is our deadline for negotiating or brexit deal. so it feels like it's all coming together and the uk both symbolically and literally looking increasingly isolated. you're right, you have to have some sympathy for boris johnson but there are a lot of people in the uk who will say the whole way he's hand this would has been so chaotic, so late, should

he have given people a chance to get out of london, he gave them 24 hours and then you saw the massive scenes at train station. remember when the germans were about to invade paris and the parisians fled that's what it look like and they're standing there with no masks on and potentially spreading the virus even further. >> now several airlines, governor cuomo announced yesterday, several airlines will test any travel coming from the uk into new york city at least. we'll come back to that in a moment. but let's turn to rudy giuliani. two sources tell nbc news prosecutors for the southern district of new york are trying to gain access to giuliani's emails. but first need approval from federal counterparts before seeking a search warrant. joining us now, nbc news correspondent julia ainsley. good morning. what exactly would investigators be looking for in this case? >> well, they would be looking for all of his electronic communications and in

particular, his email. but it's really complicated, willie, because not only is giuliani an attorney, but he's the president's attorney. so when you talk about getting information, getting communications that are protected under attorney/client privilege, you have to go through main justice and a lot of times they set up a filter team. these are people who have the very tedious task of reviewing communications, deciding what is protected and then they are the ones who decide what to hand over to prosecutors so the prosecutors don't see anything that could be protected under attorney/client privilege. as we talked about giuliani, he wears many hats, some of the communications very well could not be protected by attorney/client privilege. but then you have the added layer he's the president's attorney and that could be a reason why some of this investigation was at least -- it kind of went quiet for a while. you can't take overt actions that's as closely tied to a candidate and at that time, the

president was a candidate, and the lead-up to the elections. that's why we may have not heard as much about this investigation. we haven't heard much about what was happening into the investigation in rudy giuliani out of the southern district of new york since february. we know they're interested in the bank records a lot stemmed from his activity in the ukraine. they were in the spotlight during the president's impeachment trials and now we're hearing this is ramping back up. two sources say it's ongoing. one telling me it is quote, very active. >> so julia, is this an investigation just about rudy giuliani and potentially as you say his dealings with ukraine? we know that lev and igor were arrested and they pleaded not guilty. does this reach into the president's orbit or just about giuliani? >> at this point, we don't know

the scope. it's especially hard because we haven't known about it for so long. there's a lot that investigators can come across in an investigation line this. especially with somebody like rudy giuliani who is involved in so many pieces of the president's life. these are headlines that we'd expect the white house to look at and not just think oh, that's a ukraine thing we put that to bed. when you're talking about the communications of rudy giuliani, we're also interested in the communications he would have had with the president. that's why that pardon trigger now seems like something, you know, the president may -- we know he's been talking about with rudy giuliani. that's been reported. and so i think that that is even more something that we want to be looking for now because if the president not only wanted to protect rudy giuliani but also himself knowing that some of his communications could be seen with the investigators it's in the back pocket and because this is a federal investigation the president does have the power and all he'd need is a pardon to put this entire investigation to

bed. as we know, it's ramping up and it takes a lot for prosecutors to get to this step that we're talking about which means they have to have a lot of information before they get a search warrant. >> hey, julia, is there -- two quick questions for you. any indication that there's any sort of state probe, state probes into rudy giuliani and therefore the pardon wouldn't apply. do you have any sense to where rosen stands on this? has he been briefed on this investigation into giuliani? >> well, first, i have no indications that there are state-level investigations at least from my reporting. then when you talk about jeffrey rosen, i think that's a great question. we know he's involved insofar as the deputy, the number two at the justice department, is above the criminal division.

he sees everything being criminally investigated and you can imagine something this high profile will cross his desk like the other politically involved investigations during husband tenu tenure. but his role will be key because they have such an important role in an investigation like this when we talk about that filter team. attorney/client privilege and we talk about investigating someone this close to the president. justice has a bigger role than in the other southern district or other investigations. we call it the sovereign district of new york and they can do so much on their own. in this case, justice does play a key role. it's not clear what direction rosen may take but he has the ability to put a block on things like a search warrant. but as which understand now it's ramping up and i do not have any indications that he himself is putting his thumb on the scale. but of course that's the next thing to watch for as well as the pardon. >> all right. you can read the full piece at

nbcnews.com. nbc's julia ainsley, thank you so much for your reporting as always. good to see you. mika? coming up with less than a month left in donald trump's presidency, our next guest says he's still at the center of those georgia runoff elections that will determine control of the senate. we'll dig in to that reporting next on "morning joe." (soft chimes)

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>> vice president-elect kamala harris campaigning in georgia yesterday for the two democratic candidates in the senate runoff elections now two weeks from today. joining us now national correspondent for new york magazine, gabriel debenedetti whose magazine latest issue is entitled the devil went down to georgia. all of the senate runoff candidates are relying on trump for one last turnout extravaganza. are they going to get it, gabe? >> well, it certainly looks like the turnout is off the charts compared to what we have seen in the previous runoffs at least. it's not yet clear if it's going to match exactly what we got in the general election, but so far this is good news really for everyone involved. the democrats feel pretty good about the fact that there's so much interest in this race. it remains to be seen, of course, if this is going to drop off a little bit over the

holidays but you see it there in that vice president-elect kamala harris said in the state. it's lost on absolutely no one. there was some time there where everyone in this state was a little bit worried that there was going to be an attention drop-off. but, you know, basically after a few days after the general election in november there it picked right back up and i got to tell you, it is completely overwhelming on the ground there. it is inescapable, this race is just a fact of life for every single person in georgia right now. >> gabe, at the center of the conflict here for republicans is the fact that president trump and the two senators running for re-election said that the previous election was rigged and yet they're asking the republicans to go out and vote again, so how are david perdue and kelly loeffler walking that line, they don't want to alienate trump's votes but getting out there to vote? >> this is the central conflict

they're trying to deal with every single day. one, they dodge questions about it. they're not willing to deal with the actual substance of the question and two, when they're cornered on this essentially toe the trump line. we have to investigate and what's really important is this race right here, right now. you say saw it when the president himself went down to georgia. you know, when he took the stage in valdosta, he said you have to make sure that you vote for perdue and loeffler to make sure that the communists don't win that's how he refers to the democrats and that's how he talked about how the last race in his words was rigged. clearly, this is a massive concern for the republicans but the way they're trying to bulldoze through it. we can't let the socialists win and of course it's a scare tactic right from the trump 101. >> hey, gabe, jonathan lemire. picking up on that point the president is expected to come back to georgia in a week or so.

what are you talking -- when you're talking to republicans there is there any anxiety he'll continue the attacks on the republican -- the republican governor and secretary of state of georgia and you said that the enthusiasm is off the charts. are there some concern that well, my vote doesn't matter, or are they embracing the thought it's rigged and they're still go out there in georgia? >> a lot of people are saying this is rigged but we still got to get out there to support trump and that's the point that the republicans are trying to make. however, it's really complicated for a lot of the folks especially for loeffler who was appointed by brian kemp and who owes her political career for him. when you have trump going after kemp that makes life difficult for her but it's an important thing to note, we're talk about

a race won or lost on the margins and that's why everybody is trying to ensure we have 100% turnout on both sides because this is so close. if you look at how georgia went in november it was the closest race in the country. we're likely to see a pretty close race once again. no one is really sure what that is going to look like. so that's why president trump coming back and that's why the republicans are welcoming him back, saying we have to use every single tool in our arsenal to make sure that every republican in the state turns out. democrats of course say come on back. you know, he motivates our voters too. >> all right. we'll be reading the new reporting on "new york" magazine. thank you for coming on the show this morning. still ahead, a real most that's how new reporting is describing the crises that trump is leaving behind for joe biden. we'll speak with "washington post" anne gearan on how trump is reportedly undermining biden before he takes office. "morning joe" is back in a moment. so you want to make the best burger ever? then make it!

