people who believed the populist things with that they were saying, but they were crushed by donald trump in the primaries so i'm not clear how it will work going forward in 2024. i get we'll find out. thank you for getting up early with us. don't go anywhere. "morning joe" starts right now. if we can go over some of the numbers i think it's pretty clear that we won. we won very substantially in georgia. >> the reason i'm having to stand here today is because there are people in positions of authority and respect who have said their votes didn't count and it's not true. >> they are shredding ballots in my opinion based on what i have heard. >> is there no shredding of ballots going on. that's not real. it's not happening. >> brad, why did they put the vote in the three times? >> there was no problems with the machine scanning. if somebody scanned them multiple times you would have a

lot of votes with no corresponding ballots. >> it was stuffed with votes. they weren't in the official voter box. they were in what looked to be suitcases or trunks -- suitcases. but they weren't in voter boxes. >> there's videotape of this and this is what's really frustrating. the president's legal team had the entire tape, they watched the entire tape and from our point of view intentionally misled the people of the united states about this. when i listened to the audio of the phone call and the president brought that up again and i heard it on the radio ad again today, i wanted to scream. >> but have they -- have they moved the inner parts of the machines and replaced them with other parts? >> no. >> are you sure, ryan? >> i'm sure. i'm sure, mr. president. >> see, this is one i don't fully understand. no one is changing parts or pieces out of dominion machines.

i don't know what that means. >> right. top georgia election official gabriel sterling with that reality check yesterday for president trump. good morning and welcome to "morning joe." it is tuesday, january 5th. along with joe, willie and me, we have chief white house correspondent for "the new york times" peter baker. former u.s. senator now an msnbc news and nbc political analyst claire mccaskill and jim vandehei. it was painful to watch but had to be done, joe. republicans who seemed to be able to stand up to trump in a way that many others have not. to his face and to the camera. >> well, the thing is they're republicans, life long republicans, they support donald trump. they supported donald trump and they have been elected as -- >> but they also support facts. >> as officials of donald trump

and we are actually starting to see a split finally in the republican party between those who are willing to actually work to engage in the president's attempt at sedition against the united states of america and undermining american democracy and those republicans, some in the senate who would go up to the line, but pull back at the last second decided that maybe, just maybe sedition and treason against the united states may not be a good way to finish out the term. but willie, the president's -- >> my god. >> the president's claims are beyond outrageous. he's picked them up from the sewers of the internet and he passes them off as fact when josh hawley knows that they're lies. ted cruz knows they're lies. ron johnson, to be honest with you, ron johnson doesn't know

the difference between a microwave and a blender and his lawn mower so i don't we need to go into ron johnson, he gets confused easily. but most of those people -- most of those people know -- all of them know donald trump is lying. donald trump knows he's lying. >> they're lying. >> and yet, they are going to conduct a vote tomorrow where they're going to commit treason against the united states of america. sedition against the united states of america. trying to hold up and some overturn the popular will of how many people voted about 150 million americans. >> yeah. a little more than that. yeah. >> like nothing obviously that we have ever seen in this country since the civil war. >> yeah. i mean, those were the faces right there. it will happen tomorrow. >> put those faces up again. by the way, could we put those faces up again because these are the people who are voting to

help the president's attempt to commit treason against the united states of america. take a good long look at them. i'm sorry, willie, go ahead. >> last night, president trump in his appearance in georgia on the eve of this election that will determine control of the united states senate is recruiting publicly mike pence his own vice president saying, we hope he comes through on wednesday. now, mike pence has only a ceremoniual role when this electoral college vote takes place in the senate on wednesday but donald trump is recruiting him and asking him to do something more. he views him as a judge at a trial which is not how this works at all. you have the senator and the vice president all working together on this effort. it will fail because we know how this works, and they know it's going to be fail. they're sticking their necks out to participate in what you describe as sedition and it's hard to describe it any other way. >> to appease a crazy man.

>> to appease the president who as you just said, joe, he is plucking those theories -- we'll hear from our reporter ben collins, in a moment, from qanon. he's throwing terms out and theories out and very patiently the secretary of state of georgia, brad raffensberger and his attorney on that call are saying, no, mr. president, no, sir, that didn't happen. you can see the frustration from gabe sterling the elections official that we heard from coming into the show point by point refuting this in a state where the vote, joe, has been counted three times. three times in the state of georgia the vote has been counted and president trump at his rally last night asking people to go vote for two republicans in a place where he claims the vote was rigged previously. wow. >> and he also claims or at least one of his lawyers claimed that kelly loeffler was part of a conspiracy theory to rig the runoffs. >> yeah. >> to keep doug collins out and

the president even hinted at this in the tweet earlier. but claire mccaskill, i'm just wondering, i don't think i have been in public life since 1993 when i first started campaigning. i don't think in -- god, all that time, i don't think i have ever over a century said a politician was guilty of sedition or treason. i know that conservatives have always done that. i don't think i'm one of them. you know, there's a big 1960s book that conspiracy theorists on the right love called "none dare call it treason." i'm just curious you're an attorney, you're a prosecutor, former prosecutor. you're a senator. is it too harsh to accuse a president of the united states and those who are conspiring with him right now of committing sedition against the united

states of america? or committing treason against the united states of america, because you look at the federal statute, i mean look at michelle goldberg, she starts with a federal statute this morning and just look at the federal statute. it sure looks like this president is guilty of something and it sure seems like sedition to me. >> i think, joe, that we are so worn down by the behavior of this guy and his lies. i mean, think what he has done. he started lying early and often. and his supporters looked the other way and became numb to it and frankly all of us became somewhat numb to how often and robust his lies were. so he's taken the strategy and applied it to the election and he started to lie about the security of this election months ago.

so now because some of his followers believe these lies, that is is the little flimsy excuse which i believe is seditious for these elected senators to ignore the constitution. and you went through the list. i will tell you not only do the majority of these senators know better, not only do they know that this is a total stunt on his part, the other thing that's interesting about it to me is the schism this is causing within the republican party in the senate. i have talked to a lot of senators over the last week and i'll just tell you what is really interesting is seeing your senator froms a lot of these guys' states are voting in favor of the constitution. they're going to perform their ministerial duty. they know they have no power to overturn the states. they know what they guys are doing is not conservative, it's radical. it's extreme. it's anything but being a

constitutional conservative. so you see splits for the majority of these states and that is really unusual because usually two republican senators from a state kind of talk to each other and go the same way. especially if the senior senator is explaining that this is a dumb move. they're ignoring that advice from senior senators in these states. >> and you know, mika, i have been describing for four years -- actually for five years during the campaign, i said donald trump is no conservative. >> right. >> not even close. and i have been describing him for the past four years how these republicans are not conservative, how they are trashing constitutional norms, that they remain quiet while the president claims ultimate power under article 2 of the constitution and quiet while he racks up the biggest debt of all time. spending like a drunken sailor out of control, nothing

conservative about this guy. and now as one of the final acts as members of the united states senate, you're going to have self-proclaimed conservatives who again aren't conservative. they're radical. they're going to actually vote to have the federal government, to have the centralized state sweep in and override the decision of voters. override a local and state election officials. to do actually just the opposite of what we conservatives have always said we're for, which is deferring -- having the federal government do what the federal government has to do. but deferring to the state especially where the constitution suggests that we defer to the states. and elections are to be like handled by state legislators and

then we have the states certify the process. and then it goes to washington. i mean, you have josh hawley -- oh, no, it doesn't matter what the state legislators say. it doesn't matter what the local election officials say. it doesn't matter what the voters say. we in the centralized state, we in the centralized state are going to override the wisdom of their vote, the wisdom of the state legislators. the wisdom of the state election officials and yes, the wisdom of our founders who said elections were to be regulated on state level. but josh hawley is now going to sweep in and say, screw the constitution. screw the state legislators. screw the voters. we in the centralized state are going to determine what the law is.

we're going to determine what the law is because one person who's in the white house is telling us to do this. it is the most antidemocratic thing that any of us have seen since the civil war and josh hawley, you're in the middle of it. ted cruz, you're in the middle of it and all of those other idiots are in the middle of it who a lot of idiots with ivy league degrees, by the way. a lot of idiots with ivy league degrees. i don't know if they can strip them of their degrees or not. i'm just a state school guy but i can read. like the black and white lettering of the united states constitution and of and these people are useful idiots for a tyrant in training. >> and you can see a crime when it's being committed. >> right. >> by the person you're doing this for. >> but they can too. >> that's why i don't understand the thinking. >> they went to harvard and yale law school.

they can read the constitution, they know what they're doing. >> while the president's rally in georgia last night was intended to support the senate candidates he spent much of his time railing against his failed bid for re-election. at one point the president put the pressure on vice president mike pence. zeroing in on the role that pence will play overseeing tomorrow's certification of the electoral college vote count. >> i hope mike pence comes through for us. i have to tell you. i hope that our great vice president -- our great vice president comes through for us. he's a great guy. of course, if he doesn't come through, i won't like him quite as much. >> tomorrow, pence will preside over the proceedings. it's a role that is largely ceremonial.

pence can't affect the outcome of the proceeding, but as you can see, donald trump is asking him to go against a act. >> because donald trump doesn't understand the constitution. >> he thinks the people around him are that stupid and many are. many are that stupid. they do what they think he thinks -- instead of what is right. why not push the envelope and the people around him are the bigger idiots because they know better. as "the new york times" puts it, pence's role will be more akin to the presenter opening the academy award envelope or reading the name of the movie that won best picture with no say in determining the winner. it may be worth noting that on the campaign trail in georgia yesterday, pence did not engage when the crowd began chanting stop the steal. peter baker, you're following all of this. what are the chances that mike

pence would do something that crazy for donald trump? my gut is no. >> well, you know, it's hard to say. i don't know what he could do. i mean, i honestly don't know what they see as the genuine option. the department of justice has already said that this louie gohmert lawsuit ordering pence to take action was out of bounds. he doesn't really have a role. his role is to open up the box, hand the piece of paper to the senators who will be the tellers, who will read the results out loud. and that's it. you know, josh hawley and the republicans in the house can object and if they get one member of the senate, one member of the house to object, they'll go their separate ways, separate chambers and they'll vote. obviously the democratic house is not going to agree to unseat electors for joe biden. obviously, we have now seen more than enough republican senators say they wouldn't vote to do

that either. we know there's a majority in the senate as well. so we'll go through the kabuki dance tomorrow but one that obviously has great import. because it's the first time i think we have ever seen our history a sitting president of the united states lose an election and yet try to hang on to power even after the electoral college has voted through, you know, a series of false claims and, you know, increasingly desperate efforts to pressure somebody, anybody in the system to allow him to stay in office despite the will of the people. >> jim vandehei, this appears to be the extreme extension of the old doctrine that the president could shoot somebody on fifth avenue and everyone will stay with him and now he's trying to overturn the presidential election and try to subvert the democracy and push and push and say, how far will the people go with me? he's got a group of senators and tens of millions of his supporters who have said, sure, i'll go along for the ride. >> yeah. i mean, peter has a great piece

in "the new york times" today looking at the historical anomaly. this has never happened before and people need to realize that. then you have to why is it that when you get to the vote that peter just laid out, why is it that probably more than half in total of elected republicans are going to vote to overturn the election? it's not just trump. when you get outside of washington, almost every voter you talk to republican voter is with donald trump probably because of donald trump. they firmly seem to believe paced on the reporting, based on talking to them, based on the in box in terms of people who are emailing on a daily basis, they seem to believe it. there's nothing you can write or nothing you can say that seems to change their mind. joe pointed out earlier. this isn't a bunch of woke lefties that are doing this to donald trump. these are some of the trumpiest trumps out there. tom cotton, you're trying to tell me he's not a trump guy? until yesterday, you would have said he's one of the most trumpy

