i personally am going to be thinking about those law enforcement agents and capitol police officers as i cover this story. thanks for getting up "way too early" with us on this thursday morning. "morning joe" starts right now. ground ball to torres and that'll do it! a no-hitter for cory clubber on a wednesday night in texas. clubber becomes part of forever. >> there it was. cory clubber last night in texas. the yankees starter who's had a bunch of years of injuries coming back strong in his first season with the yankees, faced only 28 hitters. one walk away from throwing a perfect game against the texas rangers. welcome to "morning joe" on this thursday morning. joe, i know you as a red sox fan, even as a red sox fan can appreciate clubber, who, look, the guy, there was a chance he was going to be out of baseball,

hurt his shoulder, hurt his harm, two-time cy young award winner. and last night going down to texas, stoically, quietly, facing only 28 hitters in the sixth no-hitter of this major league season. >> and of course, the first in major league baseball, the american league east. but there have been some -- i think there were some no-hitters in the central time zone just last week. >> two days ago. >> jonathan lemire, listen, we want good things to happen to american league east teams. i've got to say, though, i started watching in the seventh inning, because, of course, not to cheer against our fellow american league east brethren, but i noticed he had a strike zone like -- >> oh, come on! >> that greg maddux would be envious of, right? he throws one actually in the doughout -- >> wow. >> and they say, on the corner.

>> this is underneath you, joe. let's celebrate greatness. >> i know there's the old adage that you don't talk about a no-hitter because you don't want to jinx it while it's in progress. i texted everyone i knew, i went through my source list, i started tweeted randomly. i think that, look, this is already our sixth no-hitter of the year and the fact that corey kluber who has thrown a total of three or four innings since 2006, i think this is the most compelling argument yet that major league baseball needs to fix the mound, move it back, fix it, if corey kluber can do this. >> my intention was to open the door to celebrate greatness. just for one night. and immediately, right down to the low road for both of you. >> yeah, i just want to -- we care about calling balls and

strikes. and we don't have to move the mound back, lemire. just call a ball a ball and a strike a strike. and it made me sad last night to see that umpire last night cheat in the game of baseball. this goes down in the history books and i'm just wondering whether we put an asterisk by it right now or not. >> was he in pinstripes? >> 107 pitches, 71 strikes. that is. it accuracy. just painting the corners. just tying people up all night. corey kluber, first no-hitter since 1999, when david cohn -- for the yankees. >> that is so exciting, willie. we're so glad to share this with you. lemire is right, though, by the way. he started texting me, i swear to god, i had an event last night with senator amy klobuchar, a book event, a

virtual book event. and in the middle of it, i started getting texts. he said, please, don't tell anybody, please keep it to yourself, but corey kluber has a no-hitter going through the fifth inning, don't say anything, you'll jinx it. >> i have them, too. >> he was doing his best to jinx it. >> i have them too. >> speaking of amy klobuchar. they had -- "the new york times" did a remarkable remembrance of her father and that guy, i encourage everybody to read it, what an extraordinary life. we heard about his battles with alcohol. he fought those and had been sober for 25 years, but this guy climbed the materhorn eight times, climbed kilimanjaro, put

chalk between his teeth and had a sharpshooter shoot it out. the stories he covered were incredible. and little-known fact. senator klobuchar's father was the kid at the time to call minnesota -- one of three kids to call minnesota for jfk after they looked at the numbers and that put jfk over the top. the ap called it like 15 minutes later. so he had an absolutely wonderful life and of course, we still -- our thoughts remain with amy and the entire family. >> yeah, no, that's a nice remembrance -- the newspaper up, the "star tribune" in minneapolis had great piece about him the other day. recommend everyone will read that. we will get to the news now. former -- msnbc political analyst, michael steele, thank you for also shaking your head, michael. and cofounder of punch bowl news, ana palmer. we're happy to say, she is now an msnbc contributor as well. welcome aboard, ana.

great to see you. if you haven't been able to tell already, mika has the morning off. >> yes. >> so let's get into the news. the bill to create a bipartisan commission to investigate the january 6th capitol attack has passed the house, but faces an uphill battle in the senate. 35 house republicans went against party leadership to join all democrats in voting "yes." "the washington post" framing it this way. quote, republican leaders are trying to sink the legislation that probably would scrutinize former president trump's role in the riot and his conversations with republican lawmakers that day. here is how democratic congressman tim ryan of ohio put it on the house floor yesterday. >> to the other 90% of our friends on the other side of the aisle, holy cow! incoherence! no idea what you're talking about! benghazi, you guys chased the former secretary of state all over the country, spent millions of dollars.

we have people scaling the capitol, hitting the capitol police with lead pipes across the head and we can't get bipartisanship! what else has to happen in this country! cops -- this is a slap in the face to every rank-and-file cop in the united states. if we're going to take on china, if we're going to rebuild the country, if we're going to reverse climate change, we need two political parties in this country that are both living in reality and you ain't one of 'em. >> yeah. you know, the first part of that clip, we didn't show. he actually did, he was grateful to the republicans that were working in a bipartisan way to make it happen. he called them out by name. but it is surprising that those people who were cowering for their lives, many of them, don't want the country and the world to know what happened on january the 6th, when the united states capitol was breached in a way it hasn't been breached since the war of 1812.

there's just -- i mean, to vote against an inquiry to figure out what happened that day, it's -- that is about as staggering as it gets. >> it is. and now it's going to the senate, joe, where it doesn't look good, frankly. it needs support from at least ten republicans to get past the filibuster. it needs 60 votes to get this thing going. yesterday, mitch mcconnell urged his members to oppose the bill, calling it slanted and unbalanced and argued the ongoing congressional investigations are sufficient to probe the attack. quote, it's not at all clear what new facts or additional investigation yet another commission could lay on top of the existing efforts by law enforcement and congress. so, ana, what changes here? i mean, it passed through the house, but if you've got to get to 60 votes and mitch mcconnell is telling his caucus not to vote for it, how does this pass? >> i think it's going to face a really uphill battle. the real question is, how hard does mcconnell push his members

to not support this? does he let this be a vote of conscience? we've been hearing privately that senate republicans are leery of not letting this move forward and filibustering it. when you such a bipartisan vote in the house, 35 republicans going and supporting this measure. chuck schumer has said, he's moving forward with or without republicans. he's going to press that hand. and in the next couple of weeks, we'll see how much republicans are willing to in the senate say, no, we don't need this commission. >> and i'm a little confused here. which is nothing new. i was surprised last night when i was watching a strike zone the size of a county fair, but we'll get back to that later. you always hear from fund-raisers moving into any election, they go, oh, we've got to win the house. i know you don't think it

means -- we've got subpoena. you don't want the democrats to have subpoena power or the republicans to have subpoena power and go after our president. i'm a little confused. democrats control the house. democrats control the senate. they can run these commissions. they can set them up any way they want to set them up. they have the power of subpoena. they can call anybody they want to call. and of course, chuck schumer can do it in the senate as well. i'm sure he'll get 50 votes for that. not even 50 votes. just tell your chairman, chairwoman, go, go do this. go investigate. go. you've got the power of subpoena. i'm not really sure why people are wringing their hands over not having a joined committee? what's the difference? because look at what republicans did on benghazi with just republicans basically supporting

that inquiry? >> that's a good question. and you're totally right. if nancy pelosi wants to have a select committee or have her chairman subpoena people on this and what happened on january 6th, that can happen. i think what they were tryinged to is say, this is a stepback moment. this is a 9/11-esque moment where we should have a bipartisan commission. and the speaker really moved. she had started this to be a much more partisan operation. it was going to be, who can have subpoena power. it's now an evenly balanced commission. you have to have both democrats and republicans supporting subpoenas. but this goes back to the fact where they wanted to have something where there weren't two sets of facts. republicans were invested in the effort so they could actually bring back to the people of this country to say, this is actually what did happen. not necessarily what donald trump is saying, not what some of these fringe members and the marjorie taylor greens of the world is saying. this is what happened, lay it out and make a pathway forward. that doesn't seem like it's going to be possible. >> michael steele, do you

remember, former president trump's second impeachment trial, when republican and senate leader mitch mcconnell gave an impassioned speech, announcing what happened on january 6th and saying that of course that the president fueled that violence at the capitol and that nothing like this should ever be allowed to happen again. since then, he's done everything in his power to walk the other way and walk away from those remarks. and here, blocking a bipartisan commission to investigate truly what happened there. i'll let you just go here, michael. this is yet another cynical political play from mitch mcconnell. what does this say about the state of his senate caucus, where the republicans stands right now, and the grip that donald trump still has on the gop? >> well, it says a lot about the grip. more than anything else. i mean, mcconnell, before donald trump said anything or really weighed in on this with respect to mcconnell, was like, well, i'll take a look at this.

i'm not sure. and donald trump basically called him a punk. and next thing you know, mitch mcconnell is like, no, no, i see no reason to have this investigation. this is about a couple of things, one of which involves consequences. the gop's calculation right now, when they look at redistricting, they look at the gerrymandering and look at what state republican legislatures are doing to fix next year's elections and elections beyond that. they see no consequences at the ballot box. they think they have the advantage. so why upset your base unnecessarily? because at the end of the day, that's all that matters. and why upset donald trump unnecessarily? because at the end of that day, that's certainly all that matters. so there is a calculation here that there will be very little consequence to this. and that, yes, democrats and others will harangue them and there'll be bad headlines. but when it's all said and done,

so what? what are you going to do to me, right? and that's -- that's the stunning cynicism here in all of this. just the cold, calculated, political approach to one of the most devastating events in our countries since the war of 1812. where we can't even say, let's find out why this happened. let's get to the bottom of who was involved. and the second piece is, cya. this is all about covering for kevin mccarthy and other republicans who are up to their elbows in this thing, because they played a role, whether it was talking to donald trump that day or whether it was maybe sending a text message to people who were storming outside those doors, there's a lot of information here they don't want disclosed. so you have these two pieces and they're sitting there saying, what are you going to do about

it? and i think the democrats should just push through it. you've made the play to bipartisanship. you wanted america to see it full frontal. and the republicans have said basically to the country, screw you. and so now i think the democrats say, all right, let's give this to the committees and let's go and do the investigation. >> so, joe, we've got votes in consecutive weeks. last week's vote to oust liz cheney from her leadership position, making the statement that going out publicly and speaking truth and saying the election was not stolen cannot stand in the republican party. she's kicked out of her job. a week later you have this vote in the house that says, no, we don't want to look through carefully and closely what happened on january 6th, what led up to it, what the security failures were on that day. this is clearly, it can't be more stark from republicans saying, we don't want to take a look at what happened on january 6th or the events that followed that led to an attack on the united states capitol. it shouldn't be a controversial issue to investigate an attack

to overturn a presidential election, but here we are. >> here we are. and i'll say again, democrats still have the power to call witnesses. they still have the power to subpoena. i actually think, for democrats, who want to know what the truth actually is, without having to stumble over qanon types screaming and yelling and trying to get on these committees, here's what nancy pelosi does. here's what -- or maybe chuck schumer does, his own version of this. but nancy pelosi can still call a committee in the house of representatives. and here's what you do. you've got 35 republicans, i guess, around 35 republicans that voted for this inquiry. she picks four -- yeah, she picks four democrats and four republicans. and maybe two of those republicans are adam kininger and liz cheney. and two former republican attorney who is served in past administrations. and then, she -- the democrats

or republicans, those 35, she puts two on there. and let's them choose two former republican attorney generals to be on there, or two former administration officials, maybe you get someone like a robert gates or somebody like -- i don't know, like i said, former attorney general, former administration officials who are bipartisan and who are respected and who will follow the facts instead of donald trump. and there you have something that america will stop and watch. we've seen that liz cheney is actually in the eyes of kevin mccarthy and donald trump, madingly focused on getting to the truth of january 6th. adam kinzinger has said the same. there are 35, 34 other republicans who have voted that way. this can happen.