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let me say definitively sidney powell is not part of our legal team. she hasn't been for five weeks. she is not a special counsel for the president. she does not speak for the president. nor does she speak for the administration. she speaks for herself. >> i don't get that. you get that, mika? >> yeah. but she was part of the team. she was up there doing those -- remember that press conference in the landscaping or the trash bin or something? >> four seasons yeah, the -- >> across from the porn shop. she was there and they were like -- >> was she there, are you sure she was there? >> willie, was she -- >> she was there along the way. >> rnc, when rudy lost the hair dye down his cheeks. >> i definitely remember that.

so okay, maybe not at the one from across the important porn shop. but the landscaping company. >> she has been at the white house three out of the last four days and where was she when she said that kelly loeffler stole the election from doug collins and shouldn't be on the ballot in a couple of weeks? do you remember she was when she was listed as part of that conspiracy theory. >> i know she was on the stage when people were chanting lock him up, brian kemp. yet, she's spent an awful lot of time at the white house at the president's side. >> yeah. >> willie, can i ask you something? i'm just curious because, you know, i went to southern state schools. what? i went to southern state schools. >> it's too much today. >> i don't know about rituals,

you know? you have skull and bones. like that bohemian club. they have got all these rituals. i'm just wondering what were the rituals for you? like what hazing did you put lemire through when he started his "way too early" rotations this week? obviously, there's a long and storied past for "way too early" going back obviously to the months leading up into world war i. that's when "way too early" first started to being shown on this network. just to get ready when you're going up against the kaiser. >> stop talking. >> that's when it started. it got passed on to you and you have passed it on to obviously kasie hunt, but she's a pro. i have a feeling with this lemire kid you hazed him pretty hard this morning. what did you do? >> joe, that was a louie teeon

windup to get to the pitch. >> it was. it was. >> as jonathan can tell you, the alarm clock to "way too early" is hazing enough. i think that's all he took. >> so painful. >> it pains me to offer a public compliment to jonathan lemire. he's crushing it this week. kasie hunt does a great job and jonathan lemire, he's smooth. >> yeah. >> willie, of course you're the gold standard and kasie is spectacular in this as well. although she didn't warn me that i had to like get your dry cleaning, willie. she didn't tell me that i'd have to fend off the disappointed autograph seekers. people who have been outside 30 rock for years now, hoping you would come back in it at 5:00 in the morning and being told no, that you're not there anymore. although, now of course joined

by the khaki clad steve kornacki groupie out there. although i'm happy to carry on "way too early." but that alarm, 2:45. >> every bit as smoothly as montana against the bengals, final drive. 8 7, 88 yards. by the way, tomorrow morning, because the pressure has been far too much on jonathan lemire right now, he's going to have to go back into the sort of michael jackson type of bubble he has at his apartment in brooklyn and get -- you know, pure oxygen for a couple of days. jacob soboroff, answering the wake-up call at 12:30, doing "way too early" live from the west coast. that's illegal in some countries, but soboroff is going to do it tomorrow. >> all right, katty kay is with

us as well and joining the conversation we have mike barnicle. and professor at princeton university, eddie glaude jr. we begin -- >> wait wait. >> what do you have planned for christmas what do you have planned for the holidays? >> i'm going to cook -- >> what is this war on christmas. i can't ask a question about christmas anymore. it's the war on christmas. eddie, what do you have going on for christmas, hanukkah, i don't care. what do you have going on with your lovely family this christmas? >> be quick. >> i'm going to cook a bit pot of gumbo and i'm going to write a book written by joe scarborough. >> did not plan this. it's called "saving freedom." >> yeah. that's it. >> mike barnicle, what is ann going to let you do this

christmas season? >> oh, joe, you know me. i mean, we're going to have an incredible crowd of people here individually socially distanced. i'm a people guy, as you know. we're going to have the extended family here for two or three days, sleeping over. having fun. playing card games. it will be wonderful. i can't -- i'm looking forward to it. >> no one is going to be there at all. okay. we begin with -- >> by the way, that -- mika, can i interpret for everybody? barnicle saying leave me alone. >> they have so many grandchildren it's pandemic -- yeah. pandemic love in the barnicle family. so enjoy them. we begin with president trump still searching for ways to overturn the election that he lost. and the group of republicans who are still willing to help him. even though he lost. trump met privately with a number of house republicans

yesterday to advance his election fraud crusade. the talks centered around an effort to object to the electoral votes that joe biden won in the january 6th joint session of congress and some of the republican lawmakers spotted in the west wing reportedly include newly elected congresswoman and qanon conspiracy supporter marjorie taylor green and jim jordan, moe brooks, louis gohmert. mike pence was also there. both trump and the chief of staff confirmed news of the meeting on twitter. mark meadows wrote, quote they're preparing to fight back. >> oh, shut up, mark. >> against mounting evidence -- >> stop making a fool of yourself. >> and trump tweeted the headline, conservatives call on state legislators to appoint new electors in accordance with the

constitution. senate majority whip john thune was asked about the oval office meeting with republican lawmakers who planned to object to the electoral vote in the house chamber in january. he said, quote, i think the thing they've got to remember is it's not going anywhere. i mean, in the senate it would go down like a shot dog and i don't think that it makes a lot of sense to put everybody through this when you know what the ultimate outcome is going to be. >> thank you, john. makes sense to me. that's just good old dakota sense as we used to say in the scarborough household. we never said that, but if we did it would apply to john thune right there. so eddie glaude, they still don't have the memo, these confederacy of dunces, they don't have the memo that the gig's up. it's over. you have everybody from pat robertson to william barr saying

enough. no mas. done with this stuff. and yet, there's still a few holdouts, like the japanese soldiers they found scattered across the pacific in 1957. the war is over, they lost. >> yeah, joe, it's just a pretty sad state of affairs. you have the president who is acting like caligula, the mad president in this instance, and he's surrounded by sycophants who in some ways kowtow to that madness. i think what we have to worry about are the collateral effects of this. there's the spectacle of it. there's the feature of all of it. but it's in so many ways eroding in the very clear ways i think, the foundation of our democracy. that might be a bit of an exaggeration but i think the effects of this ongoing spectacle on those who support donald trump and their trust in this system or their already deepening distrust in the system will have long-term consequences

for how we move forward over the next four years with the biden administration, joe. >> well, we're just 29 days to go until joe biden is inaugurated. there is new reporting that the current administration is doing as little as possible to help with the peaceful transition. "the washington post" reports that in the final weeks the white house is trying to do everything it can to reshift the government with last-minute policy changes and political appointments. the newly installed defense secretary, a trump loyalist, has stopped briefing the transition team calling it a holiday break. the biden team says it never agreed to this, adding the move will quote will have consequences well beyond january. trump is also telling advisers not to share information with biden's team that could be used against him. and with his possible run for office, he's already looking to

begin at least informally working behind the scenes. let's bring in anne gearan of "the washington post" who is talking about this and report on this. what do you think the most destructive thing that they're not helping with is in terms of the transition? >> well, mika, it's actually something that's hard to see, which is the sort of mid level and lower level government workings. the biden team remains sort of blinded to a lot of what's actually happening in government and some certainly who are advising president-elect biden are concerned that there's a whole lot of shenanigans going on behind the scenes where trump is placing loyalists now or doing their version of burning documents. we don't think they're burning documents but they may be, you

know, kind of moving things around, making it difficult for the biden folks to get traction once they get in. making it doubly difficult for the biden team to understand and know all that trump left in place when he left in terms of policies, changes, hollowing out of agencies. so it's less overt than a number of the things that the president tweets about the transition, but it could be deeply damaging going forward. >> mike barnicle, you are in contact with the biden team on a daily basis. you obviously express -- said they were expressing concerns several weeks ago mainly getting the vaccine out to as many americans as possible. how are they as we move toward this holiday break, how are they feeling about the transition right now? what are they overriding concerns? >> well, i think anne pointed