republicans out there. the governor of georgia, hand picked by donald trump. if we're having this debate two weeks ago you'd say he niece the top five republicans who are closest to donald trump and most like donald trump. so it's not just the media. it's not just the lefties. it is all of and these republicans who are close to him and yet it doesn't seem moving the needle with his supporters which is why they're making the calculation that this will work in their advantage. >> yeah, you know, let's expand on that for a second. so if this is a deep state conspiracy, my god, it's deep. how deep is your love, how deep is this deep state conspiracy. bill barr is in this deep state conspiracy. amy coney barrett is in the deep state conspiracy if you believe

this nonsense. tom cotton also in the deep space conspiracy if you believe this nonsense. every federal judge, trump appointed, that has -- and mitch mcconnell senate approved. the reason why you gave up your religion, the reason why you gave up your values. the reason why you put your evangelical faith in a blind trust over the past four years, in exchange for 30 pieces of silver and some federal judges, i hope you're spending the 30 pieces of silver because those federal judges, those federal judges that you actually lost your religion for, that you sacrificed your faith for, they're all in the deep space conspiracy too. because they're all voting against donald trump's attempt to overturn an election. so are you really -- i don't

think you're that stupid. i really don't think -- i think you -- maybe you go on facebook and maybe you go on other pages because it makes you feel good. it reinforces what you believe, but you know deep in your heart that he's wrong. you know deep in your heart he's a liar. you know deep in your heart he's not conservative. he's a cancer on the conservative movement. he's a cancer on the republican party. he's tearing it to shreds right now. i warned you. i warned you. five years. it's happening. he's tearing the republican party apart. you think i'm happy about that? you think i want the left wing of the democratic to take -- if you do, you're a fool, you're an idiot and you haven't listened to anything i have been telling

you for the past five years, because we have gotten to the place where conservatives and the never trumpers and i have warned you we were going to get to. and now look what's happening. but you're still -- you're still believing donald trump? you're still believing a guy who contributed to hillary clinton nine times? you're still believing a guy who contributed to kamala harris in 2014? you're still believing a guy who gave one check after another to charlie rangel? you're still believing a guy who gave political contributors to anthony weiner and eliot spitzer? that's why you're willing to lose your religion for donald trump? that's why you're willing to sell out conservatism for trump, that that's why you're willing to

watch the conservative party destroy itself for trump? wake up. it's almost midnight cinderella and things are about to get ugly if you don't pull away from this failed reality tv host. peter baker, we get numbed by what we see day in and day out. over the past four or five years your article does talk about how extraordinary this moment in time is. can you explain to our viewers just what a break from history this is and how this has never happened before, that we haven't seen a split like this since the civil war and 1861? >> yeah. i think it is important to pull back every once in a while. i think because we have gotten as you say so, you know, numb to the misagist that comes with this presidency over the last four years and we have touch of how unusual it is. so 220 years ago in 1800, john

adams, the second president of the united states loses to thomas jefferson and he turns over power and creates the precedent for a bedrock principle of american democracy that's held ever since. we have never seen since then a sitting president who lost the election try to do what donald trump is doing. now, we have disputed elections certainly. 1876 is thought of as the worst one. there's of course a fight over the 2000 election. neither of those and the others argued about involved a sitting president trying to use the power of his office to somehow subvert the will of the voters. right? you heard the president do with brad raffensberger wasn't just say, hey, i won an honest election. he said i want you to find me the votes so i win. he even dangled the idea there might be a criminal exposure for a republican official in georgia if he didn't follow suit. he used the word criminal nine, ten times in the course of the hour-long conversation.

now, i don't know whether that's illegal or not that's for lawyers to describe but it certainly sounds like an extraordinary amount of pressure by someone who is willing to use the justice department to serve his interests and we don't see that in american history. this is so different and out of the norm and it's worth stopping to say, wait a second. this is not how america has worked. at least not in our lifetime. >> no. if you know president trump's patterns and also his obsession with big reveals on his reality shows and whatever else he's done in the past, pageants, whatever, willie, i'm sorry, it is in my opinion very possible knowing the nature of his personality that he actually thinks mike pence would do some reveal when he opens the envelope or passes it along that proclaims him the president of the united states. that's what he's counting on

from mike pence. so i ask peter baker, so innocently is trying to stick to things that are normal like the constitution and history and everything this country has been built on and every process we have stuck to ever since and he's working outside the norms and i'm telling you, he thinks that mike pence will have a is special secret envelope with his name in it. he's delusional. >> i don't think there's any question about that. he's been mike pence according to our reporting and according to "the new york times," figure something out, do something and then last night he threw it out into the open and saying mike pence better come through for us or else i won't like him so much. let's go to georgia, the secretary of state there. that phone call that we were just discussing in which president trump urged the secretary of state to quote find votes. during the call, secretary of state brad raffensberger tried to warn the president not to rely on internet conspiracies.

>> mr. president, the problem you have with social media, people can say -- >> no. no, this isn't social media. this is trump media. it's not social media. it's really not. it's not social media. i don't care about social media. >> let's bring in nbc news reporter ben collins. ben, good to see you. so you cover this stuff, you cover qanon, you find yourself in the darkest corners of the internet that's how you make your living. what did you think as you listened to the more than one hour phone call between president trump and brad raffensberger as president trump sort of stumbled his way through these basic qanon conspiracy theories? >> yeah, i was startled by his knowledge and grasp of really specific conspiracy theories that even didn't make it out of the qanon internet. they didn't make it to the civil internet where most people live. they barely made it to facebook rumor level stuff. for example, the president targets this woman named ruby

freeman who is an election worker. she's a black woman and 4chan -- an extreme i website said this woman was rigging the election. using suitcases, this is an elaborate conspiracy theory. and the president specifically targeted this one hash tag called where's ruby. this was a qanon hash tag, only a few hundred people retweeted this thing and it was all qanon accounts. who is ruby freeman? she sells purses on instagram and she has a kiosk at the mall and is not an elaborate scammer which the president called her. it is almost confounding that this person has this information coming to him through this pipeline. you know, qanon was built on the idea that the democratic party is run by satanists, child

eaters, all that nonsense. that fell apart, because there were several deadlines, there are hard deadlines of the rapture and it comes and goes. so what happened instead? that network of people on twitter and facebook and then blogs, they have spent the last two months finding these ridiculous ways the president can remain in office despite losing the election. >> so ben, you mentioned the pipeline from qanon, from the cesspools of the internet to the president of the united states. how are they making their way to the president? how are they making their way to the oval office that he can become so fluent in them? >> it's mostly just those qanon network factions on twitter. they kind of come together. they build up the big retweets. and she said this thing about how -- she's expecting this big reveal, you know, the president wants a big reveal to happen. there was a hash tag in qanon called the pence card. they think there's going to be a literal, you know, card that he can play where mike pence goes up on wednesday and says, hey,

guess what? donald trump is still the president of the united states. this is just bonkers stuff from the very fringe corners of the internet. and they work together to push these things up. mostly it comes through this guy named ron watkins. ron watkins runs the website. it used to be called h chan, and that's where they posted the manifestos to kill people and they had to rebrand. he says he knows all the things about voting machines he has no experience in voting machines and the president retweets him all the time. he might be "q," so this where is this is coming from. this is raw qanon, sort of like they're shifting their talking points from the democratic cabal and they're changing it to be about the president remaining in office. >> it's amazing, claire mccaskill, that you stuff used

to see in email and strange letters that your office might get has now risen to the oval office. >> yeah. in fact, i remember laughing about comet pizza when it first came out but it's not funny anymore. ben, i think you have the odious task of brawling around these sites and learning about these people. two-part question. one, what have you seen about what they're planning on the ground wednesday, tomorrow, in d.c. and secondly, what is your sense about infiltration by foreign agents that see this as an incredible leverage to make us look silly on the world stage and to tear apart our democracy from the inside? >> sure, i'll answer your second one first. you know, qanon is a very american phenomenon. if it wasn't started by an american, it would be a shock to most people. that doesn't mean foreign actors aren't using it to push their

narratives and split people apart. it's sort of the perfect fodder for a foreign influence campaign. we have seen from facebook reports, twitter reports who have taken down foreign claims, it's a good way to get people riled up. you want to get people sort of near the fringe and push them over the edge. wednesday, that's the scary thing that we're all worried about. how many of these people are being drive on the real live action from what they're reading on facebook and twitter and from what the president is putting out into both parts of the internet. i think we're going to find out. this is something they have been planning on this for about a month and lots of different militias and even facebook groups are coming together and saying, you know, let's all come together and show our support for the president but a lot of them are saying let's come armed, let's come ready.

that's the big fear, it's not just a proud boys in the streets but it's those coming out to counterprotest. when you get a cocktail of people who believe that something is amiss and they can't do anything about it, that's where the worry is. like what's the next step for those people when their savior doesn't remain in office anymore? >> and the president as you said is encouraging them to come there on wednesday. ben collins, his reporting has been indispensable on all of this stuff you can read it at nbcnews.com. thanks so much. well, by the way, yesterday in our coverage of some of the republicans' plans to object to the electoral college votes, we pointed out some context in history that the last three times the republican has been elected president, democrats in the house brought objections to the electoral votes in states the republican nominee won. we gave several examples of

congressional democrats who praised barbara boxer who in 2005 objected to president george bush's electoral votes from ohio. we voted that chris van hollen issued a press release, praising boxer's efforts. we should clarify though that while he commended barbara boxer for raising the issue, he made clear at the time, i think it would have been irresponsible to use the certification process to attempt to change the result and doing so would establish a precedent in future elections. and van hollen voted against the motion to overturn the election results from ohio. still ahead on "morning joe" it's election day in georgia and that means it will be a busy one for steve kornacki. he joins the conversation next.

plus, house majority whip and cochair of the president-elect joe biden's inaugural committee jim clyburn will be our guest. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. go pro at subway® for double the protein on any footlong. or on any new protein bowl! so many ways to go pro at subway®! it's not amateur-tein, it's pro-tein, baby! go pro and get double the protein for just $2 more. subway. eat fresh. serena: it's my 4:10, no-excuses-on-game-day migraine medicine. it's ubrelvy. for anytime, anywhere migraine strikes without worrying if it's too late, or where i am. one dose of ubrelvy works fast.

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we have won this election in georgia based on all of this. the people of georgia are angry. >> well, mr. president, the challenge that you have, the data that you have is wrong. >> do you think it's possible that they shredded ballots in fulton county? do you know anything about that? >> no. >> are you sure, ryan? >> i'm sure. >> you know what they did and you're not reporting it. under law you're not allowed to give faulty results.

you're not allowed to do that and that's what you have done. a lot of republicans have going to vote negative because they hate what you did to the president. >> oh, my, just too real. joining us news national political correspondent and -- for nbc news and msnbc and author of "the red and the blue" steve kornacki joins us this morning. >> great to see you again and congratulations on your gig at nbc sports. absolutely incredible. i wanted to ask you, i have been hearing a little bit about early voting and republicans not getti getting the numbers they need from the rural areas. before election day of course those numbers are usually low. are they not? and we would expect more day of voting for the republicans. >> yeah, and that's what this is coming down to, joe. thank you, it's great to be back here. for a big election day, yeah, it's a story you heard in 2018,