it doesn't need to be a joint deal. the fbi is running its investigation, right? the senate can run its own investigation. and in the house, i would love to see the house run an investigation, four republicans, four democrats. but liz cheney and kinzinger on the republican side, two former republican attorney generals and then the democrats pick out their four. and willie, you're going -- not only are you going to get to the bottom of this, but because you've got a 4-4 split and also because you've got liz cheney on there, actually getting to the truth about what kevin mccarthy knew and what kevin mccarthy knew it and what kevin mccarthy say and when kevin mccarthy said it, you'll get a lot of people watching that and the truth will come tumbling out. >> and we heard congressman bennie thompson of mississippi who argued the establishment of this commission on our show yesterday said that his suspicion that kevin mccarthy don't want this commission because of what it will reveal

about them. we'll come back to this story, but we want to turn to the middle east where israeli officials reportedly expect to reach a cease-fire deal with hamas this week. that even as prime minister benjamin netanyahu gives no public indication that his military will back down. a senior official tells "the new york times" that the two sides are hoping to reach an agreement by friday, but in speaking with our own andrea mitchell yesterday, a spokesman for the israeli military said he saw no signs that the fighting is nearing its end. netanyahu said yesterday the strikes will continue until hamas is defeated. meanwhile, the prime minister is facing growing pressure from here in the united states. in a phone call yesterday, the white house indicated that pyatt told netanyahu that he, quote, expected a significant de-escalation today. israeli attacks have continued, though, this morning, with idf claiming it is targeting hamas weapons and tunnels in gaza. there have been no reports of attacks from hamas today. at least 239 people have been killed in the 11 days of

fighting, mostly on the palestinian side. joining us now, longtime foreign correspondent, martin fletcher, who is reporting for nbc news in tel aviv. martin, good morning. so what are the hopes there on the ground for a cease-fire here in the next couple of days? >> i think it's looking pretty good, willie. the public spin from the government that andrea mitchell was told yesterday about the country needing more time to finish its operation, that's not what the prime minister is being told by the security officials. there was a meeting last night, the israeli army and air force, the message that they gave the prime minister was that the army can and should end the operation. so militarily, it seems that the likelihood of an end to the operation could come soon. questions about whether that's what the government actually wants to do. that's the issue right now. hamas, for its side, has said this morning that they believe that there could be a cease-fire within a day or two. and they called it a mutually

agreed cease-fire. that's an important indication that israel and hamas are talking and that a cease-fire could be imminent. but i've got to point out one thing, willie. that in 2014, the last major battle between israel and hamas, there was a cease-fire then at the end of the fighting. but guess what, the fighting continueded. then there was another cease-fire, more fighting. another cease-fire, more fighting. it went on six or seven times. there were about six or seven cease-fires. so although it does look as though a cease-fire is imminent now, and we hope it's the final cease-fire, it may not be the end of the story, even when it happens. >> and prime minister netanyahu giving no public indication that he is going to stop as of yet. martin fletcher in tel aviv, thanks for being with us. so jonathan, we talked about pride making the phone call to prime minister netanyahu saying, you've got to de-escalate today. is that happening? how much pressure is the white house now exerting different from the last few days?

>> the white house was willing to give israel some space here, some room. they did not call for an immediate cease-fire. they stood back as israel launched attacks at hamas in response to what was happening there. but that tenor has now changed significantly in the last 48 hours. it started with behind the scenes pressure. president biden spoke to netanyahu on earlier this week. jake sullivan, national security adviser, others in the biden administration spoke to their counterparts and said, look, this needs to wind down. there's only so much longer we can cover for you. you're losing the support of the national community if this continues much longer. and yesterday, we heard from the president in his strongest terms yet, like, this needs to end. this needs to de-escalate. these operations need to cease within the next day or so. and certainly, the israelis, as we've just discussed, publicly, are not quite ready to wind it down yet. but there are signals that they're communicating to the administration that they are going to start slowing thepace of this. that in the next day or so could have what would be considered a

very fragile cease-fire. and i think we all need to understand that spasms of violence could creep up again over the weekend. but they are hopeful that by tomorrow, friday, that the vast majority of these attacks, that they will be done, they'll have wound down. and that's what the administration, the white house and the president personally saying, that needs to happen. >> and a cease-fire takes two sides. jonathan, thanks. still ahead on "morning joe," former president trump responds to the news that the new york attorney general's office is pursuing a criminal investigation of the trump organization. plus, congresswoman mikie sherrill of new jersey, a veteran and former federal prosecutor will be our guest. she says without the january 6th commission, our country will not be able to heal. also this morning, senate majority whip dick durbin will join our conversation. and a new warning from dr. anthony fauci, who says some americans are misinterpreting the new mask guidance from the cdc. we'll let you know what he said when we come right back on "morning joe." d when we come right back on "morning joe."

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this week in covid history. it's mid-may, 2020, and americans are heading into a somber memorial day party weekend! the 20s are roaring again. >> we're in quarantine and i need to get out and party! whoo! >> yeah, whoo! as in wuhan! but shouldn't these youngsters being wearing masks? >> if he's not wearing masks, i'm not wearing masks. if he's not worried, i'm not worried. >> the president? >> yes, sir. >> that's right, the president. >> i had on one before. wore one in this back area. it looked very nice, but i didn't want to give the press the pleasure of seeing it. >> his generosity is contagious. who needs a mask anyway when you have a miracle cure. >> hydroxychloroquine. >> warning.

not effective. >> i happen to be taking it. >> hydroxychloroquine? >> i'm taking it. hydroxychloroquine. i think it's good. i heard a lot of good stories. >> who needs studies when you hear stories. here's my evidence. i get a lot of positive calls about it. >> good enough for me. >> i'm still here. and i tested very positively in a -- in another sense. this morning, yeah. i tested positively toward negative, right? no, i tested perfectly this morning, meaning i tested negative. >> but, uh-oh! here comes negative nancy. >> he's our president and i would rather him not be taking something that has not been approved, especially in his, shall we say, weight group, which is morbidly obese. >> oh, snap! >> what say you? >> pelosi is a sick woman. she's got a lot of problems. a lot of mental problems. >> speaking of mental problems. it's time for this week's eric trump's pandemic prediction. >> guess what. after november 3rd, coronavirus

will magically all of a sudden go away and disappear. >> why does that sound familiar? >> it's going to disappear. one day, it's like a miracle, it will disappear. >> he got it from watching you, dad. this has been this week in covid history. >> oh, my god. how did we survive? well, a lot of people didn't survive, actually. so, i love the -- the 1950s hydroxychloroquine commercial. warning, not effective. i mean, i mean, he was pushing hydroxychloroquine nonstop. and did not get it. i will say, again, he got -- he picked the right companies for the vaccines, so, we can be grateful for that this year, but man, got a lot of things wrong. >> yeah, i'd forgotten about that moment, too, where he said, i tested positive -- and then he had to go down this long and winding road, meaning, it was positive news, meaning, i tested negative. just all over the map.

unfortunately, all of that comedy, jimmy kimmel's team put that together, led to a lot of deaths, unfortunately. dr. anthony fauci speaking yesterday with mike allen of axios raising concerns that some americans are, quote, misinterpreting the cdc's new mask guidance. >> in reality, that's what we're seeing, because people are hearing -- and they misinterpret guidelines. that happens all the time. it's not their fault. that's just, people either read them quickly and listen and hear half of it. they are feeling that we're saying, you don't need a mask anymore! that's not what the cdc said. they said, if you are vaccinated, you can feel safe that you will not get infected, either outdoors or indoors. it did explicitly not say that unvaccinated people should abandon their masks. >> so if you have the vaccine, you can take the mask off. that's the bottom line. meanwhile, the debate over masks returns to capitol hill with

house democrats rejecting a rule to roll back the requirement. kevin mccarthy argued that masks should no longer be required in the chamber. house speaker nancy pelosi's office offered this response. get your members vaccinated against covid-19, first. the resolution was defeated in a party line vote of 218-210. members of congress were among the first americans with access to the vaccines, but many of them have not been vaccinated. several republican lawmakers publicly have refused to get a shot. dozens more have refused to disclose whether they have been vaccinated. ana palmer, actually over in the senate, all democrats and most republicans have been vaccinated. it's the house republicans, as you might expect, where a lot of them, i think the number is less than half of republicans, have publicly said, yes, i have been vaccinated. >> yeah, it's a big problem for them. we've seen this week where house republicans have tried to go to the house floor. and the speaker is not playing

here. she is buying them. they have a first warning and a $500 fine. and to this point, she's not going to change it right now. because there's at least 75%, which is what the most recent report say of some -- only 75% actually being vaccinated. and so, there's a lot of concern about what that means for staff, what that means for those who are in compromised positions. and unfortunately, you know, kevin mccarthy isn't telling all of his members, hey, guys, just go get vaccinated and he can get rid of the masks. he's just trying to make a political point here. >> michael steele, it's really -- the republican party, my former party, being a party that is taking pride in ignoring medicine. ignoring basic science. and you know, you know a lot of these people are being hypocrites. you know that a lot of these people have secretly gotten vaccines. and they're posing publicly to their anti-vax crowd.

to the qanon crowd. and claiming that they didn't. and so, of course, it's not only impacting people as they go on the house floor to deliberate, but impacting their staff members, as well. it's impacting the people they come in contact with all the time. forget about it being anti-medicine, anti-science, it's just antisocial -- it's just rude. it's just rude. >> it is. and it shows a lack of concern or interest in, you know, the health of those around them. and you're right, i suspect that a lot of those members have gotten vaccinated, but they're playing the political card and saying, you know, i'm not going to tell you. mean, it's the easiest thing in the world. yeah, i got vaccinated. you should get vaccinated, too. what's so hard with that sentence? what's so hard with that reality? well, it doesn't play into the trumpian narrative. and it doesn't play into this

idea of you've stoked people in a certain direction, you've pushed them toward a cliff, and guys, we don't want to go that way. we don't want to play that way. we don't need to go down that road. the reality of it is, people's lives, those members who work on the hill, your staff. people in the neighborhoods and communities in which you live. i mean, your leader, you set the example. and yet at every turn, they seem to shy away from that leadership moment. well, again, i go back to the point that i made earlier, go next year, look at the country and say, give us the keys to the kingdom. put us back in charge, because these guys are socialists. tada! that's it, right there! that's the best argument that they'll come up with. >> and it's crazy, willie, i

talk to family members and friends who say, why is the government finally doing this? why do they require -- why do i have to get this to -- what about the vaccine passports. and then they'll say, well, why does this group of people need to be vaccinated? why do these children need to be vaccinated? and they ask these questions. my family and friends ask these questions as if this is the first time that that has ever happened. and this is like this is the first time that people have been encouraged to get vaccines. you know, the first state that require vaccines for children to go to school was massachusetts. was that in 1970? oh, yeah, it was 1809. in 1809, we've been doing this for a while. and all of these people that are going crazy about, you're taking my freedom away for vaccinations. your kids have to get vaccinated

before they go to school. this has been the way it's been your entire lifetime, all 50 states. right here, i'm just looking. polio, diphtheria, tetanus, measles, mumps, rubella, hepatitis "b," chicken pox, on and on. kids are required to have those vaccines before they go to school. and some people say, well, i don't understand, why would you want children to get vaccinated? because they're not going to get that sick from it, most likely. it's just like the strategy for polio. the strategy is getting herd immunity. stomping out polio, getting rid of it for good. our children have a much better chance of getting covid than they do polio, but they're still required to get polio shots,

because the idea is to stamp it out all over the world. and not let it spread. and again, this is just basic stuff. this has been the reality for over a century. and people are acting like this is some new violation of their civil liberties. it's absolute madness. it's absolute madness. >> and schools are talking right now about whether or not this fall they'll require vaccines. a covid vaccine. companies are going through their deliberations right now, whether you have to be vaccinated to come back into the building. but as you say, these vaccines that our kids have been getting forever have not been controversial until now. obviously, some things have changed with the anti-vaccination movement. there's this proliferation of terrible information. you have people in positions of power and leadership questioning the vaccines. but i think the way to look is toward the doctors who actually know what they're talking about and not toward political leaders trying to score points. >> and willie, by the way, the

last time i checked, 90% of doctors, around nine out of ten doctors have gotten the vaccines themselves. if these people that are running around and acting like this is the first vaccines that the government and health officials have ever asked them to take, despite the fact that has been going on for a couple of hundred years, talk to your doctor. talk to the person that takes care of your family. talk to the person what took chair of your child, who delivered your baby, who took care of your parents, who you know and trust. talk to that doctor. and ask them if they got the shot. chances are really good they're going to go, well, of course i got the shot. why wouldn't you want to get that shot? >> yeah. >> it's just -- it's madness. >> it is. we're going to talk much more about this coming up. but also, the inquiry into new york governor andrew cuomo widens to include whether he prioritized covid testing for

his friends and family. another controversy, another scandal for the government. plus, a look at where things stand in the crowded race to become the next mayor of new york city. "morning joe" is back in a moment. york city. "morning joe" is back in a moment there's interest you accrue, and interests you pursue. plans for the long term, and plans for a long weekend. at thrivent, we believe money is a tool, not a goal. to learn more, text thrive to 444555, or visit thrivent.com. ♪ ♪ we made usaa insurance for veterans like martin. when a hailstorm hit, he needed his insurance to get it done right, right away. usaa. what you're made of, we're made for. usaa