out, if not the overriding concern, joe, in addition to the logistics of getting the vaccine district aid cross the country there's the increasing worry about how much damage is being done in the various departments of government within the administration. what are they doing on an intentional basis to slowly and surely hurt the biden presidency before joe biden is sworn in on january 20th? they continue to do damage they feel the incoming biden administration feels in coming damage on a daily and hourly basis, so my question to you, anne, it's clearly, you know, the talent pool around the white house is historically been very thin for the last three or four years. who is left around donald trump to provide either advice, counsel or maybe as an accomplice? >> well, i'll let you decide

who's who in that cast, but certainly mark meadows is in there just about every day. rudy giuliani is in there every day. he's not a government employee. or he's on the phone with the president. the president's circle is really becoming smaller and smaller as his days dwindle in office. there are only a few people who he talks to every day and we're not seeing much of the president. this is the different president trump, you know, kind of going out the door here. he's been really rejecting the advice of some of his political aides to go out and do a valedictory tour. you know, give the people what they want, but instead he's holed up inside the white house talking about how he can get senators to do his bidding when it comes to the electoral

college vote, certifying the vote. which is as senator thune pointed out, you know, a fool's errand to begin with. but the president seems to want to do it. you know, he's not tweeting -- well, he's tweeting but he's not showing up in the briefing room. he's not actually really announcing policy or doing anything with those tweets. except airing grievances. and so, you know, we're all sort of waiting to see when he comes out of the bunker. >> jonathan lemire, the only thing that matters to this president as you well know after covering him every day is loyalty. he's seen disloyalty from william barr, mitch mcconnell, from mike pompeo in the last several days contradicting the president's narratives on the cyberattack, but also on overturning this election. even mark meadows has drawn his ire for not taking his side for the strange oval office meeting late last week. that's why you're seeing the vacuum filled with people like a

qanon congresswoman who's incoming to congress, like people, like sidney powell coming in and getting meetings with the president of the united states because frankly, that's all who's left who is willing to go along with this narrative. >> there's no one else there. the group around the president has gotten smaller by the day. some people work in the west wing they have moved on. communications director, for instance, has left for a new job. we have seen a number of people like mike pompeo or william barr who are perceived up until very recently being very supportive and loyal to the president have broken with him in some key ways, namely, on the idea of russia being behind this hack and in barr's case suggesting it wasn't widespread election fraud and the president of course grew very angry at that. we see jared kushner who of course is one of the most influential advisers be m.i.a. he's been in israel in the last couple of days and his focus is on the middle east peace process and he as in not been in the white house, he has not participated in a lot of the key

meetings. so to your point, instead, who steps into the breach? the rag tag group of misfits who are to this -- trying to encourage the president's worse impulses and someone close to him put it in the last 48 hours, who speaks to him regularly, when -- they suggested this. trump though of course angry and of course went through the emotions of being in the fight, the electoral challenge and a lot of that was performance. a lot of that was putting on a show for his supporters. he had to keep fighting with an eye towards 2024. but there was a recognition, privately, that he knew that he had lost. that has changed and that's -- that's something that's alarmed the president. the president is telling people he does believe that the election was stolen. he sincerely believes in the conspiracy theories that have been put into his ear by sidney powell and rudy giuliani and others and that's why he's

invited people like michael flynn into the oval office and discussed martial law and while trump hasn't acted upon that yet and denied that's a serious consideration it shows where his head and it shows why so many people, republicans, democrats, even those in the white house, are so worried about what could still come in the 30 long days when he's still president. >> katty kay? >> yeah, anne, can you spell out a little bit more what specifically can damage the biden administration coming in if there isn't a transition as normal. we know back in 2000, after 2000, the rocky transition meant that the incoming bush administration didn't have enough time -- as much time to go over terror threats. are there any specifics that you can think of that the biden administration might be less well prepared for now because of

the way that the trump administration is handling this transition? >> well, katty, a couple of things. first of all, the coronavirus vaccine rollout and all of the kind of inner workings of how the government is preparing for what is going to be an extraordinary logistical challenge that will fall entirely on the shoulders of the biden administration once we get past these very initial groups of people who are receiving the vaccine nationwide. they feel they have good cooperation with the cdc, with other federal agencies that are handling that, but there's an enormous amount that they feel they don't know and are not sure of all the logistical issues they're going to inherent and have to be building the plane while they're flying it. that's one very practical short-term concern. another is the effects of this

massive hack, which again, is going -- it's going -- it happened on donald trump's watch and it wasn't caught by the administration. it was caught by a company. but the fallout from it, the after effects, the damage they still don't know, is all going to fall on the biden team to pick up. they do not feel particularly in the case of the pentagon they're getting cooperation to really understand the scope of what the government knows know and what is being done about it, what they're going to inherit when it's their turn. >> all right. "washington post" white house reporter anne gearan, thank you. if you don't get at least -- no, let's take the full shot here. because you have to see the depth here in the other room. if room raider does not give you a perfect -- it's not a 10 out of 10. this is a 20 out of -- >> lovely home. >> this a nadia comaneci of room raider here. you win, shut the site down.

everybody, just go home. the lighting, the depth, everything is perfect. which of course -- won't get you into starbucks. it's beautiful. >> i love it. >> go ahead. >> i was going to say from your lips to room raiders' ears. >> there you go. >> let us see. still ahead on "morning joe," the covid cases top 18 million in the u.s. as officials here try to urge calm after a new more infectious strain makes its way through the uk. we'll talk to a top doctor who's on the front lines of trying to convince skeptics that the covid vaccine is safe. by front lines we mean he participated in the moderna trials. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. is now a good time for a flare-up?

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the united states has surpassed 18 million coronavirus

cases just days after the country crossed the 17 million case mark. the death toll stands at more than 320,000 people nationwide. more than 232 million tests have been conducted in the country and more than 7 million americans have recovered. according to the covid tracking project, just yesterday, states reported 2.1 million tests and 178,000 new cases. there are currently a record 115,351 people hospitalized. willie? >> meanwhile, more than 40 countries have stopped flights from the united kingdom amid fears of a new more infectious strain of the covid-19 that's circulating there. parts of london placed under a new lockdown over the weekend as boris johnson warned the new strain is 70% more

transmissible. but u.s. public health officials are not advising a similar ban on travelers from the uk and dr. fauci warned about overreacting. washington state's governor inslee called for travelers from the uk, south africa, and other nations where the new covid-19 strain has been reported to quarantine for 14 days. new york's governor andrew cuomo has called on the federal government to ban travel from the uk and has asked airlines to test travelers from the united kingdom to new york which they are now doing. former fda commissioner scott gottlieb says he does not think a travel ban will prevent the mutated strain from coming into the u.s. he believes it's already here. joining us from new jersey, dr. shereef elnahal. he was a participant in the moderna vaccine trial.

let's begin with the new train. i'm glad you're here to sort through this. we've heard it's much more contagious than the current covid-19 that we have a vaccine for but expected by the doctors and scientists that there's always new strains of a new virus. how concerned are you about this? >> there's cause for concern and you're right to say that there's a mutation expected and that's why there's a word of concern from people like dr. fauci. you have to consider the vaccine to be a fire hose and you have to consider the virus itself to be the fire. and with a new strain that spreads much more easily you should consider that fire bigger and faster and so the moderna vaccine as is every vaccine that has come out and gotten approval

is quite strong. 95% effectiveness, but we need to focus on the spread to make that fire as small as possible to increase the likelihood we put it out. what that does is it allows us to double down with the message of masking, and social distancing and preventing cases from spreading in the first place. >> so doctor, we work so hard -- i say we, you all work so hard, people in science and medicine to create this vaccine for the strain that we're aware of. with this vaccine, will it capture this strain? >> as far as we know, it's expected to. and the smaller mutations that slightly alter the behavior of the virus do not affect the effectiveness of vaccines but we won't know until we proceed. i still think the name of the game is to get the vaccine in as many people as possible, get the

most vulnerable people vaccinated first, the frontline people and the people in the nursing home. we have to be as efficient and fast as possible in doing so. >> what about right now? what's the message for folks who are still -- we're waiting for this vaccine to get to everybody. i'm just thinking of like the parallel reality that i saw this past weekend i was in the hospital with my mother and definitely the hospital was run down with covid patients and frontline workers were doing their best to get to everybody and keep everybody safe and separated and it was an incredible experience. at the same time, i was driving through town and there were restaurants open. people not wearing masks and acting as if this virus doesn't exist. how much danger is living like that putting people in?