2016, we have seen this in the early voting period where democrats have liked the numbers they have seen. they have liked some of the demographic indicators what they're getting and this is come down the question, what is the turnout going to be look like today? how many people are going to show up, how republican? we know -- we are almost certain it's going to be a more republican electorate today than a democratic electorate but how much more republican than democratic, but we have seen this set up before in a number of different races, in a number of different votes and the early voting looks encouraging for democrats and then the opportunity is is there for republicans on election day to make it up and more. that doesn't mean that will happen today, but we have seen this set-up before certainly. >> so steve, this is something i wanted to do when we can all take a deep breath after we are sure the constitution is spared from donald trump. but i want to go through a

series after january 20th of segments just called, you know what happened? i want to know what happened in the state of florida, what happened in other close states. why did susan collins win by nine in maine and joe biden win by nine? those sort of things. but we have you here and we're talking about the state of georgia, so why don't we start our little what happened segment with you telling us on election day what happened in georgia? did we have more black voters come out in 2020 that came out in 2016, did that make the differences or was it white voters and other voters in the suburbs of atlanta that probably made the difference in joe biden's win if you look at the margins between '16 and '20. >> yeah, i think a big thing is the biden/trump margin in georgia and turnout was just up

everywhere. 5 million people basically voting in georgia in the presidential election. but i think the biggest swings towards democrats, the biggest thing that changed this from 2016 where trump wins the state by five points to 2020 where biden ekes it out it's just movement in those suburbs. i take it a step further because i think it's directly relevant to what we're seeing today. the movement that i'm talking about that put joe biden over the top in georgia is not quite there for the democrats in the senate races. there were split ticket voters in georgia on election day. so take a look at this. here's the biden/trump result. again 12,000 votes basically. that's the margin for biden over trump in georgia. now take a look at perdue versus ossoff. the other senate race was that jungle primary, a bunch of different candidates. from biden winning the state by 12,000, you have the senate race perdue finishing ahead of

ossoff, 88,000 vote there. plus 88,000 minus 12,000 for the republicans in the presidential race, a difference there in margin of 100,000 votes and then you start asking yourself, where did that come from, where were these split ticket voters and that's where i think an interesting demographic profile starts to emerge. the biggest single example of this is in the biggest county in the state, fulton county which is atlanta. there are suburbs in fulton county too. core democratic area. jon ossoff gets under 70% of the vote in fulton county. 216,000 votes and that's good. look at what biden got out of the same county. 73% almost in the margin of 242,000 votes. remember, we're trying to account for that difference right there. this is a more than 25,000 vote difference in the margin from senate race to the presidential

race. biden doing better than ossoff so now you break it down further. we're in fulton county. where in fulton county did you see the disparities the most and the answer is you tend to find them roswell, sandy springs, buck head. you tend to find them in the higher income college educated, more sort of suburban areas of fulton county so i think a profile starts to emerge of a split ticket who was anti-trump, who wanted to go out and vote trump out of office. but also did not want to vote for democrats. and so voted for biden, and then voted republican. it's not a huge number. but it's the difference between biden winning by 12,000 and perdue having 88,000 more votes than ossoff. at least in the preliminary. >> well, you know, willie, when we first started talking about these two races, i was certain the republicans were going to win both of the races but you

have seen the madness, the donald trump madness. a lot of conservatives are now saying if the republicans lose, even one of seats today it will be on the shoulders of donald trump. for the madness that he's been stirring. so we just heard from steve the very voters who couldn't handle the craziness of donald trump but didn't want bernie sanders to be the chairman of the senate budget committee, voted republican. i'm wondering what happens today with the voting because of the craziness, because of the lunacy. because kelly loeffler came out yesterday and said, hey, you know what, i'm going to get on the sedition train as well. it does put a question mark over tonight's races. >> yeah, it's interesting she dodged that question for so long and then on the eve of the election came out, senator loeffler said, yes, i'm on board with these senators who are

going to challenge and raise an objection to the electoral college. so she as you said is now on board there too. steve, the polls open in about 13 minutes from right now. they'll close at 7:00. do you have a sense right now with those 3 million early and absentee votes already in the bank of how long it may be until we know a winner in these two races? >> yeah, i would say be prepared to be patient on this one, but there's the potential this could go quicker than it did in november. in november, i think this is important we can put a couple of numbers for what happened in georgia in november. let me just reset there to statewide. so look, at about 3:00 a.m. wednesday morning, elect night into early the next morning at a about 3:00, all the votes were counted for and however, trump still led in the count and that's because the remaining 6% which then took four or five

days to process and count was all mail-in votes and it was primarily in fulton county. and the immediate metro atlanta area. . but it was the cumbersome mail-in ballot processing that ended up taking four or five days. it wasn't until 3:00 a.m. friday morning that joe biden actually caught trump in the tally in georgia. and then won the state. so look, that's what happened in november. what's to say that that same time line wouldn't play out this time. be prepared to be patient. the optimistic version that was kind of the shakedown cruise for a lot of the people dealing with the mail-in balloting on a scale they haven't seen before. now they have a sense of what it takes. i have been talking to the election officials in fulton county in particular. they certainly sound like they're on a much more rapid pace than they were back in

november to get this done. certainly if november is a guide it could take some time. >> well, it's an exciting election ahead. the stakes for the senate race couldn't be higher and we can't wait to see you tonight to guide us through it. claire mccaskill, i wanted to ask you as someone who knows the senate very well in these elections, you know, it's so hard to beat an incumbent unless there are extraordinary circumstances. you certainly are aware of that. do you think the circumstances of the last month are extraordinary enough to push one or two of the democrats over the finish line tonight or are these races going to go according to plan? >> i was fascinated with steve's analysis there because if you are running these races, you are looking carefully at those split ticket voters. and here's my question, joe.

does donald trump doing what he's doing in georgia, doesn't that hurt the republican candidates in terms of those crossover voters? think of all those people that steve just referenced that voted for joe biden and then voted for david perdue. well, what trump has done has really i think discouraged them from going down this rat hole of voting especially for kelly loeffler who is like joined hands. she's now this qanon woman's best friend. i mean, the president put the qanon woman on the podium last night. everybody in georgia saw that. so in all of the insider trading that has come out with the two of them, i really think there's a chance that both of these democrats prevail especially if you look at some of the analysis of the early voting and who turned out that didn't vote in november.

that's another thing i'd love steve to take a crack at. maybe tonight in our coverage he can, talking about the new voters that didn't even vote in november. who are they? and where are they from? and what does that say about what the vote might turn out to be tonight. >> right. that might be a real opportunity. joining us now, politics and journalism professor at morgan state university, politics editor at the grio and an msnbc political contributor, jason johnson. and political scientist, editor of the website the cycle and senior adviser to the lincoln project, rachel bitecofer. she is out with a new piece, democrats have a closing message, but the question is will they use it? so i guess, rachel, let's start with that. what is that message? >> i mean, that's exactly right. we're talking about these very distinct, small group of swing voters who split their tickets and i can tell you specifically who they are. we're talk about independent

voters, college educated millennials predominantly who grew up in the republican households and they're deeply uncomfortable with donald trump. so they walked into the ballot box in november and they voted for joe biden. but because they didn't get their perdue and loeffler tied tightly to donald trump they felt comfortable enough to fill out that republican ballot still. and, you know, the question is have the ossoff and warnock campaigns made a compelling case that perdue and loeffler are trump? if they are equivocal to donald trump in their voters' minds they're walking into the ballot booth this time and they'll vote for the democratic candidates, right? i think that -- have certainly made that case, if you're just wondering, i think claire was opining, gosh, the events in the

last month have made that case. average voters don't necessarily get that, you know, message themselves. it's the job of the campaign to make that case. that's what the argument is showing and saying, look at the early vote, we know that stacy abrams and the turnout operation has delivered for democrats a necessary but not a sufficient condition for them to win. they have turned out, you know, a very heavy in black turnout, heavy in youth turnout base of operations for them to start election day off on. but they need to deliver some of these swing voters. some of these voters that did not vote for democrats in the fall will have to do so today for them to win. >> so jason johnson, then to you on why at this point it's so close. i mean, what does that say not just about messaging but about the voters in georgia and the

impact that trump has had. >> well, mika, and happy new year, everybody. what i thought was going on in georgia and what has actually -- what i have seen with my eyes and heard from people since i got here are very different. part of why this state is so close it's still very purple. you still have a lot of conservative voters down here, black, white, asian, latino community. i think one of the things that people overlook about georgia it's not south carolina, it's not just a black and white -- there are large swathes of other minority populations here who are voting. but i think the other part of why things are so close it's not just because of the swing voters. it's because there are such different passionate feelings about the ticket. we have head over 100,000 people who didn't vote in november are voting now. where are they coming from? they're young, they're black, they're brown, these are young

activi activist voters, they didn't really like biden and they certainly weren't going to go out to vote for donald trump. they see ossoff and warnock, okay, this is some change i can get behind. the other interesting thing i heard down here, for a long, long time, i was under the impression and reading the numbers that this was going to be -- it's going to be a twofer. either both the republicans win or both the democrats win. what i'm hearing from both republicans and democrats is they think there's a possibility there could be a split. this could end up being perdue and warnock who end up winning. and if this is a situation where both candidates win, it's going to be raphael warnock who brings ossoff over the line. as opposed to the other way around. that is what i'm hearing from most people down here. they seem to think that warnock has really galvanized the black and african-american voters who are usually overlooked and are excited about putting a reverend in office. this doesn't mean that ossoff

has done bad, but that kelly loeffler a lot more toxic to the suburban voters. >> and a split gives the republicans a small minority there. so jason, from people you talked to on the ground covering this race since you have been there, there's this question of whether donald trump talking about how the election was rigged and stolen from him, something we have been refuting throughout this show and so have republican officials, by the way, for the last couple of days they worry that that suppresses turnout that don't vote in an election that is rigged. what is your sense of donald trump's presence there in the state of georgia? >> willie, i'll give you the perfect quote. i was listening to local conservative radio down there. there was a guy who went on a 20-minute rant saying none of the four sociopaths will improve your life. if you listen to local

conservative radio, they're disgusted with all of this. they have bought into a lot of trump's conspiracy theories, that brian kemp is a tool of the democrats and that the whole electoral process is garbage. i was surprised at how many local conservative radio hosts are basically suppressing their own vote. and i do think that republicans are facing a challenge. donald trump isn't on the ballot. and if there's going to be a weird -- we don't know what the results will be, but donald trump not being on the ballot may suppress some votes because, you know, hard-core moderate supporters, are like, well, our guy is not there and some democratic supporters may come out who weren't enthusiastic about biden. for the republican party to try to get out the republican voters, trumpists are going to come out, but a lot of main line republican votes have so frustrated with what they have

heard from donald trump and the attacks on the secretary of state who is no hero against voter suppression, by the way. but many are like apox on both houses, i don't like loeffler, i don't like insider training, i don't like trump i may sit this one out. >> jim vandehei, there are so many cross currents going on. i'm wondering how you're wading through them all. first of all, let's talk about the november elections. people are i is aing that they didn't want donald trump re-elected because they were repelled by him, but yet at the same time, they didn't want to turn the keys of the car all over to as republicans would have them believe, aoc, bernie sanders and people who wanted to defund the police. and the socialists at large. so you have that part of the story, but then you listen to

jason. obviously, donald trump has offended a lot of the suburban voters who split their tickets back in november and a lot of the hard core conservative -- not conservatives, hard core conspiracy theorists, trumpists who believe that kelly loeffler and david perdue are part of the conspiracy as well. so as you sort through all this, what are you looking at? what do you think we're going to see tonight? >> i think you're right because of everything that trump has done it overshadowed the fact that republicans did better than most people thought, they would have done better than they would have thought. i think the thing to watch for is the conspiratorial conservatism. the things that people are buying into what trump are saying. unfortunately, the drama doesn't

end in the next 48 hours because after that what you have to watch for on right-wing media and trump, do you think of using the military to -- or at least the threat of using the military to keep trump from having to leave office? that might seem absurd but there's a reason that all of the living defense secretaries put out that letter that was organized by dick cheney, dick cheney, who is the biggest advocate of presidential power in our lifetime. he organized this and it included two defense secretaries that worked for donald trump, warning that you can't engage the military or have them involved at all in thinking about this outcome. you don't do that out of the blue unless there's an authentic fear, conversations among paez those in positions of power. i wouldn't be surprised to hear it bandied about rhetorically. so until donald trump officially leaves and joe biden's in,

unfortunately you're going to see a couple more chapters in this drama. >> and peter baker, i want to follow up on what jim just said. when i was in the armed services committee and spent a good bit of time going back and forth from the pentagon talking to admirals, generals, people who lived and worked over there, many others, i understood that the lines of communication were always open and i always joked -- i found out really early in my career that the real power at the pentagon are not the generals and the admirals over there. it's the retired generals and admirals who were their bosses when they were still active duty. and so i got a chill when i saw this letter going out because i understand the communication flows back and forth constantly

between active duty leaders and retired leaders. and there is no doubt that the alarm is sounding from inside the house, from inside the pentagon. that they fear the military is going to be asked to do something extra constitutional and something extraordinarily dangerous. what can you tell us about the cheney letter? >> yeah, joe, that's exactly right. that's exactly how this happened. there's great deal of concern in the pentagon leadership that they'd be dragged into this in a way they don't want to be. general milley, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff said they have no role in this kind of situation. there's still a lot of hangover from the june 1st lafayette square event when the president used troops to clear out peaceful protesters so that he could walk across the square and pose with the bible in front of st. john's church and there's a never again, you know, feeling that emerged in the pentagon at that point.

