there's always hope and there's always help. we just have to reach out. that's the first step to getting out of the sorrow, out of the sadness, out of the pain that we're in. good morning, and welcome back to a special prerecorded edition of "morning joe." in just a few weeks from now, joe biden will take the oath of office on the steps of the u.s. capitol where he served in the senate for decades. we spoke about the president-elect's past and future jobs with historians doris kerns good win who chronicled another president lyndon b. johnson. >> what can biden take away and learn from lbj's legacy? >> you know, there's no question that lbj was a man of the congress as biden has been and

learning how to deal with those individual congressmen and senators, i think there's no better person than lbj. and just think, after that inaugural oath that he took, he we want to a joint session of congress and he made very clear that his absolute first priority was the passage of the civil rights bill that kennedy had introduced that summer. it was totally stuck. nobody thought it was ever begog to get out of the house and senate. he made a pledge this will be my first priority. his adviserin s said it's crazy. you shouldn't use the currency of the presidency for this. and he said then what the hell is the presidency for. he had individual congressmen over in groups of 30. they'd come with their spouses. the spouses would go on a tour after dinner of the white house, and then they'd have port and brandy, and then he'd start calling them the next day. every single congressman had been to the white house and you could tell your constituents i was at a white house social function. this would be so natural for joe.

he starts calling them at 6:00, he calls them at noon. he calls them at midnight. he even called a senator at 2:00 a.m. hope i didn't wake you up, no, the president said i was just lying here hoping my president would call. he made deelts wials with each them. these are the days before transparency, you want a judgeship, you want an ambassadorship, he mostly understood dirksen wanted to be remembered. he said everett if you bring some republicans, they have to break the filibuster because the democratic party is split in two. you bring some republicans and 200 years from now school children will know only two names, abraham lincoln, they get that filibuster broken and the bill to end segregation comes to the floor. i think just looking at all the ways johnson understood the congress, which i think joe biden will too, can give him some leverage in moments to pick off different senators or congressmen even if those seats are not gotten in georgia.

>> doris, over the last couple of weeks as we've discussed, the relationship that joe biden has with a lot of members of the senate including with mitch mcconnell have said personal politics don't matter the way they used to, that we're too polarized, that the senate is too partisan. obviously with lbj we're talking about the 1960s. joe always talks about in the '90s you could vote to impeach bill clinton one day and the next day he's calling to play golf. you come over and talk about what the next big challenge is. do you think things are that much different today in terms of personal relationships and personal politics that will be that much more difficult for joe biden? >> there's no question that it will be more difficult. i think that has to be faced clearly. one of the differences is in the '50s and the '60s you had like 75% of the congressmen and senators were veterans, they knew what it was like to have a common mission, to organize around that went across party, class lines. that's not as true today. nonetheless, unless you start

out with the hope somehow that you're going to be able to make a difference and maybe by meeting with these characters, talking with them and calling them up, maybe the rhetoric will be ramped down a little bit, and that will set an example for the country. you have to go on a thought that it's going to make difference, and you do what you can. i think if anyone can do it it is because biden's had these years of experience. he knows when it worked and it's almost like a fever. the fever can only break if you believe you can start doing some action toward it. fdr used to say problems created by man can be solved by man. this problem has been created by this congress and the way they've dealt with each other, and it's got to break at some point. i think this is possibly the man for the moment to help make it break. >> and claire, the most obvious difference right now is that most of those senators, republicans haven't even acknowledged that joe biden hasn't won the election, won't publicly call him president-elect even though as joe biden and reporters have told us they're calling him privately to offer their congratulations. >> there's no question that joe biden is going to be better at

this part of the job than obviously donald trump or even barack obama. keep in mind that donald trump has not even laid eyes on nancy pelosi now for months on end. there has been no interaction whatsoever. i do believe that joe biden will work very hard at reaching out to republicans in congress, and there's nothing a senator loves more than attention. so joe biden will give the republican senators a lot of attention, but one thing has happened in the senate since joe biden left. i was there when joe biden was there. i was there after joe biden left, and now mitch mcconnell has trained his caucus and to some extent this applies to both parties, to let the leadership have way more power than they used to have in the old days. committee chairs don't have the power they used to have because mitch mcconnell writes the legislation in his office and then puts it on the floor. so doris, seeing how the senate