>> we are at a really critical point right now. folks can either choose to behave responsibly during the winter holiday as we come up on christmas, avoid indoor gatherings. try to avoid going out and doing activities like the ones you just mentioned or we won't do that. and unfortunately, the alternative is really seeing what we saw in the spring right here in the new york metro area happen across the country. we are already seeing it in southern california and many parts of the country already hospitals are overrun. health care workers are going through this sometimes a second or third time when they see hundreds of patients in the hospital and these folks are tired. they have been doing this every single day, putting their own lives at risk. the vaccine is here, it will still take a while, number one, to vaccinate our health care workers, but in the generation population, we're talking about six months at least. we have to go the last mile carefully and this is a choice that we have to make right now before the christmas and winter

holidays. so i do hope that folks follow it. otherwise, we're going to see, again, something really terrible happen across the country. >> eddie glaude, you take the next question. >> well, good morning. so you talk about our need to continue to mask, to engage in physical distancing and the like, that the vaccine is on the way. but there are a lot of folks out here in the united states who are suspicious, who are distrustful about the vaccine. what do you think we need to be doing with regards to kind of public education around the vaccine to get more folks prepared to take it? >> so i think it's important to understand that there's a lot of sources of mistrust and we serve proudly the majority of minority community here. in fact, our staff is majority minority including our nurses as well as our physicians and others who are frontline health care heroes.

and black and brown people were subjugated more generally and we're talking about the tuskegee and the men were not treated for syphilis and the women were the guinea pigs for experiments. so the first step we have to take is to acknowledge and legitimatize that skepticism and say the medical establishment has failed you in so many ways. being trusted people, trustworthy organizations and demonstrating that is the first step because you can go all you want with the facts about, you know, yes, this isn't going to cause infertility. yes, some of the things are conspiracy theories but until

you break that barrier of mistrust as much as possible because we have to do it fast, you really won't get traction with the communities that frankly that need it the most. as we know, covid-19 has devastated communities of color across this country and they include a huge bulk of the workers. we owe it to them to meet them where they are. >> mike barnicle? >> doctor, it's understandable that at this stage of -- in this country of people dealing with the virus and living with the virus that there's an overreaction or a reaction filled with fill about the news there's a new mutation or variant to covid-19. but let me ask you about the initial origins of covid-19 in this country, way back in january, february and march. did that also have a variant or a mutation along the way? in other words, is it common for viruses to have such mutations? >> absolutely.

viruses mutate all the time and you have to remember that there are millions and millions of viruses replicating in your own body, let alone across the world. so the chance that there's a mutation that ends up changing the behavior of the virus is almost inevitable even within the course of a short time of a year and mutations happen all the time. they actually render the virus useless or ineffective, but the ones that make it spread more easily, the ones that make it more virulent do happen and so we have experts in the cdc and bio surveillance that are constantly tracking this. i have faith in them they'll do this especially as the new administration comes in and the voices of science are elevated and we do know that this is expected but we have ways of managing it. one way is to accurately track and report cases all across the country and where we have places that aren't accurately doing so or withholding information which makes it more difficult to understand whether the mutations

are meaningful or not. transparency, being the first and foremost public health practice that allows us to do our job is very important. we didn't see transparency unfortunately as we have learned out of china initially so we hope that changes going forward across the world. >> dr. shereef elnahal, thank you very much for being on the show this morning. and coming up, in what's being called the nation's most ambitious police reform, new jersey has announced sweeping new policies regarding the use of force. we'll speak to new jersey's attorney general next on "morning joe."

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dozens of cadets are facing disciplinary action after being accused in a major cheating scandal at west point. nbc news correspondent courtney kube has more. >> reporter: in what could be the biggest honor code violation in decades, more than 70 west

point cadets are accused of cheating of up a math exam while learning remotely last spring. the cadets caught when they all made the same mistake on one part of the calculus exam. two have since been exonerated. four left the academy, but the others still face administrative actions. the 55 cadets who admitted guilt will be on probation for the rest of their time at the academy. west point's honor code states a cadet will not lie, cheat or steal or tolerate those who do. a spokesperson said that the cadets are being held accountable for breaking the code. while disappointing, the honor system is working and the 67 remaining cases will be held accountable for their actions. >> they go into the army and they're responsible for the lives of maybe 40 people and very much different than

graduating from a civilian institution. now to what is being called the nation's most ambitious police reform in the police killing of george floyd in minneapolis. states began examining their use of force policies for their police departments. yesterday, new jersey's attorney general, gurbir grewal, announced his state's first overhaul for police use of force in 20 years. among those changes, a requirement that notice be given before force is used. and that medical attention be administered when it is. and new jersey's attorney general grewal is joining us now. thank you for joining us. tell us what else the new policies includes and how exactly do you administer medical attention and in the

moment of dealing with the potential suspect, how do you let them know about the use of force? explain how this works. >> well, thank you for having me. it's really a paradigm shift for how we interact with citizens here in new jersey and that's the goal. our 20-year-old use of force policy started with force and it ended with force. it never mentioned de-escalation, so what we're asking our officers to do is in every instance, respect the sanctity and dignity of life and use force as a last resort. if force is used they have a duty to give the warning if feasible and if force is used and the individual with whom they're interacting is injured they have a duty to render the medical assistance promptly if safe under the circumstances. we realize that policy is just paper so we're undertaking a massive retraining of all 38,000 comes to drive this home and

setting up a state of the art, first in class use of force portal to see how we're doing with this new policy. >> eddie glaude? >> as a resident of new jersey i'm so excited about this. let me ask you this question though. these are some extraordinary gestures or a policy initiative. what's the accountability component? what happens when folks fail to live up to the policy? i mean, we're hearing what the policy contains, but what -- what are its mechanisms to ensure that police officers abide by these new policy initiatives? >> yeah, that's a terrific question. you know, that's why we built out something that we're extremely proud of in this state, which is a portal where every officer within 24 hours has to report any use of force. and that portal is online. it's state of the art and it requires and our new policy requires that every police

executive monitor and review every use of force. our county prosecutors have visibility into it and my office does as well. that real time accountability will give us a better understanding of how we're using force and if trends are going in the wrong direction we could intercede early. this is something, you know, i know the introduction said it was done in the wake of the killing of george floyd in minneapolis. we started this hard work three years ago because we realized that we do our work in this criminal justice system against a back drop and a history of unjustice and unlike the federal administration and the federal attorney general we believe that systemic racism is real. we have been building this out for years and we announced it yesterday. >> mr. attorney general, it's willie geist. another new jersey guy here. good to see you this here. transparency, accountability, all great steps. i'm look through this and i know

one place where you'll hear from the police groups is crisis intervention. if they encounter somebody in the middle of a mental health experience, this happens quickly in my ways, you don't have time to do something like this. how will it look like as you game it out? how will a police officer identify the person as being in the middle of the mental health crisis and call in someone else? >> you know, one of the things that we're emphasizing in the new policy is time as a tactic. we're saying in the past where you have been taught not to retreat, that repositioning is not retreating that you can create space and create time for those professionals to come in and to have those crisis intervention teams in place. we have seen the policies work in jurisdictions like camden where they have been able to de-escalate situations with those in mental health crises and safely resolve them. i think that's proof of concept for what we're trying to do. you know, we've very far afield