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welcome back to "morning joe." governor andrew cuomo of new york is under more scrutiny adds federal investigators look into whether new york state officials gave priority access of covid-19 testing to cuomo's close associates and family members at the beginning of the pandemic. according to "the new york times," the members of cuomo's inner circle submitted priority covid tests, which were submitted to a lab and process ed within a few hours. according to state health officials, special tests were supposed to be used for urgent cases, including those linked to an outbreak to help stop the spread of coronavirus. people familiar with the matter tell "the wall street journal" the federal inquiry is one of three investigations into cuomo

and his team. investigators already have begun looking into the governor's handling of covid-19 in nursing homes and the state's attorney general is investigating accusations that cuomo sexually harassed three former and two current aides in his office. "the journal" reports democrats who dominate the assembly are conducting an impeachment investigation into governor cuomo. so jonathan lemire, there is a lot that is stacked up here against governor cuomo, including the nursing home deaths, the changing of the numbers there. but this piece of the puzzle, we sort of knew this was out here. there had been reporting that he had given priority testing to members of his family and close friends, but now we know this is all part of an investigation. >> that's what's new here. the idea that the authorities are looking into this. and it's a reminder that the headlines have sorted faded around the governor in the last couple of months. we certainly had a few days ago with the news that he is going to potentially make $5 million off of his book that he wrote about his handling of the covid

pandemic during the middle of the covid pandemic that still had a whole another wave to go after it was published. so that certainly raised some eyebrows here. but there was that sort of stretch a few months back where it seemed like on a daily basis, there was another bad headline for the governor, another accusation. and it seemed there was talk of impeachment. fellow democrats in new york state were looking for his-outer. and that seems to have subsided. but this is a reminder that he's certainly not out of peril just yet. that these investigations are ongoing into the nursing home, in scandal, into his handling of the pandemic. certainly into accusations of sexual harassment and these are things that we don't know if they'll come to a conclusion in the weeks and months ahead, but they still shadow the governor as he remains in office and is still toying with the idea of running for re-election again. although he has at least for now survived any sort of impeachment effort, but his political future far from clear and we'll have to see where this investigation takes them. >> yeah, he's a guy who's been self-confident, to put it mildly, for a long time, and he

appears, despite all of this, i think any one of these would bury another governor. he seems to be confident, still talking about running for re-election. >> and he's certainly taken the playbook that's become so common now for a politician who has accused of scandal is you don't resign, maybe offer up some sort of an apology, but you put your head down, stay in office, hope your base stays with you and the headlines fade. whether donald trump does it, matt gaetz, governor northam, that's what he's trying to do right now. but for him, these investigations are still ongoing. there could be problems for him down the road. >> we'll see where these investigations lead us. keeping it in new york, we are just weeks away now from the primary race that likely will determine who leads america's largest city. on june 22nd, for the first time ever, new york city's crowded mayoral primary will be determined by a ranked choice voting system. as it stands now, the race up for grabs, former presidential candidate andrew yang barely edging out the competition in one recent poll, more than 40

new yorkers initially filed campaign paperwork to run. that list now down to eight democrats. former new york city sanitation commissioner katherine garcia recently earned the endorsement of the "new york times" editorial board, which wrote about the importance of the race. writing, quote, the mix of optimism and anxiety new yorkers feel highlight the extraordinary challenges facing the city and its next mayor in the coming months and years. and perhaps the most consequential mayoral contest in a generation. joining us now, the co-founders and ceos of the data analytics company apple cart, sasha and matt. >> sasha, first of all, let's just explain to our viewers how these elections are run. like, for instance, what happens, who emerges in new york city. like, bill de blasio, nobody expected him to win and yet he pulled off a shocking win. what can we learn from 2013?

>> well, i think one of the things we can learn from 2013 is that this race really won't be decided until the very last couple of days when people tune in, just because it's an off year election. it's going to be very, very low turnout. and you know, there's a big open question. who actually shows up. how do they feel about the issues and the candidates? do they even know who the candidates are? and a lot of people are just starting to tune in right now. >> i want to put that chart back up there and, sasha, as you look at it, it shows 3.2 million registered democrats. only 8.8% of democrats ended up, you know, voting for the eventual mayor of new york city. this is just the way it works out. and it is always, really, if you look, look into it, that one of the most important political jobs in america, one of the toughest political jobs in america, are determined by such

a small sliver of voters. >> it sure is. it's been the standard in the city, but the mayor of new york is, as you said, one of the most recognizable political figures of the country, and it's about 8% of democrats who usually chooses that person that makes up 4 to 5% of overall the city of new york. so, it will be interesting to see sort of who is the 4 to 5% this year and who do they vote for? >> and matt, when people think of new york city, they think of it as a very liberal city. skpuld think that the -- you would think that the democratic primary voters would be overwhelmingly liberal. that's just not the case. a strong majority don't identify themselves as such. tell us about the new york city primary voter that's going to be voting in this race? >> well, that's absolutely

right, joe. i think a lot of people think about new york city elections and they think about ocasio-cortez. they think about jamal bowman and bill de blasio. what's really interesting is that our firm has conducted over 7,000 interview of new york city voters over the last several months. and that we've seen is that a majority of voters who are registered democrats, this is democrats exclusively, self-identify something other than liberal. and perhaps more interesting, as you look at the national dialogue about defunding the police, about crime, we asked an open-ended question of new york city voters, asked them whether they thought the city was on the right track, the wrong track, again, just to democrats who were eligible to vote in this primary election. and when we ask them that, those who said the city was on the wrong track, when you asked them to volunteer why they thought the city was on the wrong track, number one answer volunteered by voters, by a double-digit margin was public safety and crime. so when you actually go to an election where people are choosing who's going to run

their city, their municipal government, that's what's top of mind for democrats. >> and willie, if you look at the issues here, and i know jonathan lemire has a question. but since he talked about, i find this fascinating. number one, crime and public safety. 30%, top issues cited here. and then you've got some anti-incumbent feelings there. and then, look, right below that, homelessness and the economy. now, those are -- those three issues, crime and public policy, homelessness and the economy, those are the three things that my republican friends grouse about when they complain about new york city is not the same as it was in the past, before the pandemic, before -- you know, when bloomberg was in or giuliani was in there. it is, again, when it comes to crime and you always have the

media making the mistake of thinking, oh, these democrats in new york city want to defund the police. no, actually, if you follow it closely, there are a lot of neighborhoods who are saying, we need more police, we need more police on the street. we need more police in the schools, our children are not safe. >> and neighborhoods of color. neighborhoods that are impacted by a lack of policing. if you put that chart up, you can see that nypd reform is way down on page two of that list. i can't count that high. i think it's 10 or 11. interesting, jonathan, you and i were sort of smiling, that anti-de blasio is a policy issue and it comes in at number two in new york. >> and that's not just polling of andrew cuomo. it is interesting, though, to the stereotype of new york city as we're talking about voter, liberal voter, but it's not just the upper west side who votes for these things. it's not just upper west side manhattan, it's central brooklyn, other working class communities of color who are, at least in this polling, seem to prioritize public safety issues. that's going to be a driing

issue in this campaign. matt, let me ask you, this is rank choice voting for the first time being done here in the nation's largest city. i was hoping you could talk to us a little bit about how this works. but provide also a snapshot of where the race stands right now. andrew yang, he's sort of been atop these polls barely. eric adams, who's the brooklyn bureau police officer, he seems to be in second place in most places, and katherine garcia, who is a longtime, worked for the city, basically ran the department of sanitation, there seems to be a little buzz around here right now, who picked up the endorsements of the "new york times," but also the "new york daily news," which plays well in those working class communities we were just talking about. >> that's exactly right, jonathan. this rank choice voting initiative that passed in new york city over the last couple of years is really going to scramble the race in a major way. what rank choice voting does is rather than a voter voting for a single candidate, what they're

able to do is rank their top five candidates in order of preference. and what happens is that candidates are eliminated who -- you know, so you look at the first round, look at people's first choice votes. if you don't get a majority of voters that support one candidate, you eliminate the least-vote-getting candidate. and if you eliminate their voters, those voter's preferences get reallocated to their second choice. so what that means is that in an election like this one, it's a very crowded race. a lot of candidates don't have high name identification, aren't well known. what that means is that it's really going to favor candidates who are well known by a large number of voters. and it's also, interestingly, going -- it's also going to favor candidates who have voters who understand how to use rank choice voting. who understand what we just talked about there, because they will preference voters in a way that -- preference candidates, rather, in way that will benefit, you know, the

candidates that they prefer. so as you look at this race, as you mentioned, andrew yang has done very well in polling, in the early part of this race, predominantly because he ran for president. he was very well known. he had sky-high name i.d., about 80% of these registered democrats in new york knew who he was. a lot of these candidates were lesser known. but i think as the race is maturing in these last couple of weeks, eric adams has crept up in the polls. and there's a major reason for that, which is that he's the brooklyn borough president and beyond that, he's a candidate of color. and in a rank choice voting system, that can be a major advantage. there will be a sizable proportion of the democratic electorate, about a third, that will be black voters. and those voters heavily advantage eric adams. >> so gentlemen, this is michael steele here.

a lot of talk about democrats. new york is a democratic city, we understand that. are there republicans in the race? where do they stand? what are their chances here, particularly given rank choice voting. it is an opportunity for it to be a great level of the partisan-sort of baggage that tends come in the races and cities like new york and baltimore and elsewhere you're outnumbered as a republican. i grew up in washington, d.c., you know, ten-to-one, yeah, okay, whatever. just pass me the election. so how do you assess the republican field here such that it exists and their possibility of being competitive in this system, if not in this race, but in future races with rank choice voting. >> that's a really interesting question, michael. because unfortunately, or fortunately, what you find is that in this race, the republicans really don't have a voice, unless they're registered

as democrats. new york city is a closed primary system, which means that if you're not registered as a democrat, you can't participate in this election that's going to choose the next mayor of new york in the defining election, that june primary. the deadline for changing your party registration, if you wanted to participate in the democratic primary, was february 14th. it was a long time ago. new york city, there's seven times more democrats than there are republicans these days. and what that means is that coming out of this june 22nd election, you're really going to know who the mayor is, just based on that partisan split. and the reality is, a lot of voters don't understand that. in our polling, what we've seen is we asked really two questions to understand whether voters understood how this was going to be decided. the first question is, which election matters? the primary or the general? the second question we asked was, how are we going to vote? are we going to use rank choice voting, standard voting, how will this election be operated? it was two-thirds of voters who could not answer those questions

directly and we're just a few weeks out from the election. >> so sasha, before we go, i'll let you kind of handicap the race here and what you're looking for, because it's only a month from saturday, is election day. just over four weeks away. eric adams is out on top in a new poll. andrew yang, as well, who got a lot of national attention, frankly because a lot of national media just knew who he was. he's come down a little bit from those early days. and scott stringer, the former montana borough president, now the comptroller in new york. what are you going to be looking for in these last four weeks or so? >> it will be interesting to see if anyone makes a late move. and katherine garcia is probably the person best set up to do that if andrew yang was going to seal the election up, that would have happened already. at this point, i would rather be eric adams than anybody else. he's been creeping up in the polls and yang has been stagnant or falling in the last several

polls that have been publicly released. >> co-ceos and founders of the data and analytics company apple cart, sasha samotin and matt collins. this has been an exciting episode of new york one and i've been pat kiernan. thank you so much, guys. good to see you. it's now the top of the hour. jonathan lemire is still with us. and joining the conversation, mike barnacle, co-founder of punch bowl news, john brez nah bresnahan and paula mcgee. mika has the morning off. >> since she does, let's talk baseball. mike barnicle, another no-hitter. i'm suggesting after watching the game last night they just call balls and strikes. it was an awfully generous -- and i love greg maddux, it was a grade maddux-type strike zone. >> the sixth no-hitter of the year. the fourth no-hitter thrown in the month of may.

last night. corey kluber, who had never even witnessed a no-hitter as a player, sitting on a bench with multiple teams, threw his first no-hitter. it's always an extraordinary feat. you don't want to take that away from corey kluber, but that strike zone last night was wider than a cow's ass. it was unbelievable. >> wow. >> there we are. >> the other thing -- the other thing that's going on here, and again, corey kluber threw a no-hitter. it's an amazing feat. almost impossible to do in the major leagues. but the teams really have been thind out by injuries, by lack of signing players, whatever the owners are trying to do, make more fun for themselves and not sign enough good players, i don't know. but the big major league baseball news last night, joe, you know it, i know it, lemire knows it, frenchie cordero lashed a line-drive double in left field down in florida.

it was incredible. i've never seen anything like it before in my life. frenchie cordero, red sox left fielder, truly incompetent, but he got a hit last night. >> so certainly, even a clock is right twice a day. yeah, i think -- i think -- yeah, a broken clock. i think that -- you know, even a blind squirrel. i think maybe they should send him to springfield, you know? son, we're sending you down to springfield. >> frenchie? >> we don't have a club in springfield. >> just keep going, keep going on the mass turnpike until it turns on a dirt rude. you expect one of our pitchers

is a double agent from the yankees. >> adam yanavino? >> yeah. >> he probably is. he throws a really heavy curveball. last night's baseball, i'm told, weighed six pounds. kluber was throwing a six-pound baseball. >> i love how all of your concerns suddenly come out the day a yankee pitcher throws a no-hitter. i don't hear it when the reds or the white sox or the padres were throwing their no-hitters. you know what's happening here -- just for our viewers >> it's not in the eastern time zone. >> the red sox here the footsteps of new york yankees. four teams within a game and a half of each other. the rays, jays, and yankees all coming up on the red sox who had a sweet moment early in the season when the games don't matter. and now here come the big boys. >> it looks like the yankees are in fourth place. looks like the yankees are in

fourth place right now, willie. >> they're one back in the loss column. i think they look great right now, don't you, john? >> no. i don't think that, willie. but it's a logjam, certainly, at the top of the race. if we rank it my by payroll, it would be a different story. but league wide, teams are hitting like .220. some of this are offensive approach. the batters are all selling out for power, not emphasizing contact, not putting the ball in play. i saw every texas ranger last night with nothing but upper cuts, closing their eyes and swinging blindly at the six-pound bowling ball that corey kluber was throwing. it was a remarkable feat of pitching with a strike zone that resembled part of a cow's anatomy that we learned here this morning.