has really gotten stuck this a procedural morass where they don't debate bills anymore, do you think joe can still work around that? >> you've put your finger on exactly the problem. there was a problem like that lyndon johnson faced in the house where judge smith was the leader, a congressional guy from the south, there was no way he was going to let it out of the rules committee, so they had to take it out with a discharge petition. so i guess the question is you got to figure out what the rules are. are there any way that individual congressmen and individual senators can begin to take back that power, and maybe that's what you're going to have to deal with. you're right. we've got back to a situation as we were in in the '60s, we got out of it and now we're back in it right now. even so, you know somehow you've got to believe that if you deal with individual congressmen and senators -- and that's what lbj did by having every single one of them over there -- that

somehow you're building a force that on individual bills, it may not be on the big bills, look what happened with the defense department bill that was able to of have a majority that would override the president. does it show that when you've got a bill that has to be passed finally these people are going to be able to go along, maybe infrastructure, broadband expansion will be one of those bills and you've got to figure out where are we going to be able to get through those majorities. you have to believe that. it's interesting just thinking about the production problem with the vaccine right now. early on in the early days of world war ii, fdr just decided i'm going to set targets like joe biden did yesterday, and the targets seemed huge. he said i'm going to have 50,000 planes in this first year. people said you can't do it. the american people like a target, and then we were able to produce unimaginably -- and i keep hoping can we do that again today, a plane every four minutes, a tank every seven minute, a ship every single day. if we could do that then and get

this mobilization of the vaccine distribution, i just believe in the productive power of the country and somehow we've got to set that in motion, whether with the defense production act or getting everybody together. this is the key thing that we have to do in these next months. >> doris, your friend mike barnicle is here with a question. >> and we did it. >> that's right. we've done big things. mike. >> doris, joe biden is going to confront two viruses when he takes office in january 20th, one of the viruses is hope because there's a vaccine on the horizon. the other virus has been implanted in our culture, our political culture certainly by the existing incumbent president of the united states, and it's the virus of illegitimacy, the election was rigged, that joe biden is not the duly elected president of the united states. now, i don't know me, my meager understanding of history compared to yours, i don't think we can rival -- find anything to rival this situation in our history. maybe abraham lincoln in 1860,

but you tell me. >> i think you're right about maybe abraham lincoln in 1860. first of all, the transition period then was from november until march, and during that period of time seven states seceded from the union. nothing was done by buchanan to help them have any kind of sanction. he comes in and said those first 90 days he wasn't even thought he could live through it, there was such anxiety. essentially what happens with abraham lincoln is that the south loses the election. the democrats lose. the republicans win and because they lose they secede. and he said this is when popular government will be an absurdity that's an extreme version and it took a war with 600,000 people to be killed to solve that and it took an abraham lincoln. we've faced a situation before where there was an illegitimacy of an election and it led to a

succession of a union. we're not seeing that right now. and i just still have a feeling and maybe it's my optimistic temperament that when the power is gone, and it will still be out there as a potential run for 2024, it's not the same as being in the white house, that you'll begin to see some break in those republicans in washington with this president who does have power. so we got to hope. >> doris, eddie glaude has a question for you. eddie. >> it's great to see you this morning. i have a -- >> you can't call me professor kearns, that's old stuff. i was a professor a long time ago. >> well, we want to continue to recognize that, but beyond the mechanics of congress dealing with that, there are these forces that surround president-elect biden and vice president-le president-elect harris to kind of force them to tinker around the edges to not in some way

imagine at the scale of the problems that we face as a country. in your studies of presidential leadership, how did lbj just stand on his square and say this is what i'm going to do, or fdr, this is what i'm going to do. in other words, how did they muster the courage to respond at scale to the scale of the problems the country faced? >> yeah, i think that's one of the most important qualities of leadership right now. there has to be a boldness. there has to be a line of demarcation between the previous president and the new president coming in and you have to challenge the people, and you just have to be willing to know that you may not meet that challenge, but if you don't put the challenge forward, then there's no chance of doing it. i mean, it was a huge thing, as i said, for lbj to take that risk that he was making civil rights his priority. if the bill had failed and right before jfk died, every prognosis said there's no way that bill will get out of the senate. there will be a filibuster, you're not going to break it. if it had failed he would have gone before the election as a failed president.

as he said, what the hell is the presidency for then than to try for that. if you think of the boldness of what fdr did in the new deal, he came in right away in the 100 days. first he was fixing the banking crisis only, then he saw that was fixed. he said, hey, i think i'll keep this congress in session and then he kept it in session for another 100 days. it changed fundamentally the system of the country. it started off with just getting people work. then they started having systemic reform, regulate the stock market, the fcc, things that he said were going to cure the old abuses that had caused problem in the first place. i think in the end you've got to deal with the immediate problem. the immediate problem is the virus. the immediate problem was the banking crisis. then you've got to hope for systemic reform, which is what this country needs, and we know it needs it. up next, examining what joe biden can learn from president ronald reagan, that conversation is next on "morning joe." ♪ run payroll in less