in law enforcement. we're left to deal with mental health crises, substance abuse, all manner of problems. so by funding these new programs t new trainings, we're going to give our officers new tools to resolve interactions with the public in a more safe manner as well. >> mr. attorney general, katty kay is here with a question for you. katty? >> thank you. what support systems are there for instances where some law enforcement officer does something that is egregious and others want to come out and criticize that law enforcement officer because when you look at public polling that is one of the areas where the public has least confidence. that good cops effectively are going to come out and denounce bad policing habits. do you have anything in process where you could try to support those cops who do want to come out and denounce bad policing habits? >> you know, it's very difficult

for a junior officer to intercede when they see a superior officer do something and we realize that. so one aspect of the training that we're going to roll out next year is active bystandership for law enforcement. this is out of georgetown university, it has been implemented across our country in different departments. to give officers the techniques to step in and to say to a colleague or say to the superior what they're doing is wrong and teach them how to do that. and this draws on the other professionals in which this bystandership has been incorporated. but we can't do it alone. so part of the portal we're going to make public. transparency was mentioned a moment ago. this is a joint effort and we'll do our part, and we'll give the public an unprecedented look at how force is used in the communities and by whom and they can join us when we make it public. to see how their officers are

doing as well. >> new jersey's attorney general gurbir grewal, thank you for sharing that. we have a lot more ahead including our conversation with actor sean penn about what he's doing to help communities organize coronavirus testing and vaccine distributions. some of the other stories we're following this morning including the backup at the u.s. postal service that will prevent some gifts from arriving in time for christmas. we're back in just a moment. ♪

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packages won't reach their destinations in time for christmas. the overwhelming amount of online orders this holiday season along with the continuing effects of the coronavirus have created a perfect storm for holiday shipping delays. further stressing an already struggling industry. according to the american postal workers union, nearly 19,000

united states postal workers have called in sick or are isolating because of the virus. meanwhile, packages continue to stack up, some sitting on trucks for days, waiting for facility floor space to open up. by december 12th, parcel volume was already up 14% compared with 2019 with many workers clocking over 80-hour work weeks. willie. >> meanwhile, mika, president trump reportedly is inquiring about getting an airport named after him. according to the "daily beast," president trump has asked his aides about the process of naming airports after former presidents and even asked about the paperwork necessary. "the daily beast" cites two people who say they have heard him inquire about it and who also say trump brought up that no president wants an airport named after them that has a bad reputation or crumbling infrastructure. so, jonathan lemire, i guess, two things. first of all, even while he

pretends he is fighting a rigged election with his small group of fringe advisors and attorneys, he is talking about life after the presidency. so he knows in his heart what's happening here. but also maybe this is the inevitable end where president trump, a man who loves seeing his name on things, hopes to get an airport. >> clearly an eye on his legacy here. he is not shy about putting up his name on all sorts of structures all over the country. let's remember that the president has his own airplane, which he will have to go back using in a month's time. twitter jokes were flying, pardon the pun, fast and furious, about this possibility yesterday, willie. i saw some suggest that perhaps the airport in moscow could be named after him. others suggest that maybe it's west palm beach, which will be his new home airport when he relocates to florida. i think the answer is in front of us. it's laguardia airport, which no disrespect to the former mayor

of new york city, where trump keeps his plane parked and where incoming president joe biden called it a third-world airport. i know there has been some rehab since. i think if the next administration wanted to tweak the outgoing president giving him an airport, that nigmight b the one to choose. still ahead, congress passes the long awaited covid relief deal with the first stimulus checks going out as soon as next week. with talks all but dead a few weeks ago, are moderates becoming a new force on the hill? and president trump meets with a group of far-right house republicans who appear more than willing to help his bid to overturn the presidential election that he lost. "morning joe" is coming right back. back ♪ sanctuary music (kids laughing) (dog barking)

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the only thing a disaster can't destroy is hope. donate now at redcross.org no more machines! oh my god, you can't have my machines. what's so private about an election machine? >> i see no basis now for seizing machines by the federal government. >> for two years they have been trying to get this information, the fbi. one fbi agent went like this to the witness. >> i think to the extent that there is an investigation, i think that it's being handled responsibly and professionally currently within the department. >> the president suggesting that the massive hack may have been

carried out by someone else not russia. >> from the information i have, you know, i agree with secretary pompeo's assessment. it's certainly, it appears to be the russians, but i am not d going to discuss it beyond that. >> apparently there is a bridge too far even for william barr. good morning and welcome to "morning joe." it is tuesday, december 22nd. a along with joe, willie and me, we have white house reporter for t"the associated press" jonatha lemire, learning to get up way too early this week, and washington anchor for bbc world news america katty kay is with us. we are going to get to the slow-moving coup in just a moment. but first, overnight congress passed one of the largest stimulus packages in the country's history. it totals $2.3 trillion and includes not only the 900 billion coronavirus relief bill, but a full government funding package as well.

the combined bills, which include direct payments and unemployment benefits tops out at nearly 5,600 pages. it was only given to lawmakers to read yesterday afternoon due to some technical issues. in the house, it passed 359-53. 50 republicans voted against it. in the senate it passed 92-6. two republicans missed the vote while six voted against it. many of them decidiciting the c the bill. >> oh? >> mercy. >> we have deficit hawks now. >> my goodness, where are have you been all my life? >> how cute is that? they run up the biggest deficits in u.s. history, even before covid, the biggest debt in american history, and now they are deficit hawks. why, how convenient they are deficit hawks with a democrat coming in as president because they sure as hell weren't deficit hawks when george w. bush --

>> they are deficit hawks now, and now, willie, they don't like mean tweets and they don't like it when anyone uses naughty language. >> don't like curse words. >> i have some breaking news, guys. there is going to be a lot of hypocrisy over the next four years from the very people who brought us donald trump and aided and abetted the last four years. you have ron johnson the other day saying we can't give people $1,200. this government does not write bank checks. we are not a piggy bank. they found our fiscal discipline. it's extraordinary. jake sherman is here. an msnbc political contributor. jake, good morning. how did this come together in the final hours, and why did those six republicans who voted no vote no? >> well, you put it well. they are regaining their religion, let's say, on debts, deficits and fiscal discipline, which i imagine will be -- will sleep through the republican party over the next couple of

years. i will say this. this does show, i mean, to the extent, if we could take anything good from these last eight months, it does show that the congressional leadership is still working in some way, shape or form b because at the end of the day, if you think about it, it's tuesday. last tuesday was mitch mcconnell and nancy pelosi's first meeting. so they were able to, over the course of a week, put together the second largest stimulus package in american history. only second to the one that they put together just before that. so it's a massive package that will deliver much needed but delayed, let's be clear, delayed relief that joe biden has termed only a down payment for what's going to happen next congress, which will be really quickly the busiest legislative session that i think we can -- any of us can imagine with the slimmest marchens in the house and the senate. >> you know, jake, it's very interesting. we got information last week that this was moving forward and

we have been following some of the key players for quite some time who have been telling us, we are going to get this done. all while mitch mcconnell was sending signals that it wasn't going to get done. and you look at joe manchin, mitt romney, susan collins, even lindsey graham, jean shaheen, others, while mcconnell was saying no, these moderates in the jer, in the republican party and -- republican and democratic party were saying, you know, they are going to get this done. we are going to have the votes in the end. it ends up that, you know, the majority and minority leaders don't have a complete stranglehold on their parties. if they decide they want to move together and forge consensus, they are going to do it in the last couple of weeks prove that, didn't it? >> it did. it proved that there is a center of the senate that still works, like you just indicated. and what the center was able to

do better than anything was create a menu from which the leadership was able to eventually choose. and i think that is an important thing here. they showed that there was support for a variety of protests that mitch mcconnell, nancy pelosi got into a room and narrowed down. so i actually think, i mean, despite it being very late and not including everything that anybody wants, this is a good sign that shows that there is some functionality left in the institution, in the post-trump era. i think, and "the new york times" wrote this on the front page today, it shows for the first time that there is a roadmap for joe biden, which is to create some heat and some action in the center among the people you just mentioned. joe mappings, gene shaheen, some of the moderates and functional members of both parties create some sort of action from which the leadership could build upon. >> and katty kay, we have talked about it here for a couple of