>> jonathan brings up a great point. more emphasis about contact. kids, if you don't like baseball, this is a lesson on life. jfk said, when you see blue sky, go to it, right? there will be -- there will be such outrageous shifts and the batters don't adjust their swing. that's what i loved about brock holt so much. if you gave brock holt when he played for the rockies, if you gave him the third base line, he's take the third base line. people want to know why these guys aren't getting hits. like last night, despite the fact this was probably the biggest strike zone i have seen in all of my years watching baseball, the rangers were hitting the ball hard, but they were hitting it to players who were shifted right down the middle. like, at what point is somebody going to figure out, hey, you know what, we're going to do what peewee reese said. we're going to hit it where they ain't. instead of telling them, swing for the fences, make contact.

get on base! that i think the way they're playing baseball. this is just stupid. >> you know, joe, unfortunately, peewee reese, former captain of the baseball, peewee reese is dead. and so is the game that he played. analytics, no other game that -- >> he is -- >> no other game -- what? >> keep going, mike. >> i said, peewee reese is dead? hold on, i'm googling this. go ahead, mike? next you're going to tell me teddy roosevelt is dead. go ahead. go! >> i've got a couple of other surprises for you, too, but i'll hold off on those. but anyway, there's no sport that we watch that americans watch that has been more impacted by what they call analytics and you're right, the shifting, where you have the third baseman playing behind

second base and you have a huge hole in between third and second and the batters still try to lift the ball out of the ballpark, the game of baseball as we knew it, as we used to watch it as recently as ten years ago, that's gone. and it's kind of sad and they're going to have to address it, because it's not that much for a lot of fans, especially new fans, to come and watch games where the percentage of strike outs is enormous. the percentage of how to play baseball, stealing bases, hitting behind the runner is almost a distant memory. not good. >> yeah, i actually -- i did find out, unfortunately, that mr. reese has passed away. but willie, here is a complete quote that should be posted on refrigerators. keep your eye clear and hit them where they ain't. that's a good lesson for life, willie. >> it is. and this has been a pathetic display by red sox nation. corey kluber, a great comeback story coming back from injury.

congratulations, corey. the first no-hitter since 1999 for the new york yankees. what a great moment for the country, not just -- for the country. >> congratulations, from all of "morning joe," corey, from the bottom of our heart, congratulations. >> it is america's team, after all. >> mika, hurry back, please. you better be here tomorrow. we've got to reign this in. let's turn to the news. the bill to create a bipartisan commission to investigate the january 6th capitol attack has passed the house, but it now faces an july hill battle in the senate. 35 house republicans went against party leadership to join all democrats in voting yes. here is how democratic congressman tim ryan of ohio put it on the house floor yesterday. >> to the other 90% of our friends on the other side of the aisle, holy cow! incoherence. no idea what you're talking about. benghazi. you guys chased the former secretary of state all over the country, spent millions of

dollars. we have people scaling the capitol, hitting the capitol police with lead pipes across the head and we can't get bipartisanship! what else has to happen in this country? cops, this is a slap in the face to every rank and file cop in the united states. if we're going to take on china, if we're going to rebuild the country, if we're going to reverse climate change, we need two political parties in this country that are both living in reality, and you ain't one of them. >> tim ryan of ohio there. the legislation now heads to the senate where it needs support from at least ten republicans to get past the 60-vote filibuster. yesterday, minority leader mitch mcconnell urged his members to oppose the bill, calling the proposal, quote, slanted unbalanced, and argued the ongoing congressional investigations are sufficient. john bresnahan, let's talk with you. the 35 republicans who voted

"yes" on this, who said, "yes," there should be an investigation, a commission into what happened on january 6th, are you surprised one way or another by that number? higher or lower than you thought it might be? >> you know, we thought it was going to be -- we had heard as high as 50. there was clearly a push by house minority leader kevin mccarthy and the leadership to try to tamp down the number. but it's still a pretty significant number. we thought it would be -- we even heard yesterday it was going to be in the range of 30. this was right around the number. and the republicans are trying to say that, you know, they were cutting loose some of their members in swing districts to vote for this legislation. and that it was clear it was going to pass. what they didn't want was a jailbreak. they didn't want a hundred members to vote for it. that's what they were really scared of. it was a huge vote. it was 350. that would be a huge problem for mcconnell.

>> john can be can you answer the question that we've been asking this morning. it seems to me that nancy pelosi has the power of subpoena. she has 35 republicans who have voted yes on this. she could have a commission of four democrats, four republicans. kinzinger and a couple of retired attorney generals. why not do that since they have the power of the subpoena, the power to call witnesses, the power to get documentses, the power to make all of these people testify. >> you know, there's a couple of reasons. according to pelosi, one -- she actually addressed this yesterday was that she, after 9/11, they had a commission. after pearl harbor, they had a commission. and that there was a bipartisan commission would be -- would store, you know, give a credible answer that americans in both parties could say, you know, look, they looked into this and this is what they found. if they did it and it was a

democratic-dominated event or someone who was seen as anti-trump, then that is also -- republicans will just attack it as, you know, partisan and not a real investigation. the other part of this is, pelosi has talked about it. she's talked about a select committee. she could do this. but you have to note, republicans actually introduced this bill -- this was a bill that republicans had introduced as an amendment. exactly this. they called for a commission. and it was a large part of what was voted on by the house yesterday. republicans had actually voted for previously. so pelosi's point is, look, republicans, you supported this a couple of months ago. let's do it now. i don't think pelosi wants to do it that way. i think she will if she has to. but i think it gives -- i think it just gives ammo for republicans to say, look, this was just a partisan witch hunt. they were just always out to hurt donald trump and republicans. >> heather mcgee got

republicans -- the leadership sent to lead a negotiation with bennie thompson of mississippi, a democrat, and pushed him in front of a moving train the other day, as they all walked away from it. 35 republicans voted for it. but again, this comes back to the republican party's current north star, which is donald trump. they ran liz cheney out of her leadership position, because she crossed donald trump. and now they're throwing their own members under the bus, because they wanted to simply do something that seems obvious to most americans. take a look at what happened on january 6th. >> you really do have to ask, what exactly is the republican party loyal to at this point? and why are they hiding and what do they have to fear. is it the fact that the majority of the republican caucus in the house voted to do what the mob wanted? which was to not certify the election results. is it the fact that the majority of the republican party and the

ecosystem, the media ecosystem surrounding it is now believing trump's delusional big lie? the idea that the election was somehow stolen and that the person who won the majority of white voters is somehow the legitimate president of a multi-racial america? that's really the stakes. that's why the republican party is worried about any kind of commission that might find the truth about many of their member's complicity in egging on and encouraging what everybody who was observing it knew was going to be maybe not as successful an attempt, but certainly an attempt to stop the steal. when you tell people to stop the steal of their election, what do you think they're going to do? this is really a test of the republican party's future. obviously, across the globe, we have other leaders looking at what one of the two parties in

our amazing constitutional system is doing and wondering how much they can trust the word and the bond and the sanity of the american people. and it's a shame. >> yeah, republicans have made pretty clear over the last couple of weeks who they are and who they're loyal to. joining us now, democratic congressman, mikie sherrill of new jersey. she's a united states navy veteran and a member of the house armed services committee. congresswoman sherrill, it's good to see you today. you talked about the importance of this january 6th commission in healing the country. why do you think this is an important step and what do you say to the republicans who voted against it? >> good morning, willie. this is something that i have been fighting for since right after january 6th. much of the legislation i've proposed is in the commission bill, which i was happy to see. from the start, i said, it has to be bipartisan for this country to have faith in that commission, to see it as outside

the political partisan games that sometimes occur here. and as we've seen some of the false narratives and the misinformation continuing to come out of washington, out of the republican party, i think it's important that we have a bipartisan independent commission to address this. i'm from north jersey, a lot of people who were affected, some who died in 9/11, that commission i think was important to helping the nation understand the events of that day, what led up to them. how we could, as a nation, protect ourselves. and how we can heal going forward. and i hope this january 6th commission can do the same. >> congresswoman, it's jonathan lemire. and certainly, you've just stressed why this is important, why you believe this commission is needed. but i would like to get your reaction to what we've seen in the last day or so, where there were 30-odd members of the republican members in the house who voted for it, but with senate leader mcconnell coming out against it, this faces a

real uphill climb in the senate to actually happen. so what's your take on that? and if the senate says "no" to it, what happens next? where should we go from here? >> it was such a tough night last night, because here you have 35 brave people, who would just tell you that, you know, they weren't brave, they were just really putting their oath to the constitution first, putting the country first, who came out and said, of course, we need a bipartisan, independent commission to address the worst attack on our nation's capitol in our history. an attack incited by the president of the united states against members of congress, as we were trying to certify the elections, to protect our democracy. and yet, it was also, really troubling to me. we had 175 members vote against a bipartisan, independent commission, negotiated by john catco, who will be deputized by

kevin mccarthy, a back and forth negotiation. and we thought, many of us in congress, that we had gotten to a place where we could all agree on it and again, start to heal the nation. and you know, i've taken, as i've probably said on this program, numerous oaths to the constitution, as an officer in the navy, as somebody at the u.s. attorney's office in my last two oaths to congress. but every single person in the house of representatives has taken that same oath. and they owe it to this nation to look into the events of january 6th and make sure it never happens again. >> so, congresswoman, i wanted to ask you about the dccc's postmortem from the 2020 election, something obviously that i know you and other democrats in swing districts have to be looking at closely. their conclusions seemed to be that, first of all, there was bad polling. but to be fair, there was really

bad polling on both sides. republicans were expecting to get wiped out in the house, even the weekend before the election. but also, i think, rightly, a lot of focus was paid to the defund the police message, the socialism message, that democrats rolled their eyes at, but voters listened to. what are people like yourself, who are in swing districts, competitive districts doing to making sure that your voters know that you support the police, you support funding the police, you support free enterprise. is there -- is there anything in place in the democratic party to make sure that people in swing districts are defusing that message and letting voters know it doesn't line up with their own personal beliefs? >> so, certainly, a lot of us in our own personal districts are working very hard to show through our legislative record the money that we're putting towards the police departments, how much we support our police. i think the vote last night was

critical in our support of the police. we saw capitol hill police officers putting out a letter saying, please, this vote supports us and is important to us. and so, i think that is something that many of us care about. making sure that our businesses know, that we want our small businesses, our communities to thrive, ensuring again and again and again that we put money towards ppp loans. that we've done the restaurants act, the save our stages act that we put into the american rescue plan, focusing on getting people back up on their feet. that that's critical to us. you know, i'm not a socialist, i don't think many people in the democratic party are, but that is something that i think wed need to work through, through the work in congress, through the work we're doing to get the country back up on its feet. that will be shown by our work. and i think something that i've always said is just let me run on jobs and the economy. i'm working so hard on all of the issues that people care