so when you see dick cheney and jim mattis and mark esper, who was just secretary of defense a couple of weeks ago saying hey, we're worried about this. you're right. it's exactly a reflection of the thinking going on inside the pentagon. these guys are talking to people there and that's where this generated from. so that's a very, very daunting scenario, right? it's not that the president said he'll do anything, but the fact that the people at the pentagon are worried about it tells us where we're at just 15 days before the inauguration. >> and how distracting this president is when there's such real threats and concerns that these -- these individuals have put in this letter. by the way, admiral james -- writes i suspect the ten leaders urged by dick cheney the highest ultimate office holder of the group came reluctantly to the conclusion that they owed the

nation their public voices. i emailed half a dozen of the signers, to say well done and the prevailing response was simply that it had to be said. >> it had to be said. and of course we did fortunately we had as steve kornacki said about the georgia election in the fall we had to shake down cruz on june the 1st. they got out -- too far out in front and were immediately chastened again by retired military leaders, by retired admirals, retired generals and came back in line and ended up apologizing to every man and woman in the armed forces. so hopefully, that won't happen again. jim vandehei, i've got to ask you a critical question before i let you go. the green bay packers, do they have what it takes -- could we

see a replay of super bowl i? do they have what it takes to go to the super bowl and maybe face down claire mccaskill's kansas city chiefs again? >> it's a loaded question. i think you know the answer to it. a fun fact i'll play kornacki for a moment. you know that the packers scored more downs than the number of times they punted. never done in the history of the nfl which is a long way to say, yes, they can beat the chiefs and i think it will be the packers versus the chiefs and the greatest quarterback matchup if you look at the stats. they'll be finalists for the mvp and prove all the doubters wrong which i love. >> thank you so much, jim. we greatly appreciate it. rachel, what are you going to be looking at tonight? what should we be looking at as -- >> definitely going to be looking at turnout. we don't need to see explosive turnout. we learned that on november 3rd when we didn't see long lines

everywhere and yet biden pulled out the 13,000 vote win. right? so we don't need to see huge lines popping out of all over metro atlanta. but we do need to see good turnout because the republican turnout machine as you well know is really top notch from the rnc. they sent the best of the best to atlanta to georgia for this cycle. so it needs to be good, robust turnout for democrats to be able to build off of the advantage they already have in place. >> jason, will suburban voters that steve kornacki talked about be so offended by what they have seen over the last month that they'll go in and go, you know what? i don't know that i want chuck schumer run the united states senate, but i sure as hell don't want republicans engaging in sedition running it.

>> i think you will see a small number of the people. you will have some. i think at the end of the day, everyone who i have talked to says that this going to be an extremely close election. whey did hear from one official last night, look, we're in a better position heading into this election than we were with joe biden. we seem to think that these numbers are looking good right now this person was very, very bullish on warnock and the same way that i'm bullish on the buffalo bills beating the kansas city chiefs in the afc championship. i had to throw it out there. >> there you go. jason johnson and rachel bitecofer, thank you both. looking for opportunities to laugh at any moment here. let's bring in some more voices into the conversation. msnbc contributor mike barnicle is with us. pulitzer prize columnist and msnbc political analyst eugene robinson. and nbc news capitol hill correspondent kasie hunt is joining us and jim messina, he

served as white house deputy chief of staff to obama and ran his 2012 re-election campaign. great group. >> so great group. so jim messina we'll talk about the president trying to undermine the constitution and destroy american democracy in just a moment. but our top story today -- but let's talk, first of all, about georgia, because i don't think the president's going to succeed but i do know tonight's election can determine who's going to run the senate. a lot of democrats -- a lot of -- let's just say a lot of progressive commentators don't like to face this fact, but there's a reason why donald trump lost in november. and the republicans did so well in the house and the senate is because they don't trust democrats. they don't want chuck schumer and nancy pelosi in charge of the house and the senate. they want a check. they have bought into the, you know, defund the police argument.

the socialism argument. that all of the cultural issue arguments and it's just a reality. you talk to pollsters across the country and that kept coming up at least among republicans and that's why they kept picking at those scabs. so the $64,000 question tonight is has the president's unmoored behavior that made suburban voters turn from him in november, has it been so egregious that a lot of those voters that just said, i can can't -- i just -- i can't put democrats in charge of all of washington. will donald trump have pushed enough of them over to say, i'll take that chance tonight in georgia? >> well, there's two questions tonight, joe. first of all, is -- are there enough democrats who will come out and vote in the election tonight? did he inflame the democratic base? tonight i'm looking at two numbers what i call the 30-30 rule in georgia.

democrats need 30% of the white vote tonight and they need african-american turnout to be 30% or higher. in the early vote numbers it looks like african-american turnout is 31% which is good news for the democrats, but the question is can they get enough of the people you're talking about, can they get enough of the people to say i'm just sick of trump and i want him and his party to go away and those are the two numbers i'm going to look at. the other number i look at do enough democrats vote here? let's talk about why we're in a georgia runoff election and this law was designed to make sure that african-american candidates didn't win in a general election and had to go to the runoff where it would be much tougher to turn votes out. yes, we're talk about record turnout for a runoff. but we're not going to have the same turnout we had in november. the last thing i'll say to you, georgia is still a leading republican state. at the congressional level, at

the state and senate level, republicans all won in the elections so democrats are attempting to swim against two strong tides tonight, but donald trump is giving us a little bit of help. >> so kasie, we may or may not know tomorrow when congress gathers to certify the electoral votes who won. trump was stumping for loeffler and perdue but really was listing his election loss about two months ago and talking about mike pence and the role that president trump expects what him to play in this process tomorrow. let's listen. >> i hope mike pence comes through for us. i have to tell you. i hope that our great vice president -- our great vice president comes through for us. he's a great guy. of course if he doesn't come through i won't like him quite as much.

>> kasie, you'll be on capitol hill covering this. what will it look like? as we have been saying all morning, mike pence plays a ceremonial roles, comparing it to the guy who opens the envelope and announces the academy awards. who are you expecting to see in this spectacle? >> that's the right way to think about it, willie. that was a little bit of a threat there from president trump to the vice president. i was really struck by that, especially because pence has been a republican that has really been very careful to never run afoul of president trump. in this case basically, his boss as the vice president. but what we're going to see tomorrow is a long, drawn out exercise in futility, basically. the senators know that there is no way to actually use this process to overturn the election and the republican party has

been split cleanly in two or not so cleanly, really, with several of them arguing liz cheney in a 21-page memo that this is against the constitution. this is not legal. setting the precedent to have congress overturn our elections is not something that republicans want to do. it's not a place they want to go. so yes, they'll convene a joint session on the floor of the house of representatives and remember, we're dealing with coronavirus so it may look a little bit different. normally this entire process takes half an hour, but in this case they'll start reading the states alphabetically and when we get to the state where there's a senator who agreed to object, the objection will be read. then members of the senate will leave the house and they'll debate each objection for two hours and then they have to vote. they have to cast up or down votes on whether or not donald trump won the election. it's a political scenario that mitch mcconnell has tried desperately to avoid, willie.

>> well, conservative columnist george will's latest is entitled, hawley, cruz and the senate cohort are the most dangerous domestic enemies and he writes in part, republican senator hawley's conscience regarding electoral proprietaries compels him to stroke this erogenous zone of the gop's 2024 presidential nominating electorate. his stance elicited panicky emulation from cruz. has there ever been such a high ratio of ambition to accomplishment and cruz have already nimbly begun to monetize the high mindedness through fund raising appeals. they know that every one of the almost 60 trump challenges have

been rebuffed including the supreme court, including 90 judges nominated by both parties. but for scores of millions of mesmerized trump republicans who any the absence of evidence is the most sinister evidence, this proves that the courts are tentacles of the deep state. hawley and cruz both of whom clerked for chief justices of the white house hopes to be wafted into the white house by gusts of such paranoia. the members of the hawley/cruz cohort will violate the constitution from enemies foreign and domestic. they are the most dangerous domestic enemies. mike barnicle? >> well, mika, that's just the truth. it's an amazing truth. sitting united states senators led by josh hawley and ted cruz are in the middle of an

engagement of an act of sedition and gene robinson, i understand that georgia is important. i understand that if the democrats ever won both seats that the landscape in washington and the country would literally change overnight. but i'm sitting here for the past few days thinking about the incallable damage that donald trump has done to our country and i wonder if you think back to adam schiff's summation during the impeachment proceedings about why donald trump had to be impeached and he raised the question of the republicans wondering how much damage could he do and schiff ended by saying a lot. and in my mind, harkening back to those words then to today and what is playing out in front of the world, i don't think a lot really handles the scope of the

damage that donald trump has done. >> no. a lot doesn't say what we're seeing now. i mean, adam schiff's words in that summation were indeed prescient. he saw what i think a number of -- many -- most americans saw, the dangerousness of donald trump to the constitution and to this -- the essence of this country. so here we are talking about the fundamental act of our democracy which is accepting the results of a free and fair election and conducting the peaceful transfer of power from one faction to the other faction. that's what was first done in 1801 and what has been done ever since. that is really the fundamental act of our democracy.

the most important act. without it you don't have a democracy. and you certainly -- you certainly are soiling and potentially shredding the constitution. but it's all for political ambition. hawley and cruz and the rest of the dirty dozen -- i guess 14 of them now, are -- you know, should live in eternal shame for what they're doing because, you know, they're damaging not just democrats and they're certainly i hope not improving their odds of ever becoming president. i think they should wear some sort of scarlet letter for the rest of their political careers. because they're harming the country. they're harming the country in a way that vladimir putin hasn't been able to do. that xi jinping hasn't been able to do. that the ayatollahs in iran

hasn't been able to do. the serial killer is inside the house, inside the senate and in the house of the united states and this -- it's an appalling, appalling situation. and i have covered countries that have lost their democratic traditions and tried to get them back and it's hard. it doesn't automatically happen. you don't snap your fingers and it all goes back to the way it was before. so, you know, the damage that trump is doing in his -- and his aiders and abetters will be lasting. i'm afraid it will be lasting. >> the damage is from the inside and imagine the headway our adversaries are getting while america's eye is off the ball. there are new developments following president trump's phone call with georgia's secretary of state in which trump urged him to find votes.

election officials in georgia have now received at least two requests for an investigation into whether trump violated state laws, but officials there have yet to confirm the start of any inquiry. brad raffensberger said it was unlikely his office would open an investigation into the call, but an atlanta district attorney said they could investigate. once the investigation is complete, this matter like all matters will be handled by our office based on the facts and the law. on yesterday's show, former acting u.s. solicitor general neal katyal raised the fact that impeachment was well within reason. joining us now is someone on the front lines as one of the democrats managers, congresswoman zoe lofgren.