weeks. you got mark kelly coming from arizona, kyrsten sinema, who may have a different image, a different constituency, but she and joe manchin vote together about 95% of the time. hickenlooper is coming in, a moderate, conservative democratic governor. you have mitt romney. you've got susan collins, who seems like she has something to prove this year, which is she's pretty powerful and can forge consensus if she wants to. lisa murkowski, who has always been very independent. pat toomey, who has struck compromises before with joe manchin on some difficult issues. i mean -- gene shaheen, lindsey graham. and i think they flooded the zone. they overwhelmed their own leadership. one thing i noticed in these negotiations, time and again, oh no, it's going to be dead because there is not the state

and local -- oh, no, it's going to be dead because they don't have the liability shield for the corporations, and time and again these, we will call them the solution caucus, said, no, no, okay, listen, we will just put those to the side. let's talk about the aid and then we can address those other issues. they really are -- not be too glib here, but it is a problem solvers caucus. they actually were focused on getting something dunnan instead of just bitching about the other side and we wake up this morning and actually they got something done regardless of discouragement from the top. >> yeah, and they met separately. they went away from capitol hill to have their meeting. we are not going to come up with concepts or principles, we are actually going to come up with legislation and present that to leadership. sometimes congressional leadership doesn't love these

gangs because, as we have just seen, they can get themselves a whole load of power by being, as you say, solution oriented people that can get things done, and they can act in a bipartisan way. they thought bipartisanship was totally out of the window in this grease. we have just had our first demonstration of it. it will be interesting to see two things. if democrats were to win in georgia and have the slimmest of majorities, do we still see some of those republicans coming over in that situation? and once joe biden is president, do we still see as many of those republicans coming over and working with democrats? does that caucus manage to hold? either way, whether the democrats take georgia or not, that caucus, if it holds, could have a huge amount of power as joe biden goes into a legislative session that is going to have massive hurdles and need to do big substantial legislation of the kind of infrastructure and second stimulus bill he is talking

about. there is no way he can get that down watt this centrist group from the other side as well. >> and even with georgia, if for some reason, and it's highly unlikely, even if both of those senate seats in the special election go democratic, you are sitting at 50/50. and then you have what was described as chuck schumer's worst-case scenario, a month after the election, and that is a 50/50 senate where the tie-breaking vote is not the vice president. the tie-breaking vote is joe manchin. and so regardless of how this shakes out, you are going to be hearing a lot of exaggeration, it's going to be the end of the world if it breaks one way or the other. no, you will still have ten moderate/conservatives in the senator no matter who is co-majority leader and they will be striking some compromises over the next two years, if we actually get some legislation

passed instead of just having executive orders signed. >> be good to get through the next 30 days. cistill ahead, attorney general william barr is headed for the exhibit and breaking with the president on the way out the door. how will his replacement deal with having donald trump for a boss? you are watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. your mission: stand up to moderate to severe rheumatoid arthritis. and take. it. on...

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bill barr. william ba let's turn now to the ongoing trump coup, still desperately seeking ways to overturn joe biden's election win. here is how the lead in "the washington post" describes things. quote, with his baseless claims of widespread voter fraud rejected by dozens of judges and gop leaders, president trump has turned to a rag tag group of conspiracy theorists, media-hungry lawyers, and other political misfits in a desperate attempt to hold on to power

after his election loss. the president's orbit has grown more extreme as his more mainstream allies, including attorney general william barr, have declined to endorse his increasingly radical plans to overturn the will of the voters. trump's unofficial election advisory council now includes a pardoned felon, adherents of the qanon conspiracy theory, a white house trade advisor and a russian agent's former lover. >> so, willie, thoese are a confederacy of dunces that you would not around your basic household appliances, and certainly wouldn't want them with your shotguns on the back porch. they are a ragtag group of misfits. >> what a mess. >> yeah, that's putting it kindly, i think. a rag tag group of misfits.

a q&a non-congresswoman, so qanon is in sitting next to the president of the united states offering her counsel. >> by the way, willie, could you explain the underlying theory for those who don't understand what qanon's underlying theory is regarding canables and whatever else? >> they believe there are people in this country, elites, members of the media, democrats mostly, who are members of a satanist cabal that engages in pedophilia. she got elected to the united states congress and now she gets meetings with the president of the united states. sidney powell, the fringe attorney, now appears to be at the right hand of president trump, even though rudy giuliani is on tv saying, no, she is not on our team. she has been to the white house three times in the last four days. the island is shrinking and president trump's bringing on whoever will join him in the final charade to overturn the election. one person who is not turning

general william barr. he refused yesterday to yesterday. that was on display yesterday at a news conference. ostensibly to announce new charges related to the 1988 bombing of pan am flight 103 over scotland. attorney general barr knocked down a series of president trump's false claims and conspiracy theories. he began with this comment on the hunter biden investigation. >> i think to the extent that there is an investigation, i think that it's being handled responsibly and professionally currently within the department and to this point i have not seen a reason to appoint a special counsel, and i have no plan to do so before i leave. >> okay. so no special counsel on hunter biden. then this from the attorney general on president trump's reported push to seize voting machines. >> i see no basis now for

seizing machines by the federal government. >> do you believe there is enough evidence to warrant a special counsel to investigate that perhaps sidney powell or someone else? >> if i thought a special counsel at this stage was the right tool and was appropriate, i would do -- i would name one, but i haven't and i am not going to. >> no special counsel there. not going to seize the voting machines. finally this on the president's claims that russia may not have been behind the master cyberattack against u.s. federal agencies. >> from the information i have, you know, i agree with secretary pompeo's assessment. it's certainly, it appears to be the russians. but i am not going to discuss it beyond that. >> so attorney general barr there, jonathan lemire, agreeing with secretary of state mike pompeo and most cybersecurity experts that it was in fact russia, something that the president has declined to say suggesting in a tweet the other day that maybe it was china. we should point out tomorrow is

attorney general barr's last day in office. so that really was his val diktry news conference and he took all the time to make those points. >> the timing is not a coincidence, willie. i think for attorney general barr there is a little bit of attempt of sort of reshape or defend pieces of his reputation and legacy on his way out the door. he was seen as being an extreme loyalist to the president from his first days in the job when he shaped and colored the mueller report findings in the most favorable way possible for president trump allowing the president to claim falsely that he had been fully exonerated. certainly we saw here a clear break with the president on a number of subjects. one that did not go over well, we are told, in the oval office. the president, of course, had a heated meeting, several heated meetings with barr in recent weeks. last week accepted his resignation. what comes next? jeffery rosen is the acting attorney general. it's not clear how he will respond to the pressure that is surely coming from the white

house to to appoint a personal counsel about election fraud, even more pressingly than the hunter biden case, at least at this moment. to this point those around rosen say he is not inclined to do so but they don't know how he will respond to the demands from the oval office and the potential that rosen could get dismissed if the president wants to install someone else in that post. but we are seeing also, willie, this legal team, this rag tag group of advisors, as we have been saying, there are divisions in that as rudy giuliani is suggesting that sidney powell does not speak for the president right now, but yet powell has been in the oval office three of the last four days. they can't agree on a strategy here. certainly all of their legal challenges have been met with defeat and now they are attempting one last-ditch effort, that first week in january when congress meets to certify the electoral college votes, they were trying to garner senators and republicans from the gop to do the president's bidding, to try to object to that.

that's not going to work either. joe biden is still going to be president-elect. it remains so damaging to democracy and undermining some, at least, in the minds of some matters the legitimacy of biden's election. that's what's dangerous here. cup, our conversation with actor sean penn. how he is getting involved in fighting the pandemic. and a big show on tap for tomorrow. joe biden's nominee for transportation secretary, pete buttigieg. also, dr. scott gottlieb on the rollout. vaccine. and chris krebs, the department of homeland security official who was fired after rejecting president trump's false claims of widespread voter fraud. that's tomorrow on "morning joe." what if i sleep hot? ...or cold?