about, i love the equality act. i care deeply about many of our social issues. but when we are in a pandemic, when we have seen some of the worst economic numbers over the past year, as we've tried to combat that, we have got to get people safe, secure jobs. and i think what we're doing now is not just building those safe, secure jobs to get the country back to where we were, but as biden would say, building the country back better. making sure that people in the new economy feel more secure than ever. >> congresswoman, you have good relationships with many republicans inside your caucus. you're not a harsh partisan. i'm curious what you make of the state of play in the building where you're standing right now. not just on this january 6th commission, but more broadly. when you talk to people privately, they say, yeah, we probably should have a january 6th commission, but i don't want to stick my neck out and be the one who votes for it and raise the ire of donald trump or raise the ire of his voters. i can't do that and also keep my

job. what is it like trying, at least, to work with republicans right now, with the specter of donald trump looming over everything? >> you know, i guess that's in part why some of the news last night was quite good news to me. because some of the members that i really respect and i've gotten to know and i know they're working hard for the country were were among those who voted for the commission. it's easy to say, well, of course they voted for a bipartisan independent commission. but the republican party is not known for running a loose ship, shall we say. and that was important for them to put this country first and i'm glad they did that. it continues to be tough when you hear that january 6th was a tourism event. i'm shocked by that narrative and this continued attempt to whitewash the events of that day for political purposes. i think if this nation is going to heal, if we're going to

protect our democracy and create a more resilient democracy, we have to address the events of that day, and that should be something that every single member of congress wants to do. >> congresswoman mikie sherrill of new jersey, always great to have you on. we appreciate it. john bresnahan, this vote on liz cheney has overshadowed votes on infrastructure, this massive proposed package of more than $2 trillion. where does that stand different than a couple of weeks ago when it was everything that everyone was talking about? >> we wrote about this a few days ago on punch bowl news. the way we are hearing it right now, it seems like there had been hopes for a quick deal or a lot of -- at the first meeting with president biden and the senate republicans, led by shelly moore capito of west virginia, there was a lot of progress. in fact, i talked to several of the republicans in the room and

they were really enthusiastic, shockingly enthusiastic. now wing, reality has set in. they can't agree, what's infrastructure, what's not infrastructure. republicans are never going to go for tax increases. so how do you pay for this? >> gas tax not going to be enough. other pay-fors are just going -- not everybody can agree on. so i think right now, i think it doesn't look good. at this moment, it doesn't look good. the white house is supposed to respond tomorrow, to the latest republican offer. they're supposed to put a counterproposal out there. we'll see what they do, but there are a lot of saying that this is not serious, if we don't see some serious movement here, then the possibility, the chances of a deal are actually going to fall pretty dramatically. i think tomorrow is a big moment. >> yeah, and you know, heather, the two areas where both sides

were talking about a possible bipartisan deal were on infrastructure and policing reform. and it sounded like if you listened to tim scott or jim clyburn or other people involved in the process, it sounds like that was actually a possibility. is it still a possibility from what you're hearing? >> i think that anything is possible, because we are nearing the anniversary of george floyd's murder. more human beings are being killed, unarmed people are being killed by the police multiple times a week in this country and the fires are still smoldering in terms of americans' moral appropriation of what has happened to allow armed police to have so much impunity in this country. the core provisions of the george floyd act are still overwhelmingly popular, including ended qualified immunity for police. the idea that people can knowingly break the law and

abuse their badge and be shielded from any kind of liability. that's overwhelmingly popular, to end that kind of protection. so we have an opportunity in this country. just like the american jobs act, this is a popular idea. americans overwhelmingly want people who are paid in washington to do their job, to do their jobs. and particularly with the american jobs plan, you've got ideas that are just simply basically housekeeping. ripping up all the lead pipes in the country so families don't have to worry that when they pour water from the tap they're poisoning their children for life. that should be what the greatest country on earth just does as a matter of course. that shouldn't require, you know, a massive bipartisan deal. that should just be what everyone thinks the government should do for its people. and yet, we've got this overriding anti-government ethos, this desire to protect the people who are already

wealthy and powerful from investing in the country that helped make them wealthy and powerful. and until we break free of that sort of delusion on the right wing, that we owe nothing to one another, that we don't need to invest in our common resources. that we don't need to shore up the middle class, which this bill, the american jobs plan and the american family plan would do, and the sense that the right wing can just run on cultural fights and doesn't have to have any answers for what is really happening across kitchen tables in this country. doesn't have to have answers for the challenges of the future, like climate change. this is really the quandary. this is why our country is suffering. it's why in my book, i talk about the way that racism in our politics is actually having a cost for everyone. >> and you bring up so many great points. i really do wonder whether in 2022, the republicans are going to be rewarded for tactics. for simply talking about cultural issues.

for talking about dr. seuss, for talking about what they're against. for talking about these cultural issues instead of addressing all of the issues that are before them right now. if they don't like a bill, okay, come with your idea. let's hope that infrastructure passes on a bipartisan vote. let's hope -- the same with police reform and many others. it would be so important to this country to see the parties finally working together. heather, thank you so much for being with us. we really appreciate it. we love having you on. please come back soon. and of course, heather is the author of "the sum of us: what racism costs everyone and how we can prosper together." make sure you get it. and john, i can't help but notice off baseball glove in the background. i'm curious, kluber's no-hitter last night, the strike zone was the sides of a high school gymnasium. have you ever seen a strike zone that big? >> listen, i thought that was

one of the greatest moments in baseball history, as a yankee fan, i just have to say, it was a beautiful thing. i cried a little bit, called up the family, we all cried. big zoom call. so, you know, no, i think -- you know, i think mike made a great point. the way they play baseball now is not as interesting as the way they play baseball when we grew up. it could have been a perfect game. he only walked one guy. it could have been easily a perfect game. but it is not -- you know, it's not the baseball that we grew up with, no. >> john bresnahan, a yankee fan, everybody say good-bye to him for john's final appearance on "morning joe". >> i stand with john. >> thank you, brother. freedom! >> willie will make sure you're back. you know, willie, yeah, we'll go to break. but i can't say it enough. they've got to change the way they play the game.

like, hit 'em where they ain't, man? hit 'em where they ain't. like, i'm serious, hit against the shift. be brock holt, man. it's just -- it doesn't make any sense to me. a bunch of malarkey, man. i'm starting to talk like biden. it's malarkey. >> that's right, jack. >> come on fat jack! come on, man! >> you talk about velcro. that's when we knew biden was velcro. when he's calling that guy in jack, come on, fat -- i forget what their explanation was. but he was velcro. still working for him. >> to your point about brock, just slap it to left field. >> just slap it. >> just punch it over there. again, all of these concerns raised only the morning after the yankees throw a no-hitter. still ahead on "morning joe," the new york's attorney general investigation into the

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they would know what the valuations are, specifically on a project that they were designated to. each of the children were designated to different properties. but allen weisselberg knew every single dollar in and every single dollar -- not even dollar. to the penny, every single penny in and every penny out went through allen weisselberg's desk and reported before and after to donald j. trump. >> that is former donald trump attorney, michael cohen, providing his insight into the relationship between the former president and cfo of the trump organization, allen weisselberg. "the new york times" reports the new york attorney general's office has been investigating whether weisselberg paid taxes on fringe benefits trump gave

him, including cars and tens of thousands of dollars in private school tuition for at least one of weisselberg's grandchildren. attorney general letitia james informed the trump organization that its civil probe had turned criminal, with a letter sent in january. that's according to the times. "the new york times" also reporting that james' office revealing on tuesday that the ag and new york city district attorney cyrus vance have jointly investigated whether trump inflated the value of his properties to obtain favorable loans and lowered the values to avoid taxes. weisselberg has not been accused of a crime. his lawyer declined to comment to "the times". >> not been accused of crimes, just like all these other things that leak out. you are still in america, i know it's maddening for some people. you are still innocent until proven guilty. let's bring in dave aaronberg, also nbc news capitol hill correspondent and host of "way too early," kasie hunt.

you know, dave, i've been growing increasingly agitated by leaks. i will say in this case, this was not a leak. this is something deliberately put out by the attorney general, the state of new york saying, we put him on notice, we're going to be investigating their organization criminally. what else do we know from that information? what else do we know from the facts surrounding it? >> good morning, joe. yeah, when it comes to allen weisselberg, they need him to testify to be the narrator of all of these complex financial transactions before a grand jury and an actual trial jury. he knows where all the bodies are buried. it's no surprise that he's being investigated. i think that's one reason why the ag and district attorney joined forces. they don't want to get in each other's way. they don't want agency to give him immunity while the other agency is able to prosecute him. they're able to deconflict this way. and the problem for allen weisselberg is that he has an

estranged daughter-in-law who is giving prosecutors all sorts of information about him and his son. that allows prosecutors to squeeze him and i know people think that he's been loyal to trump for many years and he'll continue to be so. but that will change real fast when you're staring at the rest of your life in a prison cell. >> dave, walk us through a little bit more here. i mean, there's been so much talk about the investigation into president trump, former president trump. first of all, just how unusual is it to have a statement like this released publicly, just sort of announced to the world that this is now a criminal matter? and you know, there's been a discussion about, this is taxes, business dealings, how much of this, from what we know so far, and i recognize that you have to speculate somewhat, is going to be about trump personally, or is this more about the trump organization as a business, and this is going to end -- this is about the corporate dealings, rather than some of the individuals rather than the former president and his adult children who are running the company while he was in office?

>> it looks like there a division of labor here where the district attorney is going after trump and the attorney general is going after the organization and trump's family. i think that's one reason why they combined their efforts. it's for that division of labor. it's to make sure they have the resources to do something which is unprecedented in american history. which is the prosecution of an ex-president. now, as far as why the attorney general made in announcement publicly, it is unusual, but i think it's because she wanted to squeeze the targets and witnesses out there. she wanted them to know, it's time to put up or shut up. and the first one is the first one to win. meaning the first one through the prosecutor's door will get the best deal. it's one thing if this is a civil investigation and you can pressure people with the threat of a fine. it's another thing when you're waving around a pair of handcuffs. it's amazing how that will change your attitude. >> all right. thank you so much, dave aaronberg. as always, we greatly appreciate having you on the stand.

not as fun as the last time you were here, dave, but still, still very educational. willie, what you got? let's turn back to politics in washington. kasie, this one is for you. in his latest op-ed for "the washington post" entitled, why republican opposition to a january 6th commission could be a blessing in disguise, max boot writes this. "in 2014, the republican house majority voted to create a select committee to investigate the benghazi attack. the committee was heavily stacked for the majority party. it had seven republican members, only five democrats. republicans were able to do what they wanted and they did. the benghazi committee spent two and a half years and $7.8 million in its investigation. the republican refusal to agree to the bipartisan 1/6 commission bill could actually be a blessing in disguise. it will free pelosi to set up a january 6 select committee in which democrats will be more firmly in charge, as republicans were on the benghazi committee. the benghazi investigation was a

political stunt, but this investigation is deadly serious. we must get a full accounting of the events of january 6th, despite republican attempts to bury the truth. if we do, republicans may come to regret their opposition to the bipartisan 1/6 commission." kasie, this is an idea that joe has been floating all morning, which is to say, okay, republicans are on the record in the house. they don't want anything to do with this commission, save 35 of them. mitch mcconnell has now come out and said he is going to recommend his members do not vote in support of this, which makes it a steep climb to get up to the 60-vote threshold. so what happens next? obviously, democrats aren't going to sit idly and say, we're not going to look into what happened january 6th. so where does this go from here? >> it's a great point. and i think house speaker nancy pelosi is ready to move. and i have some questions about how they got to this point at this time, because pelosi essentially gave into what republicans wanted when she had

previously been trying to say, no, actually, i want this commission, this bipartisan commission to have more power to democrats. the political winds have been blowing and it seems clear now that this may not actually happen. which as you point out, potentially clears the way for her to be able to say, look, i tried. i tried to work with republicans, they wouldn't work with us. this is clearly, incredibly important. the one thing that's really interesting to me here is that 35 republicans voted with democrats and we're just starting to have an understanding of just how aggressively mccarthy and his team were whipping against this. these stories are trickling out. one member said, you know, some people were basically having their arms broken by the leadership team. so in a lot of ways, it suggests some weakness from mccarthy here. because 35 is a lot more than ten. there were ten republicans that voted for impeachment overjanuary 6th. 35 here. now, there's another question in the senate where there were

seven republicans who voted to impeach over there, it's not clear that they're actually going to go along this time with the commission. and that, in fact, the senate is going to stop it here, which, you know, i think says some things about where mitch mcconnell is on this commission. but you know, big picture, the reality is this is a rejection of the idea that we can all work off a common set of facts. and that's why the idea of what liz cheney has been saying about this is so absolutely critical. because the point of the 9/11 commission is to figure out what went wrong and try to figure out how to prevent it from happening again in a way everyone could grapple with, could understand and say, yes, we are willing to get onboard with this set of facts that's laid out here and willing to take actions around it. in many ways, refusing to do that for january 6th is just perpetuating the problem that created january 6th in the first place. >> you're so right. let's bring in right now -- this