she's a member of the house judiciary committee and a chair of the house committee where she'll take part of the counting of the electoral votes tomorrow. i think on impeachment, do you have an opinion about whether this is a good time to go after the president for impeachment on what happened in that phone call? >> i don't. the president has 15 days left in his term. tomorrow we will count the electoral vote that have been cast and joe biden will win and we'll move on as a country. obviously, his call was highly improper. we'll leave to others, prosecutors, judges and juries whether it was criminal. it was improper, but i'm focused on the electoral college count tomorrow. and the inauguration of joe biden on january 20th. >> having said that, what do you

make of the challenges that republicans are putting forward, still trying to contest this election and undermine -- and really vote against joe biden's election to the presidency of the united states. >> it's unconstitutional. you know, the 12th amendment is very clear. the electors meet, cast their ballots, they sign them. they put them in the sealed envelope and they send them to the capitol. that was done in december and those envelopes under the constitution are to be opened by the vice president tomorrow. and then tallied. i'm one of the talliers so they will be read aloud and toted up. it doesn't say in the constitution, we'll count them only if the congress likes them. this isn't a parliamentary system. every state in the union has

passed a law saying that the electors shall cast their votes for who won the popular vote and that's what happened in every state and that's joe biden won. now, some of my colleagues are trying to, you know, cast doubt on that. but this was highly litigated. there are 60 cases. there wasn't any evidence that would have changed the outcome. it's up to those who had concerns to raise issues and they did. there were recounts in some cases audits. three recounts in some cases. and the result remained the same. and so these kind of conspiracy theories on the internet fall apart because there's no evidence. joe biden won the election. the people's voices will be heard tomorrow when we open those envelopes sent to us by the electors when they met on december 14th. >> as you say, congresswoman those republicans who promised to stage this objection and vice

president pence as well who says he'll participate in some way in their effort, they can't do anything to change the votes that have been certified in the states and this is a formality, but does it change the way you all will do your business tomorrow? what do you expect it to look like because they have promised to bring this circus to congress. >> well, the electoral count act does provide for a challenge and it's important to look at the origin of the electoral count act. it was after there were disputes in reconstruction, dueling slates of electors were sent to the capitol and there were big arguments and a very disorderly process and subsequent to that the electoral count act was enacted and it's primarily to deal with the situation where two slates of electors are sent by the governor. that is not happening in this case. there's one slate that's been sent by the governor from every

state. so there's really nothing to adjudicate. it's done and it's just up to us to count them. this is a political show i think by some of my colleagues. i don't understand why they're willing to undercut the constitution and to engage in behavior that's really i think un-american for political reasons. >> as you say, it's a show, but a show with real consequences for democracy. congresswoman, mike barnicle has a question for you. >> sure. >> you just mentioned this show being carried out for basically political reasons. as we have watched as a nation, we have been witness to lawsuits filed in various federal courts throughout the country. all with the same reaction and conclusion. some more angry among judges than others, calling them ridiculous, no proof, no evidence whatsoever. over the weekend, we read the

release of a transcript of a phone call from the president of the united states to the secretary of state of georgia. included in that phone call was the presence of a fairly prominent lawyer in this country attach today a large law firm in this country and i'm wondering if you or any of your colleagues have stopped to consider or wonder what is the american bar association thinking about all of these lawyers participating in these fraudulent lawsuits that take up so much court time and including over the weekend a lawyer sitting there as her client right in front of her lies. have any of you given any thought to the bar association's nonreaction to any of this? >> well, congress does haven't a role in that as i'm sure you know. it's up to the bar association and to the bench to take action. i wouldn't be surprised if some

of the federal judges who heard these frivolous cases don't invoke rule 11 and impose sanctions on some of the attorneys that brought these cases. but that's for them. that's not for the congress to decide. if a lawyer participates in a crime with their client, obviously there are ramifications. i'm not saying that the president committed a crime, that's for someone else to decide. but if that were the judgment, there would be serious problems for the lawyer who participated. >> all right. congresswoman zoe lofgren, thank you very much. always great to see you. we appreciate you being here. and good luck in the new congress. it is going to be eventful. >> quite something. >> jim messina, so what are you going to be looking for tonight? you talked about 30-30, but early on in the evening, what should we be -- what should we be looking at as we're watching the returns come in?

>> first is total turnout and how big is the turnout. there's already 3 million early votes and it looks like we'll go over 4 million total voters. 5 million voted in the general election. i'm looking to see how big the turnout number is. that's crucial for both parties. but especially the democrats. i'm going to be looking to see what kind of votes the democrats are getting with african-americans and african-american turnout. and the numbers that you talked about, joe, i want to see how the independents are going. did donald trump drive them away at the end? there are people who voted for joe biden that the republican candidates need in this election and did trump completely piss them off in a way that runs them to the democrats? those are the numbers i'm looking at tonight to get a sense. just a warning to the folks watching, it's going to be long. we likely won't know until tomorrow. there's going to be, you know, absentee votes that aren't going

to be counted until the end so we're going to go once again like we did in the election a while watching georgia to see who controls the united states senate. >> and, jim, i'm going to ask you the same question i asked the rage steve kornacki about georgia specifically. i asked him what happened there. we're over 60 days since the november election. and i'm just curious, what conclusions you have drawn as to why the president of the united states lost, but the republicans in the house of representatives overperformed wildly even against their own low expectations for themselves. why democrats did so much worse in the senate races than they expected. why somebody like susan collins can win a state by nine points that joe biden also won by nine points. what -- 60 plus days later, what

conclusions have you drawn that democrats need to take into the next session of congress and the 2022 campaign? >> first of all, the economic message. if you look at the people who voted in the election, if the economy was their most important issue and it was for plurality of voters, they went republican. democrats didn't have an economic message. you and i have talked about this both on the show and personally. that we do better when we have an economic forward thinking message and trump so dominated that election that we spent all of our time going after him and forgetting that we needed a message for the american people. that's why what joe biden is doing is so important. doing an infrastructure bill, taking his party back to the coalition by focusing on the issues that voters actually care about. i think in the elections in

november you had much bigger turnout than the models suggested on the republican side and then democrats tanked on some of the key issues and then trump became the first to win the undecided vote and he party won the undecided vote because people went back to his economic messaging. so my party needs to have a wake-up call to say how do we move the voters or we'll lose the congressional majorities in november of 2022. >> jim messina, thank you for being on this morning. we want to move some of the developments with the coronavirus. the united kingdom has entered its third national lockdown as the more, new contagious variant of the virus continues to spread in the country. prime minister boris johnson made the announcement yesterday. >> our hospitals are under more

pressure from covid than at any time since the start of the pandemic. it is clear that we need to do more together to bring this new variant under control while our vaccines are rolled out. in england, we must therefore go into the national lockdown which is tough enough to contain this variant. >> by the way, mika, obviously they're worried about the new strain of the virus. it's not deadlier, but spreads so much easier. of course that was found in upstate new york. it's been found in other parts of the country. >> this is the race to the vaccine and the process to the vaccine is showing it's cumbersome and unequal between states. this could be a big problem. >> you know, trumpists can try to deny the reality all they want. but donald trump and his administration botched the distribution. >> oh, my god. >> botched the rollout of the

vaccine. and, you know, you've got people pathetically blaming it on states and on hospitals. no, no. donald trump who -- this is the one area that he tried to take credit for. >> right. >> donald trump botched this rollout because he was too busy chasing conspiracy theories. >> yeah. and he botched the whole thing. it was botched and led to almost -- well, it's going to be up to half a million deaths at the rate we're going very soon. this lockdown is expected to last until mid february and all uk residents are to stay at home except for food shopping or exercising. this variant is being found in locations here in the u.s. new york is now the fourth state to confirm the presence of the new strain joining colorado colorado, florida and cuomo

announced that a man in his 60s from upstate new york tested positive for the uk strain. the man is symptomatic but is recovering and has no recent travel history. meanwhile, the pandemic has gotten so critical in los angeles that the counties hospitals are asking ambulance workers not to show in patients who show little chance of survival. according to a directive obtained by nbc news and that directive is not limited to those who have covid and to those who show no signs of breathing or pulse. can you believe this is happening in the united states of america? in addition, crews are being advised to cut back on the use of oxygen and only administer it to patients who have oxygen saturation levels below 90%. paramedics and emt workers are continuing to resuscitate patients in the field until a

pulse can be restored after which a patient could be stabilized and transported to a hospital. officials say they need to focus on patients with a greater chance of surviving. >> so willie, here we are, we find ourselves in january of course the president of the united states boldly predicted even when anthony fauci was telling him he was wrong, this virus was going to go away and not come back in the fall. here we are and hospitals are once again like new york city back in the spring are having to perform triage. >> yeah. i mean, the state of affairs right now in california is just awful. and mika laid out why and the fact that we are talking a lot about this attempt to overthrow a presidential election doesn't mean this other thing is getting any better. we'll talk more about the vaccine as well. this is at the center of people's lives, it's still costing them their lives and still costing them their jobs. this is as bad as it's been and worse in many places and

president trump is preoccupied as you said with something that has nothing to do with this. as he's been from the beginning, by the way. but right now the problem as acute as it's been and he's focused on overturning the election. >> and up next, more on the bumpy rollout of the covid vaccine. what you need to know about how it's been distributed and when most americans can expect to receive it. that's next on "morning joe." metastatic breast cancer is relentless, but i'm relentless every day. and having more days is possible with verzenio, proven to help you live significantly longer when taken with fulvestrant. verzenio + fulvestrant is for women with hr+, her2- metastatic breast cancer that has progressed after hormone therapy. diarrhea is common, may be severe, or cause dehydration or infection. at the first sign, call your doctor, start an anti-diarrheal, and drink fluids. before taking verzenio, tell your doctor about any fever,

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getting america vaccinated will be one of the most difficult operational challenges this nation has ever faced but we have known it for the last months. this administration has gotten off to a god awful start. the president spends more time whining and complaining than doing something about the problem. >> president-elect joe biden

yesterday in atlanta talking about the vaccine rollout as states face pressure to get vaccines into people's arms. hospitals in new york state could face fines if the distribution of those vaccines doesn't speed up. governor andrew cuomo announced yesterday hospitals could be fined up to $100,000 if current supplies of vaccines are not used by the end of the week. and florida governor ron desantis said hospitals not handing out covid vaccinations quickly enough in florida could lose their doses. at a news conference yesterday, governor desantis said that any chain that fails to meet the vaccination goal will have the supplies redistributed to more expedient providers. anyone who gets the moderna or pfizer vaccine must get the two full doses, suggesting they're looking at giving half volume doses to accelerate the rollout.

the fda's statement reads this way. quote, at this time suggesting changes to the fda authorized dosing of the scheduling is premature and not rooted solidly in the available evidence. without appropriate data supporting such changes in vaccine administration we run a significant risk of placing health at risk undermining the historic vaccination effort to protect the population from covid-19. joining us right now is dr. michelle mcmurry-heath and president of the hospital in newark hospital, dr. shereef elnahal. dr. mcmurry-heath, let me begin with you with why we're failing to get the shots into the people's arms. we had the triumphant moment when the vaccine got approved, it began to enter the arms of some of the health care workers. but why is the process now slow?