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december 7th, 1941, a date which will live in infamy. the united states of america was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the empire of japan. no matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the american people and their righteous might will win through to absolute victory. [ applause ] >> that was president roosevelt addressing congress a day after japan attacked pearl harbor on december 7th. 79 years ago today. joining us now presidential

biographer craig shirley among his many historical books is one on the pearl harbor attacks entitled "december 1941: 31 days that changed america and saved the world." also with us historian and roger chair in the american presidency at vanderbilt university jon meacham who unofficially advises president-elect joe biden and president of the council of foreign relations, richard haass is back with us as well. >> jon meacham unofficially advises joe biden, and he also wins pulitzer prizes in his pastime. so jon meacham, let's begin with you. we've been looking through the eyes of other presidents give advice to joe biden through their stories, their lives, and what lessons they learned, but let's talk about this event that we remember today.

that is of course the bombing of pearl harbor in 1941. what can joe biden take away from fdr and this incredibly important chapter in america's history? >> well, i think the first thing is that presidents never quite know what's coming at them. history happens. that's why it's history and not an absolutely predictable series of events. you know, fdr had two of the great crises of american history on his watch. the first the crisis of capitalism, and then the crisis of fascism abroad and the future of democratic institutions, lower case d, around the world. the other is roosevelt had a remarkable capacity to lead what was even then two americas.

there was an isolationist america, isolationist sentiment was incredibly strong. today is the day that pushed america. this is a very important point. america did not decide, you know what? we're going to go save the world for liberty. we were attacked on this day by japan, and then it took us five days as craig knows well to declare war on nazi germany, which we only did after hitler declared war on us, and so arthur slazinger talked about how isolationist versus interventionism in the late '30s and '40s was as divisive as vietnam, and i would argue perhaps even more so. we're divided this that way, in so you have to find a way to talk to both of those

constituencies while you try to crystallize. >> and craig shirley you wrote the book, obviously, on pearl harbor. tell us what the incoming president can learn from the lessons of those 31 remarkable days. >> the presidency is ultimately about big ideas. it's about big initiatives. it's about leadership, and on leadership you cannot lead a divided country very well. you must have unity, and so when you become president you have to forget about your base. yes, you're still an ideological, political man or woman in the future sometime, but you also have to speak to and lead all the american people, and fdr knew that innately and so did ronald reagan. ronald reagan had been a democrat longer when he was elected in -- he had been a democrat longer than a republican. that's what produced the reagan democrat because he made cultural appeals to democrats, democrats in the cities.

but he knew that a president can't just lead from his base. he has to lead from a sizable majority of the american people, and if you look at the history of the american presidency, the most successful presidents led for a majority of the american people, not just their base. >> yeah, and richard haass, what makes today so different is the war that we're facing right now. i mean, it is a common enemy. everybody is challenged by and threatened by the coronavirus, and yet the nation is so divided about it. >> craig and john correctly pointed out a certain reluctance in american history to go to war. i also think there's two other lessons that joe biden ought to take from today. one is the risk of preventative strikes. japan won the battle that day, but japan lost the war that day as well. what it did was rather than sap american morale, it actually brought americans together, generated enormous war effort. so it's a real lesson that

preventive attacks, it's easy to start wars than it is to finish them. the other is one on us, which is the danger of assumptions and intelligence and almost like the way israel got attacked in 1973 by the arabs, they weren't looking for, we had dismissed a lot of things there. it's a real lesson whether it's pandemics or in this case a military attack to question your own assumptions. just because you're not looking for something, doesn't mean it's not going to happen. >> let's talk, jon meacham about andrew jackson briefly. the book for which you won the pulitzer prize. you wrote that during the bush era. there were certainly some parallels there that you brought out effectively. what's the big takeaway from andrew jackson's eight years in the white house that joe biden can learn from? >> i think a relentless focus on what jackson called the plain

working people, it's a slight paraphrase from the bank veto message, but jackson understood that the country had an innate -- and it was pretty innate because we were only a half century old at that point -- distrust of elites. the idea that the haves and the have nots that drama was an am beye ambient one for jackson. he convinced a significant majority of white people in that era that he was their champion, against the congress, against the bank of the united states, against the slave -- the south carolina interests that was trying to nullify federal laws, against all of these forces he was their champion, and i think that repeating that message as