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there are times when the city shows its true face. this is one of those times. and this is l.a. you see angels come in many ways. you believe in angels? ?

that was a public service announcement from the non-profit group core. it stands for community organized relief effort, which is so far tested more than 3.3 million people across america for free with plans to offer vaccines in the months ahead. joining us now, the co-founders of core, academy-award winning actor sean penn and core's ceo ann lee. i appreciate what y'all have been doing, especially in light of what the government has not been able to do or has chosen under this president not to do. let's start with testing. ann lee, i'll start with you. we will get to what you want to do with vaccines, but what were you able to accomplish in terms of getting covid tests to people who need them? >> we have been able to accomplish thanks to our partnerships across the u.s., it's been such a unique partnership that i haven't seen

in all of my years in working in disaster relief, a partnership between a community-based organization like ourselves with the community, the local government, whether it's l.a. mayors office or fulton county as well as the private sector. it was really sort of a sense of leadership at the federal level that the counties and the cities have become these incredible unsung heroes stepping into that void and really taking -- [ inaudible ]. >> sean penn, you say that one of the silver linings of this experience with the pandemic, and there are a few, but has been the public/private partnerships. what have you been able to accomplish with core and what are you hoping that this organization will be able to accomplish as it pertains to the vaccines? >> ultimately, i am hoping what's going to come of this is that we will have a national guideline, a national plan for

service. service. we have seen young leaders recruited and now running the show so beautifully on these test sites across the country that there is a great will to serve. and once young people serve, it never comes out of their cells. and this service can, you know, parlay off into climate issues, forestry, elderly care. there are so many avenues and so many avenues that opening up in terms of gaps, what we'll find now that the vaccines are coming online, we are going to be looking to, you know, if we can participate in that, we have got our hand up to volunteer to do that. we can -- our kind of mega site model as well as our mobile sites are able to get to, per site at this stage, easily 1,500 vaccines per day, you know, implementing and administering about three minutes per patient. so we're -- we have been able to identify the zip codes in the

areas of operations where we work that get to people where we have 30 to 50% who are uninsured. we are coming up against a c.a.r.e.s. act expiration december 31st that could really knock us out of the game. so we need a lot of continued private support while we try to keep the feet to the fire of government organizations and appropriations. but we, you know, we do know we have learned over the last ten months how to accomplish these things. millions of people that we have been able to offer free testing to, i think that overall the global part of it for me is that we cannot, in the best of times, rely on governance alone. >> sean, you mentioned the millions of free tests you all have administered through core. the number is 3.5 million, which is astounding that you guys

alone have been able to do to supplement the other testing across the country. for people who don't know, core started about a decade ago with the earthquake in haiti where you rushed in and created an organization and an infrastructure that could do things like it's doing right now. so how do you describe sort of the ethos of that organization, of core, and how it applies here to a global pandemic? >> we have found that public health offices work at a rate like a freighter, that you need about 22 miles to make a turn, and what our ethos has been is really, if there is a kid in the middle of the street, and there is a truck coming, it's going to hit the kid, you've got to get that kid off the street and on to the sidewalk. that's the first thing. that's the kind of thinking of emergency response. my concern is that there is going to be too much caution within the organizations that are currently tasked to do the work and that you will have a lot of think tanks and that the

epidemic will continue, and again without the c.a.r.e.s. money, you are going to have problems that extend beyond the virus itself into the economic impact. >> as sean says, there are some problems that are too big for government and you guys sort of step into the void as an organization that can help and supplement. so how does that work as a logistical question? you have the federal government. you have state and local governments doing their best to test, doing their best to administer vaccines. how do you find yourself fitting into that puzzle? where do you begin? >> i think, essentially, it's a sandwich approach. we need some things coming from the top down, from federal to state to county, but we also need to have that bottom-up approach. and that's where the community comes in. i think what's been so unique about our testing is that we are accessing communities of color who do not have access to these testing, to the tests for free.

because of our relationships, because we are hiring from the communities and the communities themselves are testing each other, essentially we have a relationship of trust that has been built up over time that has on-the-ground real sort of operationalization that is needed. so it's a top-down and bottom-up approach. we provide the bottom-up approach hand in hand with the local and federal government. >> mike barnicle has a question for you, sean. >> sean, in this extraordinary health crisis, the worst to confront the united states, the existing federal government has met the health crisis largely with incompetence and denial. and with regard to your operation in los angeles and elsewhere, but specifically in los angeles, i think i wasn't alone in being struck by the aerial photo of all of the cars lined up at dodgers stadium. so my question to you is, with

all of that going on, the future of c.o.r.e. and of this country, national service for a year, the country would be much better off. how would you implement this? that's one question. and the second part of it is, who were distributing the shots at dodgers stadium and elsewhere? were they volunteers, paid workers? who were they? >> yeah, let me be clear that at this moment what you are referring to is the shots were in fact oral swabs on the testing. but you're right that we want to move into the injections of the vaccination and we have the logistics in place to be able to do that if we are called upon to do it or if those running that show see our hand raised to help. what happened is that very early on, you know, all peace corps workers had been recalled from

deployments around the world by the president. that not to come and serve, not with any encouragement to come and serve, but simply to pull them away in a kind of continued nationalism. that allowed them to come onboard with us. we began our recruitment with the peace corps. we have had a front row seat to see that there is great will among young people to serve. it's simple to train them up quite quickly. they become very dedicated to their work quite quickly. their leadership skills build quite quickly. all these people are hired in the area we work. it's all local people. we don't parachute in and say we are the man and we can do this.

the silver lining of this for me as a 60-year-old man of privilege in this country, building that into young people once they have seen that they can make a difference as they do on our sites. it becomes a cellular memory, and when you see that you can be of use, i don't think that goes out of your system and you build a stronger citizenry. so we're homing, you know, immediately, our hope is to join the effort to get americans bac vaccinated, but ultimately our hope is to take this experience and to, whether independent or with the government, move towards a culture of service at a young age that solidifies citizenship. >> i love that. sean penn and ann lee, thank you both. and the idea of service is not just helping others. it will help the very young people who are participating in that service, which we need. they are struggling in these

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we welcome the bee gees! >> once again, the fabulous bee gees! ♪ >> the most exciting sound in the world. ♪ >> the biggest in the history of music. ♪ >> it has the enormous success, has it changed your life? >> i was cleaning my shoes. >> a look at the new hbo documentary "the bee gees:"how can you mend a broken heart"?" the film's director frank marshall, great to have you on the show with us today. >> good morning, nice to be here. thanks. >> you know, frank, i saw the

documentary friday night. >> we both did. it was amazing. >> we both did and it was amazing. i was sort of a rock snob, and at that point in my life i was listening to three things. the beatles, the beatles'olo albums and beetle bootlegs. i did not appreciate the bee gees dominating everything. i wi i will tell you the further i got away from it, and after watching your documentary, it confirmed what i really knew all along. they were extraordinary, gifted song writers, first of all. but what you showed us was how they really changed the history of music by what they experimented with inside the studio. they were just a one-of-a kind musical force. >> yeah, i think what's fo important to understand, even myself, i thought they were kind of lightweights back then, and it turns out they are really heavyweights.