is a nice special edition to the show this morning. we have cnn host and best-selling author, jake tapper. you don't have to change your channel. yes, that's jake on "morning joe." and he's out with his new novel entitled, "the devil may dance." i love this book. it's sort of -- it's a mix of "the manchurian candidate" and "house of cards" with a little bit of "ocean's eleven" thrown in. we'll get to that in a second. i want to ask you one quick question of what we've been talking about this morning, and that is the january 6th commission being voted against by most republicans in the house, but also mitch mcconnell and republicans in the senate also seem to be ready to vote it down. is this a good opportunity for nancy pelosi to just move forward aggressively with their own committee in the house? >> it could be. what would be, i think, great is

if she reached out to people like republican congressman denver riggleman, who is no longer in office, but has an intelligence background. if she reached out to the republicans out there, whether they are currently office holders or former office holders, officer rooney in florida and put them on the commission. these are republicans who are conservative republicans who also stand for getting to the bottom of the facts, who also do not engage in "the big lie." the pelosi were willing -- and she's not a particularly bipartisan person. that's not her inclination. that's not how she got to the position of power she's in. but if she were willing to work with the liz cheneys of the world and the peter kinzingers and the peter meyers of the world and say, who would you like to be on this commission? because i need to be able to work with republicans, currently republicans in the house, who

stand against the lie, who stand for getting to the bottom of what happened. tell me who you think should be on this commission. if she were willing to work that way, then i think the commission would have some credibility. because then at least it would have individuals who are currently republican office holders on the right side of history, as it were, saying, i support this commission. but if she just lets mccarthy name the people, he's going to put marjorie taylor greene on the commission. you know, who knows what he's going to do. he obviously does not want to the bottom of what's happened. >> and since he's shown his hand, he doesn't want the truth to be out there, it makes sense that nancy pelosi can come forward with a bipartisan commission that she can help set up with the help of like you said some conservative republicans who are on the right side of history when it comes to january 6th. all right, so, jake, tell me, when did you get this idea to write this novel based on, i

think one of the more exciting times in washington history over the past half century? >> well, i just learned, i guess when i was doing a promotion for my first novel, they worked their hearts out for kennedy in 1960 to elect john f. kennedy. and in the aftermath, he had his rancho mirage estate. his compound built up, rooms added, phone lines added, he had a helipad built in expectation that kennedy would stay with him when he came out to california. and sinatra was getting ready for that visit in 1962, but attorney general robert kennedy, who i know is one of your heroes, attorney general robert kennedy, who was going after organized crime, was faced with this conundrum, because some of the people he was investigating had stayed at sinatra's compound. so he had to decide, do i insult

one of the biggest stars in the world who helped my brother get elected or let my brother sleep literally in a compound where mobsters had slept. that's true story and i had characters from the hellfire club go out and investigate to see if sinatra was really mobbed pup and while they're there, they go on the set of "the manchurian candidate." >> and it was bobby kennedy blocking his brother from going to sinatra's estate out in california that turned old blue eyes into a lifelong republican after that. >> i was going to say, it broke his heart and changed his politics in a lot of way. jake, it's great to see you, my friend. we love these crossover events when we get to steal you for a little bit. keep writing these books. i have a process question, first. you and i lead similar lives. we have children exactly the same ages, we love our families, we like to be with them, we have weekday shows and sunday shows. so when on earth did you write a

novel? >> no, i just have this rule where when i'm in the middle of a writing project, i just need to write a minimum of 15 minutes every day. that's the commitment i make. 15 minutes a day. because anybody can find 15 minutes a day, you know, after the kids go off to school, over lunch, right before you go to bed. and if that's all you do, 15 minutes a day, by the end of the week, you have an hour, 45 minutes under your belt, it's something. and it usually ends up being more than 15 minutes. it's like the commitment to do cardio five days a week or whatever. you just have to say, that's what i'm doing. and as they say, writers write. that's the difference between me and aspiring novelists out there who haven't written novels, i've made that commitment to do 15 minutes a day. >> and you've taken away all of our excuses. jake, talk a bit about sinatra. you referenced it, that his heart frankly was broken that

kennedy didn't come out there. and it sort of changed his view of politics and changed his life. >> what's really remarkable about it is how much sinatra really was -- and he's obviously a complicated guy disorder. but beyond that, he really was a very crusading progressive on the issue of civil rights. this is something that i -- i learned while writing this book. in the 40s and 50s and 60s, he was way out there, way ahead of the kennedys when it came to fighting for civil rights, making sure that african-americans were paid the same, he tried to integrate hotels and clubs in las vegas. so he really was way ahead on the progressive cause. as you know, the kennedys broke his heart and that's part of what i write about in this book. the kennedys broke his heart in the same way david gardner did.

ultimately, as you know, willie, you and i grew up knowing the ronald reagan frank sinatra, him serenading ronald and nancy reagan, quite different from the early 60s. and i really do think, as you and joe note, this heartbreak of an event pushed him in that direction. >> jake, mike barnacle is here with a question. >> hi, mike. >> in listening to you and willie just now and you explain about how you go about writing your novel, you know i like you, i've liked you for a long time, but i hate you now because you have destroyed my family. my wife is trying to get in here and choke me to death when you say you write 15 minutes a day. >> you're pretty prolific. >> you know, the story -- >> you're pretty prolific, mike. >> well, at what. but the kernel of the story that

you're talking about, your latest novel, that period of time in los angeles is so rich in detail. >> yeah. >> i mean, the kennedys, pete lawford, marilyn monroe, everything is all there, the los angeles mob, bugsy siegel. so as you got immersed in it in order to write this novel, how many other thoughts came into your mind that you have to exclude from the principal point of the narrative that you have in the novel that exists right now? >> a lot. and as you know as a writer, i think it was faukner that said killing your darlings is the process of editing, all of these things that you love and you have to remove from the book for the narrative. i didn't know before eisenhower had an estate and i wrote an

entire chapter because i thought it was so cool and charlie is an eisenhower republican. and ultimately, i had to kill the whole chapter because it really didn't add anything to the plot at all. there was one line that advanced the plot and i stuck that in a previous chapter. so there was a lot that i left on the floor. bugsy siegel was dead at that point, but there were a whole bunch of other great mobsters that were in prison at the time, so i couldn't include them in the book, either. that was actually kind of a relief. but you're right, the period is so rich, there's so much going on in the early 60s. so many of the stars of that era remain cultural touchstones, whether it's alfred hitchcock, paul pneumoniaon and the others. so i have a scene that takes place at a famous club at the time called the daisy where i allude to a number of people, but i can't get into their stories because i had to focus

on the plot. but there's a throw away line with robert mitch yum and gregory peck who are filming in northern california, they're filming cape fear. little vignettes like that but i had to focus on the plot. but you're right, it's so rich, there's so much going on at the time. >> this sounds so exciting. jake, you may not know the back story, but mike barnacle has been writing a book for decades now, been telling his wife he's almost done and he's used the excuse of interviewing everybody from george h.w. bush to kenapunk port. and this book, he cannot finish this book. so his wife is bothering him. now i guarantee you that 15-minute rule will be put in place in that household and your you 45 minute a day cardio rule will be put in place in my household. jake, thanks a lot, buddy. final question, we're looking back. let's look back. i know what i'm doing right now

is i'm looking back over the past five years. i'm looking back over the stories that we got right. i'm looking at the stories we got wrong. i'm looking at some of the stories we followed that ended up not being 100% accurate. there's been a lot of criticism of the media at large falling stories that the intel community leaks out. it's not just against donald trump. it's not just that story about, for instance, bounties, russian bounties on the heads of american troops, which now the biden administration is casting doubt on that i know this show and a lot of other people, you could go back to hillary clinton and the leaks coming out of the fbi for a year, year and a half during her campaign. how do we do a better job? how do we be more fair to candidates, whether we're talking about somebody like hillary clinton where we're getting leaked information from intel communities that may not be accurate or donald trump and

republicans? >> well, i think what you said earlier when discussing the leaks about the -- or the announcements about the donald trump organization investigation is the right thing to do, which is every time you have to remind people, you know, people are innocent until proven guilty. a leak is not an indictment. an indictment is not a conviction. and i think you're right. there are a lot of us in the media and i don't exempt myself who should have or could have done a better job adding those caveats, making sure the people understood everything going on. when it comes to the bounty story, which is a great example, the biden administration say they have a moderate to low confidence that the story can be proven, that that alleged can be proven. a lot of that has to do with disagreements between intelligence agencies saying that they're sure of this and other intelligence agencies saying they're not sure of it. and i think the more we can provide that context, some

intelligence agencies believe this is true. others do not. the better that our viewers will be. as long as we present as many caveats as possible. and i see you trying to do a better job with that. i certainly am trying to do a better job with that to make sure people understand that sometimes we're doing the best we can with a lot of conflicting information and we're going to bring it altogether and you can ultimately decide what you believe. >> yeah. it's so important, we don't do what a lot of us have done in the past. we read something in the times or "the wall street journal" or "the washington post" or financial times, they write it and we report it. but, again, we need to slow down. like you said, this bounty story, the cia has one opinion on it. i think they believe it's moderate. i think it's the nsa and others v that have a low confidence in that story. i think you're right. that's the texture we need to

bring to these stories. and for god's sake, especially when we're talking about whether people are guilty of a crime or not, it is way past time for you to remind people that everybody is innocent until proven guilty and these are leaks from intel operations. thank you so much, jake, for being with us. this, i can't wait to -- i can't wait to see the movie. i mean, this is going to be a movie. it's like -- that chris matthews will watch and love. it has all the characters i think that so many of us have grown up and loved. the book is "the devil may dance." jake, thanks for being with us. we appreciate it. >> thanks, joe. thanks, willie and mike, too, and say hi to mika for me. >> i certainly will and she will have me on a treadmill before noon today. a member of the democratic leadership in the senate majority whip dick durbin joins us when we come back. "morning joe" will be back in one minute. come back "morning joe" will be back in onmie nute hooh. that spin class was brutal.

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ground ball to torres. and that will do it. a no hitter for glory cluber on our wednesday next in texas. cluber becomes part of forever. >> there was corey kluber last night in texas. the yankees starter who has had a bunch of years of injuries coming back strong in his first season with the yankees, faced

only 28 hitters, one walk away from throwing a perfect game against the texas rangers. welcome to "morning joe" on this thursday morning. joe, i know you even as a red sox fan can preb kluber who -- look, there was a chance he was going to be out of baseball. two-type cy young award winner. >> and, of course, the first and major league baseball, the american league east. but, yeah, there have been some -- i think there were some no hitters in the central time zone just last week. >> listen, john that lamere, we want good things to happen. i have to say, though, i want to

start with the seventh inning not to cheer against our fellow american league east brethren, but i noticed he had a strike zone. >> oh, come on. >> that greg maddox would be envious of, right? he throws one in the dugout -- >> wow. >> and they say on the corner. >> this is beneath you, joe. let's celebrate greatness. >> there's the old adage that you don't talk about a no hitter because you don't want to jinx it while it's in progress. i texted everyone i knew. i went through any source list. i started tweeting randomly. i think that this is already our sixth no hitter of the year and the fact that corey kluber, who i believe has thrown a total of three or four innings since 2015, that he threw one makes me think this is the most compelling argument yet that major league baseball needs to fix the mound, move it back, shrink it or do anything possible to allow hitters to hit the ball if corey kluber can do

this. >> my biggest thing is to open the door to give you the opportunity to celebrate greatness and immediately down to the low road for both of you. >> not the low road. we care about calling balls and strikes. and we don't have to move the mound back, lamere. just call a ball a ball and a strike a strike. and it made me sad to see that umpire cheat them in the game of baseball. this goes down in the history books and i'm wondering whether we put an asterisk by it right now or not. >> did you bribe the umpire right now? >> that is pinpoint accuracy. craig maddox, painting the corners, tieing people up all night. corey kluber, first no hitter for the yankees since '99. >> that is so exciting, willie. we're so glad to share this with

you. lamere is right, though, by the way. i started texting me. i swear to god, i had an event last night with senator amy klobuchar, a book event, virtual book event. and in the middle of it, i started getting texts. he said please don't tell everyone, but corey kluber has a no hitter heading into the seventh. he was doing his best to jinx him. >> i got them, too. >> too? >> yes. all caps. >> speaking of amy klobuchar, they had the "new york times" did a remarkable remembrance of her father. and that guy, i encourage everybody to read it. what an extraordinary life. we heard about his battles with

alcohol. he fought those. and had been sober for 25 years, but this guy climbed the matterhorn eight times, climbed mt. kilimanjaro. he put chalk between his teeth and had a sharpshooter shoot it out. the stories he covered were incredible. senator klobuchar's father was a kid at the time to call minnesota one of three kids to call minnesota for jfk after they looked at the numbers and that put jfk over the top. the ap called it like 15 minutes later. so he had an absolutely wonderful looifr and we still, our thoughts remain with amy and the entire family. >> that's a nice to remember. the newspaper in the star tribune minneapolis had a great piece about him the other day.