why is it taking so long to get these out? the product is there, they're just not being distributed and administered. >> well, quite simply, we had a national vaccine effort but we didn't have a national vaccination effort. you know, it's not the same to develop the vaccine as to get the actual shots into arms and we know this. we know this from past vaccination efforts. you have to do public communication. you have to make sure that states and we have been talking to many of the governors have the resources that they need. not just to train personnel and to give the shots, but to be able to track, for example, use the i.t. system that the government is using to track who's been vaccinated. state officials need to be trained in this system so they can use it effectively and none of the support resources have been made available in that way. so, you know, while it's too early and probably pointless to get into the blame game, it is clear that we need to deliver resources to the states so that

they're able to not just have the vaccine sitting in warehouses, but actually be able to deliver the vaccine to those who need it. >> dr. elnahal, how is the prose going at your hospital in newark? is it a speedy process, do you have frustrations, what more do you need as a hospital? >> so thank you so much for having me on again. first of all, i think it's going okay only because our state health department stepped in and allowed us to replace the delayed pfizer doses with moderna doses. we have been closely connected to the state health department, but dr. mcmurry-heath is right. hospitals, health care systems and clinics instead of being blamed should have more technical assistance to the give the vaccines more efficiently. you have to give them and observe everyone for 15 minutes to make sure that's no severe allergic reaction that occurs and then the storage and the

distribution is falling on states and health care systems when the federal government should be stepping up with more assistance, folks on the ground and people helping us out. unfortunately that's not happening yet. as you're seeing with the results, less than 5 million people have been vaccinated, far short of the 20 million goal that was supposed by the end of 2020. >> you mentioned pfizer doses. why are they being delayed? why aren't they getting to you? >> unfortunately the state of new jersey did not get the allocation that they expected and as a result that has downstream effects. these are scheduled folks that we had weeks in advance, to be able to get it. and so we had to do a quick swap between pfizer to moderna because of the quick work that the state health department had to do and the state health departments and health care

systems are not getting the assistance they need in the federal government and that needs to change. we are talking about now a discovered -- a new variant in four states that could increase the r-1, the actual metric that spreads the virus significantly by, you know, around 30%. in terms of transmissability, at least. we have to really ramp up the fire hose which is the vaccine against the ever-spreading fire which is the virus. >> mike barnicle's got a question for you. mine? >> i'd like to ask dr. heath a question off of what dr. elnahal just pointed out. since the arrival of the virus in this country a year ago, the existing administration, the trump administration, has tried to pass nearly every element of responsibility for dealing with the virus to the various states. we all know depending on which state we live on in this country

that the economies of all 50 states have been battered by the virus and thus are ill equipped to deal with the scope of the operation. now that we have the virus and it sits in storage in state after state, in hospital after hospital, through no fault of the states or the hospitals, is it time to take another look at the recipients of the virus and go with first come first served and use the high school fields everywhere to line up people and get them vaccinated? is it not the most critical issue today in our country? >> well, you're definitely right. you know, we talked in the spring about flattening the curve and this new variant definitely means that the curve has steepened. so our work has to speed up so that we're sure to be prepared and to try to stop the spread of both the existing virus and the new variants. that's critically important but

let's remember the public health tenets. we came up with the regimen of who should receive it first for very good reason. those most likely to suffer a severe reaction to covid are first in line. and we need a better coordination so that the supply meets the demand. we have people waiting in line to receive the vaccine and we have places where vials of vaccine cannot be administered and they have to be discarded. we need better core coordination and distributed to the state. >> it is maddening that some of the vials have been thrown out because they're not getting out fast enough. thank you both for what you do. we'll check in with you over the next few weeks. mika? coronavirus poses a

long-running threat for much of the world. so it is no wonder it landed squarely on the eurasia group's list of top geopolitical risks for 2021. joining us now, president and founder of eurasia group and foreign affairs columnist for "tim "time," ian bremmer. this impacts the world and the united states stability in many ways. can you explain? >> sure. i mean, many of the big surprises that it's not number one and certainly it would have been risk number one if we hadn't such incredible success enadeem logically with the vaccines. we're in better shape than we had hoped four months ago but we

need the infrastructure to actually roll this out. it will take time. there's massive frustration and that not only means greater inequality in the wealthy countries because of course if you're not in the knowledge economy this is worse, but it's greater inequality between the advanced industrial economies that will get these vaccines over the course of 2021 and a lot of the lower and middle income countries that won't. and if you are in latin america right now, you think about the second wave hitting them and the inability of those economies to provide the kind of relief and stimulus, the japanese, the europeans and even so far the americans have been able to provide, you know, it's going to be a much more challenging issue for those that are the most downtrodden in 2021. >> i want to get kasie hunt and jean robinson to jump in on the list. we will start with kasie. >> good morning. i want to start with the first item on your list.

46 asterisk. you are talking about joe biden and whether people believe he is president or not. i think one of the things that i have been focused on as i have been covering the electoral college, for example, is what this looks like to our adversaries abroad. >> what's so important about this, i know that we get so crazy about it every day in the united states and the twittersphere, but outside the u.s. there were a lot of people that really had hoped that things get back to normal if trump isn't the next president. and they are now realizing that's not true. they are realizing that u.s. political institutions have eroded, the legitimacy has eroded, this is not just about biden, but ongoing. there is no easy way to fix the idea that half of the country thinks that elections, whoever, you know, won isn't really legitimate, and that means that our adversaries think that our political models aren't as valuable as they might have been.

they have more capacity, more room for operation. think about china. in the last few weeks, they were able to get the europeans to sign a historic trade deal. once the europeans already knew that biden had won the election, because the europeans are hedging more. they are looking at the united states and saying we are not convinced even with biden as president that another four years someone else doesn't come back, that the americans are going to be committed to us as allies long term. when the world's largest economy is also the most unequal and the politically most divided of all of the wealthy democracies in the world, that creates a real problem in the way the world is run. >> ian, this is gene robinson. ian, before covid, if you had asked, polled the world a month before, we probably would have said that climate was the big issue facing the planet.

i think in a few years after covid goes away it will still be the big issue facing the planet. do you have any optimism now that we are going to have a u.s. administration that believes in the science, that wants to rejoin the paris accord, that wants to help lead the world towards clean energy future, does that give you any optimism on the number three issue on your list? >> absolutely it does, gene, because, you know, the willingness of government leaders to do more on climate has expanded, in part because of coronavirus. i mean, the biggest stimulus and redistribution program out there which was driven by angela merkel and emmanuel macron in europe is a very, very sustainable and green relief program, and it also changes the way that you interact with

europe if they are going to be cost imposed on you. in the united states, on the back of coronavirus, trump lost. he probably wouldn't have if there wasn't a pandemic. the change between trump and biden in terms of actual policy is on climate. you see that with the appointment of john kerry. xi jinping understands that. he doesn't want to be left by himself. those are positive. 2021 makes me feel that we have a better shot of only having two degrees of warming than any other time since we started this climate process. i will tell you, gene, at the same time, we don't have coordination in responding to climate. just like on coronavirus, we now know that we are facing a crisis. it's not like we are working together. so i do think that as the americans start taking much more seriously the idea we are not going to be about fossil fuels anymore, and this is from the

world's largest producers of fossil fuels, we will want to dominate the world of post-fossil fuels like solar and wind and supply chain for electric vehicles, but the chinese do dominate nothose technologies now. and i think you are actually going to see climate a area of greater competition between the u.s. and china this year and will be one of the areas that drivers for greater conflicts between the countries. it's not a kumbaya moment where we all save the whales. the fwee ogeopolitics will over this and be problematic for us. >> thank you for bringing this list. still ahead, polls are now open in georgia where today's two runoff elections will determine control of the smith. president trump campaigned last night but kept the spotlight on himself and his failed re-election bid, even pressuring the vice president to get involved. plus, house majority whip jim clyburn will join the

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some of the numbers, i think it's pretty clear that we won. we won very substantially georgia. >> the reason i am having to stand here today is because there are people in positions of authority and respect who have said their votes didn't count and it's not true. >> they are shredding ballots, in my opinion, based on what i heard. >> there is no shredding of ballots going on. that's not real. it's not happening. >> brad, why did they put the votes in three times? you know, they put them in three times. >> there was no problem with the m machine and scanning. if somebody took a stack of ballots and scanned them multiple times, you would have a lot of votes with no corresponding ballots.

>> it was stuffed with votes. they weren't in an official voter box. they were in what looked to be suitcases or trunks, suitcases, but they weren't in voter boxes. >> there is videotape of this. this is what is really frustrated. the president's legal team had the entire tape. they watched the entire tape and then from our point of view intentionally misled the state senate, voters and the people of the united states about this. wh when i listen to the audio of the phone call, i wanted to scream. >> have they moved the inner parts of the machines and replaced them with other parts? >> no. >> are you sure, ryan? >> i'm sure. i'm sure, mr. president. >> see, this is what i don't fully understand. no one is changing parts or pieces out of dominion voting machines. that's not a real -- yoo even know what that means.

>> right. top georgia election official gabriel sterling with that reality check yesterday for president trump. good morning and welcome to "morning joe." it is tuesday, january 5th. along with joe, willie and me we have chief white house correspondent for "the new york times" peter baker, former u.s. senator now an msnbc political analyst claire mccaskill and co-founder and ceo of axios jim vandehei. it was painful to watch but had to be done by these georgia election officials, joe. republicans who seem to be able to stand up to trump in a way that many others have not to his face and to the cameras. >> well, thing is, the republicans, lifelong republicans, they support donald trump. they supported donald trump and they have been elected -- >> they also support facts. >> and we are actually starting to see a split finally in the republican party between those

who are willing to actually work, to engage in the president's attempt at sedition against the united states of america, undermining american democracy and those republicans, some in the senate who would go up to the line, but pull back at the last second, decided that maybe, just maybe sedition and treason against the united states may not be a good way to finish out the term. but, willie, the president's claims are beyond outrageous. he has picked them up from the sewers of the internet, and he passes them off as fact when josh hawley knows that they are lies. ted cruz knows that they are lies. ron johnson, you know, to be honest wi"witwith you ron johns doesn't know the difference between a mike basket and a

blend he and his lawnmower. ron johnson gets confused easily. but most of those people know, all of them know donald trump is lying. donald trump knows he is lying. >> they're lying. >> and yet they are going to conduct a vote tomorrow where they are going to commit treason against the united states of america. sedition against the united states of america, trying to hold up and some overturn the popular will of how many people voted? 150 million americans? >> a little more than that, yeah. >> it's like nothing, obviously, that we have ever seen in this country since the civil war. >> yeah. those were the faces right there. there will happen tomorrow, the day after the georgia senate election. >> put those faces up again. these are the people who are voting to help the president's attempt to commit treason against the united states of

america. take a good long look at them. sorry, willie, go ahead. >> last night president trump in his appearance in georgia on the eve of this election that determine control of the united states senate is recruiting publicly mike pence, his own vice president, saying we hope he comes through on wednesday. now, mike pence has a ceremonial role when this electoral college vote takes place officially in the united states senate and in the congress on wednesday, but donald trump is recruiting him and asking him to do something more. he views him as a judge at a trial, which is not how this works at all. but now you have those senators, the president of the united states and the vice president all working together on this effort. it will fail. we know that because we know how this system works. but they are going out in a failed attempt and they know it's going to fail. they are sticking their necks out to participate in what you describe as sedition. it's hard to describe it any other way. you had -- >> to apiece a crazy man. >> to apiece the president who, as you said, joe, he is plucking

those theories, we will hear from ben collins in a minute, from qanon. and as he describes them, it's clear he doesn't quite understand them. he is throwing terms out and theories out and patiently the secretary of state of georgia, brad raffensperger and his attorney on that call are saying, no, mr. president, no, sir, that didn't happen. you could see the frustration from gabe terlg the elections official we heard from point by point refuting this in a state where the vote has been counted three times. three times in the state of georgia the vote has been counted, and president trump at his rally last night asking people to go vote for two republicans in place where he claims the vote was rigged previously. >> and he also claims, or at least one of his lawyers claimed, that kelly loeffler was part of a conspiracy theory to rig the runoffs. the president even hinted that in the tweet earlier.

but claire mccaskill, i am wondering, i don't think you have been in the public light since 1993 when i first started campaigning. i don't think in, god, all that time, i don't think i have ever, over a quarter of a century, ever said a politician was guilty of sedition or treason. i know that conservatives have always done that. i don't think i am one of them. you know, there is some big 1960s book that conspiracy theorists on the right call it treason. i'm just curious your -- you're an attorney, a former prosecutor, you're a senator. is it to harsh to accuse a president of the united states and those who are conspiring with him right now of committing sedition against the united states of america? committing treason against the

united states of america? because you look at the federal statute. look at michelle goldberg, she starts her column with a federal statute this morning, and just look at the federal statute. sure looks like this president is guilty of something, and it sure seems like sedition to me. >> i think, joe, that we are so worn down by the behavior of this guy and his lies. think of what he has done. he started lying early and often, and his supporters looked the other way and became numb to it. frankly, all of us became somewhat numb to how often and how robust his lies were. so he's taken that strategy and he's applied it to this election. he started lying about the security of this election months ago. so now, because some of his followers believe these lies,

that is the little flimsy excuse, which i believe is seditious, for these elected senators to ignore the constitution. you went through the list. i will tell you, not only do the majority of these senators know better, not only do they know that this is a total stunt on his part, the other thing that'sing that's interesting to me is the siz up this is causing in the republican party and the senate. i talked to a lot of senators the last week. what interesting is seeing your senators from a lot of these guys' states are voting in favor of the constitution. they are going to perform their ministerial duty. they know they have no power to overturn the states. they know what these guys are doing is not conservative. it's radical. it's extreme. it's anything but being a constitutional conservative. so you see splits within delegations for the majority of these states, and that is really unusual because usually two

republican senators from a state kind of talk to each other and go the same way, especially if the senior senator is explaining that this is a dumb move. they are ignoring that advice from senior senators in the states. >> mike pence has propped up donald trump every step of the way. yet now the president is signaling he is ready to turn against his own vp unless pence tries to subvert american democracy. that predictable turn of events is next on "morning joe." among my patients, i often see them have teeth sensitivity as well as gum issues. does it worry me? absolutely. sensodyne sensitivity & gum gives us the dual action effect that really takes care of both our teeth sensitivity as well as our gum issues. there's no question it's something that i would recommend.