long as you possibly can and as frequently as you can is essential. jackson understood that, in fact, the presidency was the one point in the system where all eyes could tun, and so he understood that. he used it. tr gets the credit for the bully pulpit but jackson understood that intuitively. >> and craig shirley, obviously you're a prolific historian on all things ronald reagan. what message does ronald reagan teach joe biden? >> read your mail. that was the one unspoken piece of history about ronald reagan or under reported piece of history is that he assiduously read his mail, not all of it because he got thousands of pieces of mail on a monthly basis, a daily, a weekly basis. he would get, his secretary would pick out three or four letters from the hate pile, three or four letters from the

love pile and three or four letters from the hurting pile, and he would read all of them. this was his way of getting past the washington elites the way jackson wanted to get past the elites and reach the american people and see what was on their minds and what was going on in their lives. and often he wrote letters to them, private letters, personal letters, you know, offering advice, offering solace, giving, you know whatever he can. sometimes he sent checks to people who were hurting. one time he sent a check to a woman and she didn't cash it for a month, and finally he called her. he was balancing his checkbook in the white house, and he called her. she was living in indiana, and he said why didn't you cash my check. he said mr. president when i took it to my bank and they said yes, this is the signature of the president of the united states, i wanted to keep it as a souvenir. reagan said listen, i'll tell you what, i'm going to send you a second check, but don't cash both of them. >> that's funny. >> finally, richard haass on

this pearl harbor day, we're certainly hearing ominous warnings on many fronts about china's growth, their military expansion, how do we approach china over the next four years. how does joe biden approach china in a balanced way over the next four years? >> joe, it will be extraordinarily difficult because we're going to have to figure out how we push back against china in a way that hopefully doesn't lead to escalation and in a manner that doesn't preclude cooperation say on climate change or dealing with north korea where it's still in our interests. it will be a real test of statecraft, of foreign policy to get this balance right. one thing, though, is we shouldn't be doing it alone. we've got all these partners and allies in asia and europe. let's take advantage of them. let's approach china collectively rather than making

it a bilateral competition. i think we've got a much better chance there, and lastly, there's some things we've got to do for ourselves. we've got improve american competitiveness. that's about immigration policy. it's about all the things we do to deal with covid to get our economy going. if we free ourselves up to compete with china, we can do just fine. >> all right. jon meacham, craig shirley and richard haass, thank you all so much for being with us. up next, michael ian black is taking on a new role not as an actor, but as an author. what's behind his mostly serious letter to his son next on "morning joe."

joining us now is comedian, actor and writer michael ian black, the author of a new book

"a better man: a mostly serious letter to my son" and ceo of the robinhood foundation, best selling author, u.s. army combat veteran, wes moore. michael, good morning, good to see you. you write in this book, which i think is so important and so go good, traditional masculinity encourages strength, independence, fortitude, all good qualities. at the same time it provides no useful outlets for our as a r e vulnerabilities how are we supposed to experience wonder, fear, tenderness. if we cannot turn to others for help, what do we do with bewilderment and frustration, how do we even express something as elemental as joy? so let's start at the beginning of this. you're a father, michael. had is this is a letter to your son elijah. when you sat down to write this, what did you want to say, and what compelled you to say it? >> i wanted to answer a question -- and good morning,

willie -- i wanted to answer a question that i had been seeking for my whole life from my own dad. what does it mean to be a man? my dad died when i was young. we never had that conversation, and i found myself kind of wondering it my whole life and feeling like constantly questioning like was i being a man? was my -- the way i expressed my manhood the right way to do it? i think a lot of guys feel that way. my son was going off to college, and i wanted to give him something to take with him, something that maybe could relay those own questions he may have about masculinity to rest in his head. >> there are all these things in the book that you lay out that are a part of we've been told of being a man, it's power, it's conquest. as you write in the book, it's down to the clothes you wear and the car you drive and the sports you watch and the things you talk about, and the way we acknowledge each other in an elevator as you write in the

book. what do you tell elijah about all those cues we get from the moment we're born through adu adulthood about what it means to be a man? are those okay? should those be changed? what do you say to them? >> i don't know that you can change them, but i think you can be aware of them and understand that that's what they are. you can understand that whether you drink coffee or tea doesn't make you any more or less of a man. the message that i have for him is however you are, however you express yourself, whatever it is that you want to be in this world is enough, and you are a man. you are enough of a man. you don't need to compare yourself. you don't need to challenge other men or feel challenged by other men. so much of the way we think of manhood is comparing ourselves to other guys and being like, is he more of a dude than i am. am i more of a dude than he is? it's ridiculous. these are kind of an knack