we will get to the news now that we've covered corey kluber's no hitter. michael steele, thank you for shaking your head, michael. and co-founder of punch bowl news anna palmer now an msnbc contributor, as well. welcome aboard, anna. mika has the morning off if you haven't been able to tell already. >> yes. >> so let's get into the news. the bill to create a bipartisan commission to investigate the january 6th capitol attack has passed the house, but faces an uphill battle in the senate. 35 house republicans went against party leadership to join all democrats in voting yes. "the washington post" framing it this way, quote, republican leaders are trying to sink the legislation. that would probably secret nigh former president donald trump's role in the riot and his conversations with republican lawmakers that day. here is how tim ryan of ohio put

it on the house floor yesterday. >> to the other 90% of our friends on the other side of the aisle, holy cow, incoherence. no idea what you're talking about. benghazi, you guys chased the former secretary of state all over the country, spent millions of dollars. we have people scaling the capitol, hitting the capitol police with lead pipes across the head and we can't get bipartisanship? what else has to happen in this country? cops. this is a slap in the face to every rank and file cop in the united states. if we're going to take on china, if we're going to rebuild the country, if we're going to reverse climate change, we need two political parties in this country that are both living in reality and you ain't one of them. >> yeah. you know, the first part of that clip we didn't show, he actually did, he was grateful to the republicans that were working in a bipartisan way to make it happen. he called them out by name. but it is surprising that those

people who were cowering for their lives don't want the world to know what happens on january 6th when the united states capital was breached in a way it hasn't been breached since the war of 1812. to vote against an inquiry about what happened that day. >> now it needs 60 votes to get this thing going. yesterday, mitch mcconnell urged his members to oppose the bill, calling the proposal, quote, slanted and unbalanced and argued the ongoing congressional investigations are sufficient to probe the attack. quote, it's not at all clear what new facts or additional investigation yet another commission could lay on top of the existing efforts by law enforcement and congress.

so, anna, what changes here? i mean, it passed through the house, but if you have to get to 60 votes and mitch mcconnell is telling his caucus not to vote for it, how does this pass? >> i think it's going on face an uphill battle. the real question is how hard does mcconnell push his members to not support this? does he let this be a vote of conscious? we've been hearing privately that senate republicans are leary of not letting this move and filibustering it when you had such a bipartisan vote in the house. 35 republicans going and supporting this measure. so chuck schumer has said he's moving forward. with our without republicaning, he's going on press that hand and i think in the next couple of weeks, we're going to see how much republicans are willing to, in the senate, say no we don't need this commission. >> and i'm a little confused here, which is nothing new. i was confused last night when i was watching the strike zone the size of a county fair, but we'll

get back to that later. so the democrats -- what you always say during -- what you always hear from fund-raisers moving into any election, they go, oh, we've got to win the house. we've got subpoena power, oh, we have to win the senate. you don't want the democrats to have subpoena power or you don't want the republicans to have subpoena power and go after our president. i'm a little confused. democrats control the house. democrats control the senate. they can run these commissions. they can set them up any way they want to set them up. they have the party of the subpoena. they can call anybody they want to call and, of course, chuck schumer can do it in the senate, as well. i'm sure he'll get 50 votes for that. or not even 50 votes, just tell your chairman and chair woman, go, go do this, investigate, go, you have the power of the subpoena. i'm not really sure why people

are ringing their hands over not having a joint committee. what is the difference? look what republicans did on benghazi with republicans basically supporting that inquiry. >> that's a good question. and you're totally right. if nancy pelosi wants to have a select committee or have her chairman subpoena people in this, in what happens on january 6th, that could happen. i think what they were trying to do was have -- say this is a step back moment. this is a 9/11-esque moment. the speaker had moved and started us to bay much more partisan operation. it would be who can have subpoena power and it's now an evenly balanced commission. you have to have both republicans and democrats supporting the subpoenas. about but this goes back to the fact where they wanted to have something where there's not two sets of facts that republicans were invested in the effort so that they could have to bring

back to the people of this country to say this is actually what did happen, not what some of these fringe members are saying, but here is what happened. lay it out and make a pathway forward. still ahead, michael steel on the political calculus at play in republican opposition to the january 6th commission. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. 'll be righ. centrum multigummies aren't just great tasting... they're power-packed vitamins... that help unleash your energy. loaded with b vitamins... ...and other key essential nutrients... ...it's a tasty way to conquer your day. try centrum multi gummies. now with a new look. bipolar depression. it's a dark, lonely place. this is art inspired by real stories of people living with bipolar depression. emptiness. a hopeless struggle. the lows of bipolar depression can disrupt your life and be hard to manage. latuda could make a real difference in your symptoms.

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michael steele, do you remember former president trump's second impeachment trial when republican senator mitch mcconnell gave an impassioned speech denouncing what happened on january 6th and saying that the president fueled that violence at the capitol and that nothing like this should ever be able to happen again. since then, he's done everything in his power to walk the other way and walk away from those

remarks. here, blocking a bipartisan commission to investigate truly what happened there. i'm going to let you just go here, michael. is there another senate play for mitch mcconnell? what does this say about the state of his senate caucus, where the republican party stands right and the grip that donald trump has on the gop. >> it says a lot about the grip more than anything else. mcconnell, before donald trump said anything or really weighed in on this with respect to mcconnell was like, well, i'm going to take a look at this. i'm not sure. and then donald trump basically called him a punk and, you know, the next thing you know, mitch mcconnell is like, no, no, i see no reason to have this investigation. this is about a couple of things, one of which involves consequences. the gop's consequences right now, when they look at redistricting, they look at the gerrymandering, they look at

what state legislatures are doing to fix next year's elections and elections beyond that, they see no consequences at the ballot box. they think they have the advantage. so why upset your base unnecessarily because at the end of the day, that's all that matters. and why upset donald trump uns necessarily because at the end of the day, that is certainly all that matters here. so there is a calculation that there will be very little consequence to this and that, yes, democrats and others will harang them and there will be bad headlines. but when it's all said and done, so what? what are you going to do to me? right? and that is the stunning cynicism here in all of this. the cold, calculated, political approach to one of the most devastating events in our

country since 1912. this is all about covering for kevin mccarthy and senate republicans who are up to their elbows in this thing because they played a role. whether it was talking to donald trump that day or whether it was maybe sending a text message to people who were storming outside those doors. there's a lot of information here that they don't want disclosed. and so you have these two pieces and they're sitting in the cut to say what are you going to do about it? and i think the democrats should just push through it. you wanted america to see it full frontal and the republicans have said basically to the country, screw you. and so now i think the democrats say, all right, let's give this to the committees and go do the investigation. >> coming up, republicans won't back the commission, but that

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joe, we had last week's vote to oust liz cheney making the statement that going out publicly and speaking the truth and saying the election was not stolen cannot stand in the republican party. she's kicked out of her job. a week later you have this vote in the house that says no, we don't want to look through carefully and closely what happened on january 6th, what led up to it, what the security failures were on that day. this is clearly, it can't by any more stark from republicans saying we don't want to take a look at what happened during the events that followed it leading to an attack on the united states capitol. it shouldn't be a controversial issue to investigate an attack to overturn a presidential election, but here we are. >> and i'll say again, democrats still have the power to call witnesses, they have the power to subpoena. i think for democrats who want to know what the truth is

without having to stumble over qanon types and screaming and yelling and trying to get on these committees, here is what nancy pelosi does or maybe chuck schumer does his own version on this. but nancy pelosi can still call a committee. you have around 35 republicans that voted for this inquiry. she picks four democrats and four republicans. and maybe two of those republicans are adam kinsinger and liz cheney. and then you pick two former republican attorney generals who serve in passive administrations. and then the democrats, republicans, those 35, she puts two on there and let's them choose two form he republican attorney generals to be on there or two former administration

officials, maybe you get someone like a robert gates, maybe you get somebody like -- i don't know, former attorney general, former administration officials who are bipartisan, who are respected and who will follow the facts instead of donald trump. and then you have something that america will stop and watch. we've seen the liz cheney is actually in the eyes of kevin mccarthy and donald trump maddeningly focused on getting to the truth about january 6th. we've heard adam kinzinger do the same. there are 35 other republicans, 33, 34 other republicans that voted this way. so this can still happen. it doesn't need to be a joint deal. the fbi is running its investigation, right? the senate can run its own investigation. four republicans, four democrats. but liz cheney and kinzinger on

the republican side, two former republican attorney generals and then the democrats pick out their four. and, willie, you're going -- not only are you going to get to the bottom of this, but because you've got a four-four split and because you've got liz cheney on there actually getting to the truth about what kevin mccarthy knew and when kevin mccarthy knew it and when kevin mccarthy said it, you'll get a lot of people watching that and the truth will come out. >> and we heard the establishment of this commission on our show saying his suspicion is that people like kevin mccarthy don't want this commission because of what it might reveal about them. coming up, are we move towards a cease-fire in the middle east? the latest on the conflict there and what happens next after the violence subsides. t after the violence subsides.

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welcome back to "morning joe." the ceo of colonial pipeline that shut down operations for about a week after the cyber attack confirmed he authorized a ransom payment to the hackers. in an interview with "the wall street journal," ceo joseph blount explained his position to pay $4.4 million just hours after the hack was discovered. he told the paper, quote, i didn't make it lightly. i will admit that i wasn't comfortable seeing money go out the door to people like this. he went on to say it was an option he felt he had to exercise given the stakes involved in a shutdown of critical infrastructure. it was the right thing to do for the country, he said. a person familiar with the deal said the company paid the ransom using bitcoin, but the decryption program it received that was supposed to unlock their data was not enough to immediately restore the pipeline's systems. colonial pipeline is the largest in the country and provides nearly half of the fuel for the east coast. the day's long outage led to

houses of empty gas stations and fear of that fuel shortage. after publicly feuding for former president donald trump over false claims of election fraud, georgia's republican secretary of state, brad raffensperger has confirmed he is running for re-election next year. he acknowledges he will likely face a difficult primary fight, but plans to run on his record of standing up to trump. and law enforcement's pursuit of people that attacked the capitol on january 6th continued yesterday. the fbi field office released two new videos of suspects seeking the public's help to identify them. one shows a suspect attempt to go rip off an officer's gas mask and picking up a tactical baton and it hadding officers with it. the second video shows another suspect punching officers while wearing gloves with metal knuckles. anyone can information is encouraged to call the fbi. two suspects from the original

ten videos have been arrested thanks to help from the public. the fbi caught six more suspects yesterday marking one of the busiest days of the investigation into that attack. just under 500 people have been arrested for participating in the capitol attack, joe. >> looking at those videos, watching those officers being bridlized, members of congress that claimed that, you know, they were nothing but tourists there, ron johnson saying he never felt in danger, that he would be if it was a black lives matters march, they should be deeply ashamed. i know they're not, but they should be deeply ashamed of seeing videos like this where we've seen police beaten with american flags, we're seeing police being beaten with batons, we're seeing police being beat within metal knuckles, we're seeing police being beaten and

brutalized time and time again. and they continue -- they continue to defend these people who were -- are beating up police officers and cops. it's called insurrection. it's called -- this is just a full blown riot. and they're providing cover. they're providing cover to the enemy. people that actually -- i mean, if you still -- i don't know. maybe some of these people don't even define sedition or insurrection against the united states of america as somebody being an enemy of the state. but if not, that definition has certainly changed. if you look up the statute for conspiracy to commit sedition, this is right in line with it where they were acting to stop a constitutional act from moving forward. let's bring in right now the

chairman of the judiciary committee, senator dick durbin of illinois. senator, thanks so much for being with us. a lot of questions to get to. we'll get to that in one minute, but why don't we start with the first story that willie talked about and that was colonial pipeline shutting down and the ransom being paid. i'm curious, what is the united states congress, what is the biden administration going to stop future cyber attacks like this that could cripple america's infrastructure in a moment's notice? >> i can tell you, joe, it's a wake-up call for america. this was an inconvenience. it cost people some money for gasoline. it may have interrupted their daily routine. it could have been dramatically worse. and we better take it seriously. if these companies believe they have to pay these ransoms or else, this is going to happen again and again and again. first off, we've got to get the companies to come forward and tells when they've been hacked. i can remember we started this conversation years ago and the