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♪ as we've mentioned, while the president's rally in georgia last night was intended to support the senate candidates, he spent much of his time

railing against his own failed bid for re-election. at one point the president put the pressure on vice president mike pence. zeroing in on the role that pence will play overseeing tomorrow's certification of the electoral college vote count. >> i hope mike pence comes through for us. i have to tell you. i hope that our great vice president, our great vice president comes through for us. he is a great guy. of course, if he doesn't come through, i won't like him quite as much. >> tomorrow, pence will preside over the proceedings as congress votes on the electoral college results. it's a role that is largely ceremonial. he doesn't have power to affect the outcome of those proceedings, but trump is pressuring him to do some dramatic act. >> donald trump doesn't

understand the constitution. he doesn't want to understand the constitution. >> he also thinks the people around him are that stupid, and many are. many are that stupid. they do what they think that he says they should do instead of what is right. and so why not push the envelope, is what trump is thinking. and the people around him are the bigger idiots because they know better. as "the new york times" puts it, pence's role will be akin to the presenter, opening the academy award envelope or reading the name of the movie that won best picture with no say in determining the winner. it may be worth noting that on the campaign trail in georgia yesterday, pence did not engage when the crowd began chanting "stop the steal." peter baker, you are following all of this. what are the chances mike pence would do something that crazy for donald trump? my gut is no. >> well, you know, it's hard to say. i don't know what he could do. i honestly don't know what they

see as the genuine options. the department of justice has already said that, you know, this louie gohmert lawsuit trying to preemptively order pence to take action was out of bounds. you know, he doesn't really have a role. his role is to open up the box, hand the piece of paper to the senators who will be the tellers, who will read the results outloud and that's it. then josh hawley and the republicans in the house can object. if they get one member of the senate and the house to object, they go their separate ways and vote. these votes are predetermined. we know these votes -- the democratic house is not going to unseat electors for joe biden and we have seen it more than enough republican senators say they wouldn't vote to do that either, we know this is there is a majority in the senate as well. we are going to go through a kabuki dance. it's the first time i think we have ever seen in our history a

sitting president of the united states lose an election and try to hang on it power even after the electoral college has voted, you know, through a series of false claims and, you know, increasingly desperate effort to pressure somebody, anybody in the system to allow him to stay in office despite the will of the people. >> jim vandehei, this appears to be the extreme extension of the old doctrine that the president put out years ago that he could shoot somebody on fifth avenue and everybody would stay him. now he is trying to subvert democracy and push and push and push and say how far will these people go with me. he has a group of united states senators and perhaps the vice president of the united states and tens of millions of his supporters who said, sure, i will go along for the ride. >> yeah, i mean, peter has a great piece in "the new york times" today looking at the historical anomaly. this has never happened before and people need to realize that. you have to ask why when you get

to the vote that peter laid out, why is it that probably more than half in total of elected republicans are going to vote to overturn the election or try to overturn the election? it's not just trump. when you get outside of washington, almost every voter you talk to, republican voter is with donald trump probably because of donald trump. they firmly seem to believe based on the reporting, based on talking to them, based on the in-box, in terms of people who are, like, emailing on a daily basis, they seem to believe it. there is nothing you could write, nothing you could say that changes their mind. this isn't a bunch of woke lefties that are doing this to donald trump. these are the trumpiest trumps out there. you are tom cotton, you are telling me he is not a trump trump guy? until yesterday he would have said he is one of the most trumpy republicans out there. the governor of georgia, handpicked by donald trump, if we were having this debate two weeks ago you would say he is in the top five republicans closest

to donald trump and most like donald trump. so it's not just the media. it's not just the lefties. it is all of these republicans who are close to him, and yet it doesn't seem to be moving the needle with his supporters, which is why the 2024 republicans are making the calculation that this will work in their advantage. >> coming up, where is president trump even getting these conspiracy theories? nbc's ben collins is tracing the origins of the president's delusions and he joins us next on "morning joe." ♪ ♪ ♪

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♪ peter baker, we get numbed by what we see day in and day out over the past four or five years. your article talks about how extraordinary this moment in time is. could you explain to our viewers just what a break from history this is and how this has never happened before? that we haven't seen a split like this since the civil war in 1861. >> yeah, i think it is important

to pull back every once in a while because we have gotten, as you say, so, you know, numb to what comes with this presidency the last four years. we have sort of lost touch of how unusual it is, right. 220 years ago in 1800 john adams, the second president of the united states, loses to thomas jefferson and he turns over power. in doing so, creates the precedent for a bedrock principle of american democracy that has held ever since. we have never seen since then a sitting president who lost the election trying to do what donald trump is doing. we have had disputed elections, certainly. 1876 is thought of as the worst one. there was of course a fight over the 2000 election. neither of those and the other ones that were argued about involved a sitting president trying to use the power of his office to somehow subvert the will of the voters. what you heard the president do with brad raffensperger wasn't just say, hey, i won an honest

election. he said i want you to find me the votes so i win. he dangled the idea that there might be a criminal exposure for a republican official in georgia if he didn't follow suit. he used the word criminal nine, tense times in that hour-long conversation. i don't know whether that's illegal or not. that's for lawyers to decide. it sounds an extraordinary application of pressure by a te person who has shown he is willing to use the justice department to search hserve his interests. this so out of the norm that it's worth stopping every once in a while to say, wait a second, this is not how america has worked in our lifetime. >> no, and if you know president trump's patterns and also his obsession with big reveals on his reality show, shows and whatever else he has done in the past, pageants, whatever, willie, i am sorry, it is -- in my opinion, it's very possible

knowing the nature of his personality that he actually thinks mike pence would do some reveal when he opens the envelope or passes it along that proclaims him the president of the united states, and that's what he is counting on from mike pence. and so i asked peter baker, who like -- so innocently is trying to stick to things that are normal, like the constitution and history and everything this country has been built on and every pos process that we have stuck to, the president is working outside the norms. i am telling you, the guy thinks mike pence is going to have, like, a special secret envelope with his name in it. he is delusional. >> i don't think there is any question about that. he has been saying that privately, pushing mike pence according to our reporting, according to reporting in "the new york times," saying figure something out. do something. then last night he threw it out into the open at that rally in georgia and said, mike pence better come through for us or else i am not going to like him so much.

let's go to georgia. the secretary of state there, that phone call that we were just discussing in which president trump urged the secretary of state to, quote, find votes. during the call, secretary of state brad raffensperger tried to warn the president not to rely on internet conspiracies. >> mr. president, the problem you have with social media, they, people can say anything. >> no, this isn't social media. this is trump media. it's not social media. it's really not. it's not social media. i don't care about social media. >> let's bring in nbc news reporter ben collins. good morning. good to see you. you cover this stuff. you cover qanon. you find yourself in the darkest corners of the internet. that's how you make your living. what did you think as you listened to the more than one hour phone call between pl president trump and brad raffensperger as president trump stumbled his way through these basic qanon conspiracy theories? >> yeah, i was startled by his knowledge and grasp of really

specific conspiracy theories that didn't even make it out of the qanon internet. they didn't make it to the civilian internet where most people live. they barely made it to facebook rumor level stuff. for example, the president targets this woman named ruby freeman, who is an election worker. she is a black woman. and 4chan specifically said this woman was -- the election using suitcases. this is an elaborate conspiracy theory. and the president specifically targeted this one hashtag called where's ruby. if you do the analytics on this hashtag, this was exclusively qanon hashtag. only a few hundred people re-tweeted this thing. it was all qanon accounts. you know, who is ruby freeman? she is a woman who sells purses on instagram and has a kiosk at the mall. she is not an elaborate scammer, which is what the president

called her. it's almost confounding that this person has this information coming to him through this pipeline. qanon was built on the idea that the democratic party is run by satanist child eaters and all this nonsense. that fell apart. there were several deadlines were passed. it's like a cult where they have hard deadlines of the rapture and it comes and goes. what happened instead? that network of people on twitter and facebook and blogs, they had spent the last two months finding these ridiculous ways the president can remain in office despite losing the election. >> ben, you mentioned a pipeline from qanon from these ses pools of the internet to the president of the united states. how are they making their way to the president, to the oval office that he can become so fluent in them? >> yeah, it's mostly just those qanon network factions on twitter. you know, they kind of come together. they build up these big re-tweets.

mika was right. she said this thing about how she is expecting this big reveal, you know, the president wants this big reveal to happen. there was a hashtag in qanon twitter called the pence card. they think there is going to be a literal card he can play where mike pence goes up there on wednesday and says, hey guess what? donald trump is still the president of the united states. this is just bonkers stuff from the very fringe corners of the internet. and they work together to push these things up. mostly it comes through this guy named ron watkins. he runs the website -- it used to be called 8chan. that's where the white nationalists were posting before they killed people. ron watkins has turned into a sort of election expert. he is on oan saying he knows things about voting machines. he has no experience in voting machines. the president re-tweets this guy constantly, his segments constantly, he who might be q from qanon.

he runs the website that qanon posts on rg right? that's where all of this is coming from. this is raw qanon just sort of like they are shifting their topic points. the democratic cabal and they are changing it to be about the president remaining in office. >> nbc's ben collins, thank you very much. and coming up, congressman jim clyburn is standing by. the house majority whip joins the conversation straight ahead on "morning joe." ♪ ooh la la by cherie

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two weeks from tomorrow, president-elect joe biden will be sworn in as the 46th president of the united states. his inauguration day will look drastically different than presidents past, including a historically crowd-lined ride from the capital down pennsylvania avenue that will be replaced by a virtual parade. what's that going to look like? our next guest knows all about

those plans as the co-chair of president-elect biden's presidential inaugural committee. the third ranking democrat in the united states house of representatives, majority whip jim clyburn, he is also chairman of the house select committee on the coronavirus crisis, which we will get to in just a moment. but, first, thanks very much for joining us again. happy new year. how else will this inaugural celebration be different this time around? >> thank you very much for having me. you know, it's going to be very, very different, but i do believe it will be very, very appreciated. so many people that i have heard from were really impressed by the way we conducted our national convention, which was virtually done, and they felt a real -- real good about it. so we're going to try to replicate that in this instance, and i think that people will be very pleased with it.