resistic notions we've takden f -- taken with us for years. >> wes, you look at some of the cues you get, what it means to be soft, to be kind, to cry, to be respectful to women. since i know you so well we try to instill in our kids as okay and important, we've learned, you learned as a young guy and i did too that those were kind of things that made you soft. >> and that is one of the things i really love about this frame, michael, is it's actually not just outdated. it's incorrect, and i think about it and your words in this book really hit me. i also when i was 4 years old, i watched my father die in front of me, and i would hear my mom talk about what it was like being a woman trying to raise a man and trying the best to understand what it means to raise a man in this climate, what it means to raise a black man in this climate.

the book is written from the perspective of a man. how would you recommend that for a single mom or a grandmother who's helping to raise her grandchild? what recommendations would you give to her as she's now having to go through the process in this case raising that boy into a man on her own? >> so i grew up in a lesbian household. my parents broke up when my mom came out of the closet shech. she got involved with another woman. i grew up in a very female dominated household, and it may be un-pc to say because i support women raising their kids. i mean, i just do, but i do think it's important, i needed to have a male role model in my life, and i didn't really have it. i needed to have somebody, a

teacher, a coach, maybe somebody in the clergy, somebody that i felt like i could look to and talk to about these questions. it was frustrating for me that i didn't. women do an amazing job with their kids, with their sons, and if they don't have that in their lives i would say for all parents, what you want to do is model the behavior that you want to see. that's not gender specific, i don't think, but if you want to raise a strong child and i think we all do, be strong. but one of the ways that we show our strengths is to be vulnerable. and i think it's not only acceptable, but you should show your vulnerability as a parent. you should show that you're not infallible. you should apologize to your children when you've done wrong. how else can you expect an apology from them? i think modeling regardless of whether you're a female head of

household or a male head of household is the best way to move forward. be the person you want them to be. >> michael, i love this for a number of reasons including because i think in many ways there's a focus on women and young girls and developing their confidence and growing up in a man's world and sometimes we leave boys and men out of the conversation, which is just as unproductive, so it's a wonderful, wonderful book. you tweeted about an excerpt of where are book that describes the, quote, real man and how it explains much of trumpism. the real man is beset by enemies always. always there are others out there threatening destroy him, to destroy his family, to take everything. it's a bleak way to go through life. here we men are supposedly strong, yet not strong enough to tell the truth. tell us more about trumpism and that sort of fallacy of the real

man. >> one of the ways we think about traditional masculinity is through the prism of strengths, and we as men are encouraged to build a kind of suit of armor around ourselves to protect ourselves from essentially other men. what it ends up doing is trapping ourselves in a suit of armor. we're immune from expressing empathy, from the freedom to express love in some cases, and that armor that we see in so many guys is a kind of -- it's like -- you end up in a tank bursts throu ing through the wod i think trump is a really good example of that. he's so wrapped up in his own suit of armor, so kind of terrified to let anybody in that he's incapable of etmpathy.

he's incapable of understanding what other people are going through. if he wasn't as powerful as he is, he would be such a tragic figure because he seems like so incapable of feeling comfortable in his own skin, and i think so much of that is bundled up in these antiquated ideas of masculini masculinity. >> the new book is "the better man." i think it's going to be a must read for many families. congratulations on the book and thank you so much for being here today. we appreciate it. >> thank you so much for having me. >> we will be right back with more "morning joe." h more "morning joe. so you want to make the best burger ever? then make it!

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♪ joining us now author and u.s. marine corps veteran john chick donohue. his new book is about a crazy but true vietnam war story. it's entitled "the greatest beer run ever: a memoir of friendship, loyalty and war" and

the book is being adapted into a film written and directed by oscar winner peter farrelly. very good to have you on the show, chick. first of all, tell us about that beer run and the book. >> the beer run, it was an idea, it was back in '67. it was similar today in the way of the political split of the country. they were demonstrating against the troops over there. i lived in a neighborhood in northern manhattan called ind wit. we had buried 26 young guys from the neighborhood by then, and we were very supportive of our troops. it was terrible to be watching tv and seeing in our city, central park to be exact carrying vietnam flags and everything, and the bartender noted that the guys over there must be disgusted seeing this on tv as if they were sitting at the pub watching it. anyway, that started it. and he suggested somebody should go over there bring them all a beer and let them know we're not like them people in central park, that we support them and slap them on the back. tell them we love them and all