chamber of commerce and the leaders and the business said no, no, that's bad public publicity for our company. baloney. we have to know about this so we can respond to it. i think that's the first step. secondly, we have to put defenses in place available to the private sector and the public sector to protect ourselves. believe me, it's an ongoing calling. >> yeah. and we need that defense, the defense against these cyber attacks, we also need for retribution and justice to be swift. how do we go after a bad actress like this who commit an act of war against the united states by going after its infrastructure? >> you know, when you look back in recent history, the many times that we have charged russians with wrongdoing dealing with political issues in our country and this situation, which appears to be russian inspired, as well, the honest answer is we don't have a really good easy way to deal with the

prosecution of people in other countries unless there's cooperation by those countries. we're certainly not going to get that from vladimir putin. >> so let's talk about the 1-6 commission. some republicans on the house side, 35, 36, thank god for them, decided they wanted to learn more about january 6th and launch a commission and good for them. it may be facing some obstacles. mitch mcconnell is against it in the senate. if republicans in the senate don't go along with this, why can't democrats in the senate launch their own committees as well as democrats in the house? why can't they launch their own sort of iran-contra style committee? >> the bottom line, the republicans who are voting against this commission are

afraid of the truth, afraid of what's going to come out and when it's going on come out. so the ones who voted against it are in some ways trying to stop this effort. in the senate, rules are different than in the house. chuck schumer said he's going to bring this commission vote to the floor and i'm glad he is. i can't wait to support it. there is a little bit of hope. there were some seven republicans who voted for the impeachment resolution against president trump related to this incident. so it gives us some hope that there may be 10 of them. it will take ten of them to move this forward. you ask why don't we do this on our own? because frankly that would be the major undertaking to the sclus of a lot of other things that we've got to do in this country to get this economy moving and dealing with the pandemic. i won't rule it out, joe. but in the senate, it's not an easy lift. >> you've known mitch mcconnell for a long time. when he comes out yesterday and says i'm going to recommend to

my members not to vote for a january 6th commission, which obviously is going to make it nearly impossible to cross that 60-vote threshold, what is driving that? what is behind that? is he living in fear of donald trump like everyone else in the party these days? >> let me tell you what happens on january 6th. leadership in the senate house was removed to a separate location. we were together in one large room. imagine, if you will, nancy pelosi and chuck schumer and mitch mcconnell, myself and others in lich who were there in that place. the feeling was, of course, one for safety for everyone in the capitol, number one, frustration over the fact that we were forced to interrupt our session, but anger over what was happening to our government and our country and our capitol building. that was shared by everyone. we were doing everything conceivable to bring in the proper forces to beat back this mob that was trying to take over the capitol and interrupt our business.

and there was a determination, a comeback in session that very day not to give to this trump mob what they wanted, an interruption in our process. i felt this was a unanimous feeling, a bipartisan feeling. now when we have this opportunity to put on the record clearly what happened on january 6th, the opposition of senator mcconnell i cannot understand except for the fact that it may spill into the election year in 2022 and he thinks it may have an impact on the election. that's the only thing i can imagine that is the vote of anyone. >> senator, it's jonathan lamere. the big lie from donald trump which fueled that violence has fueled republican efforts to go after voting rights, a number of states to change access to the ballot. we've seen it in several states. georgia, florida among them and that has cast a spotlight on the work of capitol hill for the voting rights act and the john lewis act. can you talk about where things

stand there, but more broadly, there's some bipartisan effort right now on infrastructure. do you see anywhere any republicans coming to help democrats with the voting rights legislation? and if not, is that the moment where the filibuster needs to be changed or thrown out? >> there are two majors under way, as you know. and the rules committee, it's s1. that is critically important because it establishes minimal standards across the united states of america for the availability of those eligible to vote. and we know that 20 states or more, they're changing the laws and making it more difficult for people to vote after a historic turnout in many states in this presidential election, after dramatic returns coming in from areas that we haven't seen before. the republicans are trying to get state legislatures to limit opportunities to vote. they can't beat the graphics to push back against the voters and make it more difficult for them to vote. so that's a reality. now when it comes to the john

lewis act, that is a part of preclearance of state decisions on drawing boundaries and such. there are two different worlds. we need both of them. we need the activity with the rules committee and we need our actions in the judiciary committee. your bottom line question, will a republican join us? i am hopeful. i can't speak to the other issues that is in the reels committee. >> so, senator, since we've gotten on the air, israel has, according to the associated press, israel has, again, unleashed a wave of air strikes across gaza. what would you say to the leaders of hamas and prime minister netanyahu about peace and for the palestinian territories and the people of israel?

>> 28 of us signed a letter just a week ago that john alsoff started calling for this cease-fire. i was glad to join it. i can't understand why there weren't move, even democrats, who called for an end to the death and killing going on in this situation. and let me tell you, there's two things i'd like to make very clear. first, i couldn't disagree more with the policies of netanyahu when it comes to the treatment of palestinians and the establishment of settlements. i think the two-state future is the only solution in that part of the world. that's the reality and i am not going to endorse netanyahu. now let me add kwktly, i made a commitment early in my career that i am standing by. i am going to support the survival of israel. those who want to cut back on the protective missiles and such

that they need, i don't join in that. they live in a very dangerous neighborhood. although i wholeheartedly disagree with the netanyahu policy, i am going to stand by my commitment to the survival of israel. >> senator, you're going to hold a hearing on you dish nominees. what do you hope to accomplish? >> we had five of them and they're excellent. two for the circuit and three for different court judges. the first of the biden administration all of them found well qualified by the american bar association, handled themselves professionally and is i'm hoping that we can get approval in the judiciary committee this morning. >> any concerns that republicans are going to vote en masse against these judicial nominees or is there hope -- let me be more optimistic. is there hope we can return to the days when qualified injury additional nominees get votes

from the senators. >> i hope so. it's up to the biden administration to give us well qualified people who republicans can feel confident that they can vote for. and i think we're going to see that. among the five that have been proposed, i think at least four of them have a chance. i'll no better this morning, of having bipartisan support. >> that would be fantastic. not only for them, but for the country. senator dick durbin, as always, we greatly appreciate you being with us. thanks so much. >> thank you. and coming up next, there's a lot happening around the world right now. we just mentioned the u.n. meeting this morning on the violence in the middle east. also, president biden waiving sanctions against a russian oil company. we'll have that and much more on "morning joe" when we return. orn "morning joe" when we return finding new routes to reach your customers, and new ways for them to reach you... is what business is all about. it's what the united states postal service

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emeritus at the williams center. and author of "insanity defense cln while our failure to confront hard national security problems makes us less safe." also with us, richard haass, his book, "the world: a brief introduction" is available in paperback. good morning. i know you will help me take up the cause of corey kluber a bit later but first let's talk about that first face-to-face conversation between high-level officials from the two countries since president biden was sworn in. a senior state department official called it constructive. this comes as the white house faces criticism for waving sanctions against the company overseeing the construction of a controversial russian pipeline to germany. the state department says those sanctions would, quote, negatively impact u.s. relations with germany, eu and other european a little lies and partners. richard, what do you see in these images right here of secretary of state blinken

sitting across from sergei raggoff? >> i see a couple of things, willie. one is the united states wanted to have certain types of diplomatic interaction with russia. they already signed a nuclear arms control and iran and nuclear issues in the middle east, obviously ukraine, north korea. i don't see diplomacy as a favor we do with russia. it is a tool of national security and decision to wave the sanctions was less about russia and really about germany. then the question is how do we subsidize ukraine, which potentially stands to lose if gas no longer that's to traverse its territory? how do we make sure russia is not in position to blake mail germany or other countries? we need stand-by arrangements there. but i see this in a sense as pretty practical diplomacy. >> jane, let's talk about the practical diplomacy.

it was the last four years under the trump administration was a bit schizophrenic for the russians and donald trump being seek wa 'tis, huell millating himself with vladimir putin. and then the u.s. with really tough sanctions now. this seems more like a consistent approach with the russians. do you have any hope we can build on this relationship that has really, really suffered over the past 15, 20 years, mainly because vladimir putin invading countries and acting the way he has? >> well, in my book, joe, i say we haven't had a foreign policy strategy since the cold war ended. we assume everyone wants to be us and we missed the rise of china and missed the rise of terrorism and overmilitarized

our response to 9/11 and that's how we got the endless wars. this is the emergence of a nuanced foreign policy strategy. i agree with richard, there are two ways we can approach russia. one is the tough way and we should. we opposed sanctions on their sovereign wealth funds, the right thing to do after recent cyberattack, and condemned them for keeping navalny in prison, as we should. that's a huge human rights violation. on the other hand there should be cooperation, there is cooperation, arctic, which i led for ten years, as a polar initiative where we meet regularly with russia and having our top people meet there was exactly the right group. this relief on the pipeline to me is a little complicated because russia is still meddling in eastern ukraine 2349 dom box and i don't see how that reduces our leverage, on the other hand

if russia gives us a carrot, i believe they're cooperating on a newer, better agreement in iran and maybe that will pay off. germany wants the pipeline but the rest of europe doesn't. that's another wrinkle biden has to address. >> richard, talk about our approach towards russia. it seems every leader in the 21st century, every president has seemed to have gotten it wrong. george w. bush, of course, making his embarrassing remark about looking to the soul of putin. barack obama whispering once the election is over, we can do more with you guys. and donald trump, we can just talk about what he said in helsinki. in response to all of that, russians invaded georgia in 2008, ukraine in 2014 and interfered in our elections in 2016. what is the best approach to

russia, to vladimir putin, if we want to move them from where they think of us as an enemy, to where they think of us as a rival? >> well, it's going to be difficult to get there, joe, because vladimir putin gets up every day, his principal goal is to maintain power over his country, and he sees a lot of what we do and even more what we stand for as inconsistent with that. so the best we're going to have is an extremely limited transactional relationship where we can continue to have limits on nuclear arms, maybe on this or that regional problem, meet some sort of accommodation. but fundamentally, we're going to be distant economically, distant diplomatically, we're going to be at odds but i think what presidents have to understand is to get over the notion that personal interaction with vladimir putin counts for a lot. it goes back even to fdr and stalin. so many american presidents

think the personal chemistry will matter. it will not matter with vladimir putin. he is who he is. he's a former kgb officer and he's going to pursue what he sees as his personal interest as well as his country's interest relentlessly. again, it's going to be a relationship where we're going to try to carve out some limited areas of cooperation, and see if he will lead in afghanistan now against a backdrop of fundamental differences and fundamental competition. >> i want to get to the violence we're seeing between israel and palestinians. the quiet diplomacy, u.s. gave israel space to counterstrike, defend itself, and now more overt pressure from president biden the last couple of days calling for a cease-fire, with some hope one could come into play in a day or two, even though as we know there are still attacks right now. what is your analysis on how the u.s. handled this situation?

>> it's one of those hard problems, again, we have to address and in a better way than we have. just magically thinking a two-state solution will work right now and b.b. netanyahu, the best survivor in politics in our lifetimes will back off is naive. what do we do now? biden is threading a needle. the community and a large number of congress are critical of israel. there's an effort by some of the left who cut off the sale of j-jams, precision-guided emissions that go on rockets to help them meet their targets and criticism of biden from bernie sanders and others. this is must. and israeli is turning on itself. israelis who got along with the jewish-rileys and served side by

side and connected are turning on their neighbors in cities like lod, which is hugely disheartening. if you have to play the long game, and i think b.b. netanyahu is now trying to play the long game. there has to be a reset. i think there will be one here but the bigger issue was addressed brilliantly yesterday in "the washington post," vetting the whole middle east, tectonic plates are moving. i think biden understands this and bibi netanyahu for the long time will have to learn about this. >> jane harman as always, thank you very much for being with us. greatly appreciate it. richard haass, final thoughts on last night? and the largest-stroke zone in modern baseball history for corey kluber? >> two things, joe. you and that lemire guy owe an apology to the city and state of new york for not recognizing greatness and fairness when you see it. today at the tart of the ppa tournament, the longest golf

course created for a major golf tournament, ten holes by the water, it will be a great four days. the but, joe, i'm waiting to hear your apology, as is willie. >> if kluber were playing golf, instead of a golf cup, you had like a big basket for him to putt into. that's what we were looking into last night. anyway, richard, i want to ask you at some point if you ever saw sergey lavrov and dr. bra zensky in the same room? i saw the foreign policy at the cf forum one time and he had that same take-no-prisoners approach of as dr. brzezinski, and i said, i've seen that before. >> certainly. >> i'm sorry, alex is yelling at me. he must hate the yankees too. we'll get to that later. rig