people know that when this inauguration is over, we want to have a pursuit of what i call to get beyond this so-called -- this pandemic that is really haunting this country in a very unique way. and we do not want to couldn't contribute to that at all. we don't want this to be a superspreader. we are going to do it in a way people will be around a year from now to celebrate the great accomplishments of this new administration. >> congressman, as you say, joe biden will be sworn in as at 46th president of the united states two weeks from tomorrow. but tomorrow, on january the 6th, some of your colleagues have said they will rise in objection to the certification of the electoral college. what would you say to those colleagues, some of them

incoming, some of them members you have worked with over the years who are planning to do that tomorrow? >> well, i would say to them, to remember that this country's greatness depends in large measure upon how we go about our business of protecting the integrity of this democracy, and what they are doing could very well cross the line and, in many ways, could threaten the future of this country's greatness. i have always adhered to a notion that our nation is great not because we are more enlightened than the other nations, but, rather, because we have always been able to repair our faults. and when we see faults in our electoral system, whatever it might be, we should go about the business of repairing those faults. not trying to circumvent them. not trying to replace our own

feelings for what people may have done on election day. so i would say to them, be careful, and be dignified, and let's make sure when it's all said and done, the american people will feel that we have acted in the best interest of serving this great democracy. >> jim, obviously, the margin between democrats and republicans much smaller than it was last session of congress when it was hard to get things done. what do you hope to see this democratic congress accomplish over the next two years partnering with republicans, because obviously you are going to have to figure out a way to partner with some republicans to pass meaningful legislation simply because the margin is so small. >> yes, the margin is smaller, but, you know, i think last year we had difficulty not so much

because of the size of our caucus, but, as you know, there was some transition taking place in the american electorate, and people needed to get to know each other. and i think we have done a pretty good job of getting to know each other. i think that was demonstrated when we had our organization on sunday. a lot of people thought that there would be a lot of con tank rouseness and we didn't have that. we really had a very good organization and we demonstrated the unity of our caucus, and i think this caucus has gotten to know each other and i do believe you are going to have a much more efficient operation going forward. >> so what is your top legislative goal for the next two years? >> number one, get beyond this pandemic. this problem is getting wrors as

you all have been reporting this morning. part of my job here in the congress is to select a committee on the coronavirus, trying to keep up with how owe spend our money, whether or not it's efficient, effective and equitable. that is number one with us. and once we get some semblance of control over this pandemic, then i want to see a comprehensive infrastructure program unlike anything that we have ever seen before. i am not talking about what we may have done to get beyond the great depression. i am talking about something that would take into account where this country is today. we have got to start treating the information highway the same way we treat the interstate highways, which means infrastructure has to include things like broadband, things like housing construction,

school construction. we have to have a comprehensive program that meet the needs of the american people at the same time we get this economy to stir in such a way that it will have an impact that will last for our children and grandchildren. that, to me, is what it's all about. >> mike barnicle is with us and has a question for you, congressman. mike. >> congressman, i think every american listening to you solidly agrees with your number one priority, to get people vaccinated. and yet the incompetence of this administration in distributing the vaccinations across the country, i don't know what it's like in south carolina, but it's laboriusly taking a long time in massachusetts. so my question to you, is given your role and the scope of your job responsibilities, on january 20th at noon, when joseph biden becomes president of the united states, how are you going to improve the distribution of vaccines and getting people vaccinated?

>> you know, one of the things i want to see this president do on january 20th, that afternoon, have it all prepared, sit down and sign a significant number of executive orders. among those executive orders i would hope would be the nationalization of the national guard. i think that that is the way to go. if you recall, i conducted a congressional response to katrina and rita, and but for the national guard, i don't know that we could have been as efficient and effective as we were. the national guard is a part of our military, but it's also people who live in these communities, people know the communities, people who know the people, and i think that that's the key to having the kind of distribution. so let's use the defense production act to get the materials that we need and let's

nationalize the national guard to carry out the implementation of those things. if we were to do that, i really believe that this new president will be able to accomplish 100 million vaccinations in his first 100 days. >> that is very helpful. congressman jim clyburn, thank you very much. and congressman clyburn talked about the ongoing challenges posed by the pandemic. it's something we have been following closely at knowyourvalue.com. we have a great piece from msnbc political analyst elise jordan who shares her experience of becoming a new mother amid covid and speaking of strong women, a reminder about know your value's exciting partnership with forbes. we are creating a 50 over 50 list, and you can nominate a woman who has found new success after 50 and paid it forward to other women. go to knowyourvalue.com for much more about 50 over 50.

as we go to break, here is a live look at georgia voters lining up to cast their ballots in today's pivotal senate runoffs. georgia flipped blue for biden, but will it stay blue today? we'll be right back with much more "morning joe." ever wonder what retinol dermatologists use to fight wrinkles? it's what i use! neutrogena®. the #1 retinol brand used most by dermatologists. rapid wrinkle repair® visibly smooths fine lines in 1 week. deep wrinkles in 4. so you can kiss wrinkles... and other wrinkle creams goodbye! rapid wrinkle repair®. pair with our most concentrated retinol ever for 2x the power. neutrogena®. always have been.er. and always will be. never letting anything get in my way. not the doubts, distractions,

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the secretary wants me to make clear that everybody's vote

is going to count, everybody's vote did count. i want to make that abundantly clear. if you care about the values and the direction of the nation you want to see, it is your obligation to turn out and vote tomorrow, be you democrat however, right now, given the nature of the president's statements and several other people who have been aligned with him previously who have had a rally saying protest and don't vote, we're specifically asking you and telling you, please turn out and vote tomorrow. one of the things specifically i've had to argue with people whom i've known for 20 years. we feel like our election was stolen, our votes don't count. okay, i'm not acknowledging the election was stolen because it wasn't or that there was massive voter fraud, because thereupon wasn't. but if you believe there was, the best thing for you to do is to show out and vote and make it harder for them to steal. if that's what you genuinely in your heart of hearts believe, turn out and vote. >> that was more from top

georgia election official gabriel sterling yesterday pleading with georgia voters to head to the polls today, explaining their votes will, in fact, count. despite the disinformation president trump is spreading. joining us now, the co-host of npr's morning edition steve i inskeep. "imperfect union. how they mapped the west and helped cause the civil war" is out today in paperback. and we'll get to that in just a moment. first, you've been covering the presidential election and the georgia elections. what are your thoughts going into the georgia runoffs today? >> well, i actually think of this research that i did about the 19th century when i think about the election period now. for a number of reasons. one of them being that we just heard joe biden in georgia last night saying everything is on the line. we heard president trump, the departing president, say last

night, everything is on the line. that's a common message for politicians to deliver. but it's something that people feel right now that elections mean everything. that they could mean catastrophe for the country and that's true no matter which side of the divide you're on. and that's something that was absolutely true in the 1850s as well. it was a moment when the country was divided between the north and the south and each side saw a change in country. the north was becoming more populist. they had stronger demographics. they saw an opportunity to take what the south saw as total power of the country which the south ultimately resisted by trying to secede. the north also feared the south was taking undue power and that led to an extreme form of politics that went wrong. i'm not saying it's going to happen now. i'm saying that is something that makes politics a little more dangerous. >> we always think that the age that we're living in has the dirtiest brand of politics that

this constitutional republic has ever confronted. but, of course, talk to anybody that's written history about the election of 1800 and they'll tell you that's the worst. you looked very closely at 1856 and you talk about how myth making, because of the telegraph, myth making was possible. the age of celebrity was possible, but also the smearing of john fremont and the other candidates. just absolutely horrific. >> oh, yeah. it was remarkable. john charles fremont was this super famous explorer in his time. explorer of the american west and participant in the american conquest of california. the republican party and their very first presidential election chose him as their nominee. it was almost a husband and wife team because his wife jessie benton fremont was also super famous and he was smeared. there was an anti-immigrant movement at the time, which was also against a particular religious faith. it was against catholicism then

and people suggested that fremont was not born in the united states. that he was an immigrant. that he was a catholic. and fremont had to decide how to deal with these things. there are other parallels as well, joe, to this moment. i was amazed in researching the election of 1856 to find out that republicans in their very first presidential election were fearful of votes being stolen in the state of pennsylvania. they were convinced there was vote buying in pennsylvania. i didn't find any evidence of it then. just as there's virtually no evidence of fraud now. but i think that's one of the reasons that the falsehoods that have been spread in this election resonate for some people because there are tales that people have told each other again and again and again through history. people talk about richard daley stealing the 1960 election for president dkennedy so it field

familiar when someone sxcomes o and says an election has been stolen. there has been election fraud at parts in history but it was a lot harder today than it was then. >> you think of a celebrity presidential candidate and a celebrity president. so what did it mean in 1856 if you're john fremont to be a celebrity when all they had was the telegraph. >> oh, my goodness. this guy -- well, the telegraph to them was revolutionary. it was like twitter is to us or the internet is to us. there was a national debate from newspaper to newspaper, but it was very slow. the telegraphs sped things up. that did help john charles fremont become even more famous, although he was also a fantastic self-promoter. he had a way of getting himself in the newspapers even as he was accomplishing things. and then inflating his accomplishments in western exploration even more when he wrote those best-selling books about his adventures with his wife. it was a magazine in 1850 that

called fremont one of the world's three most important historical figures since jesus christ so he was super famous and super admired and ultimately used that to run for president. a job for which he wasn't really qualified. i mean, it's really interesting in retrospect. some of the people who supported him said john charles fremont did a great thing in being the first republican nominee. an anti-slavery party. he moved the country toward finally confronting slavery. then they'd go on to say, thank goodness he didn't win because he would have been a terrible president. he was just famous. >> today as we look -- the president of the united states, the sitting president of the united states is an expert at flourishing within the media and doing damage to this country.

can you calculate or compare or contrast, it's hard to do given the difference in time but the damage done by one man, donald trump, to our institutions and our faith in elections, our faith in government, to the damage done years ago when john charles fremont was active. >> well, in the 1850s, the united states was heading toward civil war and heading towards secession. and i know people talk about that and fear that, but, of course, i'm hopeful we're not going there. i'm not going to predict the future as a journalist. we'll see where we go. there certainly have been a lot of attacks on american institutions, under this presidency, and that's not even a criticism. it's a statement of fact. it's a thing that donald trump in many cases said he was elected to go and try to do. and now we have an administration with a different point of view that's going to try to do some repair work. but i'd like to suggest an analogy for the way that things might be changed.

you can change this country if you build a successful political coalition to do something that is hard. this is something that the new republican party did in the 1850s. there had not been an effective coalition against slavery. that was their central issue and they assembled a coalition of voters. quite unpleasant people who nevertheless agreed on a basic approach to slavery to restricting slavery, and that was something that fundamentally changed the country even though it ultimately took a civil war to do it. joe has a book that describes another instance of this. harry s. truman facing the need to build a new global order after world war ii and there's not necessarily a great political consensus for america's involvement in the world, even after world war ii, but somebody had to go out and do the hard work of building a political coalition for that. i find it particularly

interesting in listening to my colleagues who have been talking with people in the incoming biden administration. their thinking, the president-elect's national security adviser is thinking in a particular way about foreign policy. very much the way truman did, and saying we have this idea of an international order. we have to build a political consensus for this. we have to get that done because there is a reason that some people voted for donald trump's idea of foreign policy. they didn't agree with what the establishment foreign policy had been for many years. and that policy has to be sold differently and maybe it has to also change. >> the book is "imperfect union:how jessie and john fremont invented the west, invented celebrity and helped cause the civil war." out now in paperbook. steve inskeep, thank you for being on with us this morning. and that does it for us this morning. stephanie ruhle picks up the coverage right now.

>> hi there. i'm stephanie ruhle, live from msnbc headquarters here in new york city. it is tuesday, january 5th. election day in georgia. and a huge day for the entire country. right now polls are open across the peach state. voters there deciding who georgia will be sending to washington and, in turn, whether democrats or republicans will be in charge of the senate. as the atlanta journal-constitution put it recently, no pressure, georgia. but the outcome of the biden presidency is riding on what happens today. that is because right now there are 50 republicans in the senate, 46 democrats, and two independents that typically vote with the democrats. if democrats win both of georgia's senate seats that makes it 50/50 with vice president kamala harris as the tiebreaker. essentially giving democrats control of the white house and all of congress. we've got reporters covering every angle of this in georgia