of that. so i volunteered. he got me some addresses. half a dozen to be exact, and the next day i headed down to the union hall, got a ship. the ship was the s.s. drake victory from leonardo, new jerse jersey. took me down through the panama canal across the pacific, landed about six or eight weeks later. i don't remember the exact dates and i started looking for in alphabetical order, tommy collins, rickie dugan that very day. a couple of days later i found dugan. in between i actually ran into kevin, i delivered beer to them. we had a beer. we had a laugh, they were in shock to see that somebody could get as far as i did. i never thought i'd get to see them at all. i thought i couldn't get out of the port area, but by the third day i was up on the dmz with the first air in an ambush post outside of the perimeter they

just had set up that morning, and then i realized that this was kind of stupid and crazy. >> now, you are in country, you're in vietnam during the height of the tet offensive and you take a plane, you hop a plane, a transport, a resupply plane into one of the most dangerous places on earth at that point in time. i believe you were trying to find rickie dugan who grew up in the same house as you did as a kid, and you find him in cay san. tell me about how you jumped the transport plane, what your thoughts were where you landed, where the planes never stood in the runway, they took right off again. tell us about that one. >> actually, mike, by the time i got to dugan, i realized i was in civilian clothes, actually dungarees and a plaid shirt. collins describes it as i'm looking to go play golf or something, and i obviously was a civilian surrounded by nothing but military, and then i

realized after a while the further i got in country the less i got stopped. there was more security in the port than out in the field. when dugan saw me, he said chickie, my god, what the hell are you doing here? i said i come over to see you. no, really, he says, who are you with? we're out in the field. i said who am i with? i'm with you. that's it. and the sergeant said i don't know who he's supposed to be with, but you got him. take him with you. i can't explain him. so i went out to the ambush post, and it was that night i realized they came up and there was some firing and pop pop pop pop pop, and i'll never forget it. he said, chickie if we get overrun, lines are back there. see those fields. we got to go across those fields. don't worry i'll go with you. we get overrun, i came over here to deliver beer. >> you come back and spend the

rest of your life sitting in a tavern in inwood in queens telling these stories to people who they thought they were great stories but who could ever believe those stories, chick. >> the big thing was i'm telling the i'm a storyteller. but i couldn't call up dugan, i couldn't call up collins. i couldn't call pappas, one of the other guys i saw and say i'm down here and i'm telling the story about when i arrived and we had the beer. can you come down and explain it to the guys, you know? so it was clear, like we all know it's, as you get older, none of our friends who saw combat are sitting in a pub telling war stories. they don't even tell their kids or their wives or their grandchildren. so i was -- these guys are still alive today. now they vouch for me. now they said, oh, yeah, he did

this and he did that. i couldn't call them then. they wouldn't dare come down. so i just had to button it up. so i figured before i'm going to leave this earth, i'm going to write a book, write it all down. it's going to be accurate because if i don't do that, somebody would be able to tell any story. >> and the book is "the greatest beer run ever: a memoir of friendship, loyalty and war." u.s. marine corps veteran john chick donahue, thank you for everything. and we'll be right back with much more "morning joe." trelegy for copd. ♪ birds flyin' high, you know how i feel. ♪ ♪ breeze drifting on by you know how i feel. ♪ ♪ it's a new dawn... if you've been taking copd sitting down, it's time to make a stand. start a new day with trelegy. no once-daily copd medicine has the power to treat copd in as many ways as trelegy.

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christmas ♪ ♪ i just wanna hide ♪ don't wanna wish you all a merry christmas while i'm dying inside ♪ ♪ oh, it's christmas it's christmastime ♪ ♪ i don't wanna go home for christmas ♪ ♪ i don't wannaa i'd like to wish you all a merry christmas but i don't think that i will ♪ ♪ oh, it's christmas it smells like christmastime ♪

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♪ because this christmas it's you and me ♪ ♪ because this christmas it's you and me ♪ >> and thank you for joining us this morning. stay with msnbc for all of your breaking news and political developments right here on msnbc. hi there, i'm yasmin vossoughian in for steph ruhle this morning. it is thursday, december 31st. here we are. one day left. this morning, as we get ready to turn the page on 2020 and thank god for that, these are the headlines americans are waking up to across this country, proving that the fight against the virus is far from over this morning. officials in california now confirming that the more contagious strain of the virus originally identified in the uk has, in fact, arrived in san diego county now. california now the second state to report this new covid variant. and then