and they are really gifted. it was their songwriting that touched everybody, and their ability to reinvent themselves when they ran into these challenges and the ups and downs of being a pop superstar. >> well, and you really saw through this, that they were an artist in the greatest sense of the world, like lennon and mccartney, like jagger and richards, and also, you know, we could say like burt bacharach. great song writers like that because they had their first phase. they broke up. then they came back. they had their second phase. then they came out with joe thuney jive talking." i remember buying the single. what's going on here? then "nights on broadway." as mccartney always said, some of the most remarkable things he ever did in the studio happened by accident. here "nights on broadway," barry

starts this crazy falsetto and everybody is blown away, going, oh my god, what lu doing? and music literally changes at that moment, pop music. >> yeah, he had no idea he could do it. and his producer asked him, can you do something at the end, you know, to take us out? and he tried this falsetto and he changed music, as you said. >> so let's hear that part of the documentary that you guys were just discussing. discovering the falsetto. let's take a look. >> it became another icon of the gibbs. everybody knew when you heard that falsetto, that's the bee gees. ♪ ♪ you know how easy it is to hurt me ♪ >> when we sing songs like -- ♪ you know how easy it is to

hurt me ♪ >> they mesh together so well, it sounds like one voice, but it's a different voice from them separately. ♪ you know how easy it is to hurt me ♪ >> it's delivered with such delicacy and the message in the lyrics was what guys should say, didn't say, couldn't say, for whatever reasons. it's the kind of music you might have thought of giving to your girlfriend, but that's what was special about them. ♪ >> it became a turning point for us. >> dennis brian on drums and blue weaver and alan kendall, that became our band. ♪ ♪

>> one of the best qualities was adaptability. in many ways, they were chameleons of pop. >> the way they changed and the groove they got into there was so profound. if that was something that was initiated by me, i can't think of -- one of the great things i have done in my life. i will take full credit. >> clapton takes more credit, of course. he gets them down to miami. of course, any rock fan knows about, you know, his -- the place he went in miami to clean up, and he basically told them, hey, i was at the end of my career and then i went to this place in miami and everything changed. you y you guys should do it, too. that's exactly what they ask, frank. talk about miami, because clapton really does play a big part in this story of sort of refocusing them and saying get

down there, get away from everything, find yourselves again. >> yeah, it's kind of amazing, the sort of spontaneity, serendipity of all of this. it's not planned. somebody makes a suggestion. they were hanging out together. they were both at rso records under stigwood. and eric said, you know, i found myself at this 4720 ocean boulevard, which is the cover of his album. you ought to go over there. america is great. you might have some, you know, discover something new there. and so they all moved there. and then, you know, magic happened. and it was that ability to adapt and be flexible and just catch that, whatever that wave was, of creativity, and then they recorded main course and they were off and running again. >> so, frank, i am curious.

they were on top of the world, obviously, in 1977 with ""saturday night fever."" no one was bigger in that moment. the fall came pretty quickly. two years later disco demolition night at comiskey park, fans start a riot burning records. they got swept up in that. they were popular, and then all of a sudden it was gone. >> yeah, actually, they were swept up by changing social times and changing political times and it really wasn't their fault. they weren't a disco band. and they were kind of mad about that and frustrated and confused by what was happening. i mean, they were selling billions of albums and still, you know, on that front wave of super pop stardom that nobody had had at that time, the globalness of it all, it was

something that took them by surprise and they thought everybody would love them forever, and they found out it wasn't true. >> boy, it crashed really quickly. and one thing that barry gibbs said in that documentary, or in an interview, mike, where he defiantly turned to the tv camera and said, hey, we're not disco. i mean, they kept saying -- and they really weren't. they were really their own music form. but the backlash was so bad. and also there was part where radio stations, you know, when "saturday night fever" came out, you know, deejays were by that point very constricted in what they could play. you know, they have to get five bee gee songs into a rotation in an hour and there is a natural backlash to that after some point. >> well, you know, joe, the thing that struck me the most about watching the documentary, and it's great, it's entertaining and it's educational as well, is the span

of eras that the bee gees covered. it had not occurred to me that their careers and their performances stretched out over so much time. and, frank, at one point barry gibbs says in the doc, we didn't always connect, but we stayed around, and they certainly did stay around. they are still around. we are talking about them. but the interconnection between the brothers, the strive between the brothers, the addness of the bee gees, that's also part of the soul of this documentary. >> yeah, i thought it was really important to explore what kept them together. and i think it's really family. they had a loving family. they had a dream when they were kids in australia. their parents supported them. you know, when you look at the miami years, you see 50 people in that shot. it's all the families. they had their own families by then. but mom and dad were there. and when you think about it, you

know, brothers have ups and downs in life. and that's what, you know, broke them up and also kept them together. >> so when they had to gather around the christmas tree every year, they realized, they realie something, and we were more together than we are apart. and i think that love and that family commitment kept them together and they overcame those obstacles that were there in those five decades. it is incredible the fact that that longevity that they had over five decades and the impact it had on pop music. >> let's talk about miami and the studio, criteria studio but also the inspiration for a song that really changed their sound that you talk about in the clip. let's run it.

>> driving backwards and forwards, this clickety click thing going on and this bridge, every time they crossed over it. in my head it sounded like -- and it was gone. and eventually, i started singing to it in my head. i remember going in the studio. the chicken picking. i didn't know what it was. i played this one note and it sounded like a chicken. mixed with barry, it really worked. ♪ ♪ >> at that time, a handful of r&b artists were using

synthesizers so we went into this field pioneering in a way. >> it really was -- >> amazing. >> -- a completely new sound. i was explaining on twitter this weekend what a nerd i was. i'd stay inside on saturdays and listen to casey kasem and write down the top 40. it was an obsession and my family thought i was crazy, and they were right. i remember him introducing "jive talking" one week and say, talk about a new sound. this is when you can tell disco is big when the bee gees are getting involved. just a couple years later, one of the most extraordinary, really stories in pop music history, "saturday night fever" now that came about. and a couple of things i didn't understand about that era. one was the loop, how they created the loop when they lost the drummer to a family sickness, which is amazing story

of "stayin alive." but the second, stigwood needed songs. they send him a demo tape with five pop classics. a demo tape. talk about that moment because i don't know anybody that would get a demo tape of "stayin alive" and "night fever" and "how deep is your love" and all the others and not just be blown away. that is gold. >> i know. i actually was offended because, you know, when i found out that barry didn't even read the script, i thought, wow, how did you do that? it turns out they were in the chateau in france, outside of paris, and they were creating a new album and had these five songs in the drawer. and when stigwood called them and said, i need songs for a movie i'm doing, they just chose not to read the script and just delivered those songs to bill

oaks at the label and he went, oh, my gosh, i have a soundtrack. and those are five songs that ended up in the top ten for months. just incredible. >> yeah. and finally, the title of the documentary "how can you mend a broken heart." a bittersweet title. sweet because it was a huge hit in the early '70s for them but bitter because of that moment at the end when barry is talking and saying what he would give -- what he would give to have his brothers back with him. >> yeah, i -- i think the title of the movie really is two themes. one, it was the very first time that they mended their breakup when barry invited robin back and asked him to sing the first verse and how can you mend a broken heart was born and the bee gees were back.

but for me, it really means that i'm hoping that talking about it and getting and -- getting out and celebrating the legacy of the bee gees is something that will mend barry's broken heart because he does miss his brothers, and i am hoping that he's back. now the music will last forever, and as you see in the end credits, he's been out performing. he was at glastonbury and feeling that love. i'm hoping it accomplishes both things. >> and at the end, mika, we saw the moving moment where he said he would give everything back, every song, every single, everything just to be with his brothers again. >> the new documentary "the bee gees: how can you mend a broken heart" is available now on demand. frank marshall, thank you so much for coming on the show this morning. and that does it for us this morning. stephanie ruhle picks up the coverage after a quick break.

♪ ♪ stayin alive ♪ stayin alive if you think about, ha, ha, ha. their voices are so sick. they're like, no, we're going to sing it. ♪

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hi there. i'm stephanie ruhle live from msnbc headquarters in new york city. it's tuesday, december 22nd. right now, relief is in motion on multiple fronts so let's get smarter. that relief did not happen until just before midnight, but it did finally happen. the senate passing that massive stimulus bill just hours before it made it through the -- just hours after it made it through the house. now it's on its way to president trump's desk. he's expected to sign it within hours. treasury secretary steve mnuchin says $600 stimulus checks could start landing in bank accounts as soon as next week. at the very same time, the vaccine continues to make its way to medical sites nationwide. on monday, roughly 6 million doses of moderna's vaccine