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is that even though so much has been looked at, a steady drip of what we know might be the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the ex-president's efforts to overturn the election result. the latest bombshell coming from conspiracy theorist, alex jones, who was at the capitol on january 6th. during his broadcast monday, he said he took the fifth more than 100 times in his interview with the select committee. politico reports on what jones referred to as the quote, unofficial testimony that he delivered on his show, quote, jones described the questions the committee asked him about his contacts with gop fund-raiser, carolyn wren. who he described as a liaison for logistics relating to trump's rally. quote, my contact for the fifth and sixth was carolyn wrenn, he said. all this comes as focus by the

committee on recently revealed plans to get the u.s. military to seize voting machines. plans that resulted in an executive order being crafted. one that was not signed and ultimately not released, but would have amounted to a radical and norm busting power grab by the ex-president and the trump administration in the days and weeks before congress was set to certify president biden's victory in the 2020 election. brand-new reporting traces the idea back to the ex-president's legal team which was full of conspiracy they are riss. politico reports quote, a former member of trump's legal team says that former army colonel first came up with the idea of trump issuing an executive order to seize voting machines. he is now best known for circulating a 38-page powerpoint presentation that urged trump to declare a state of emergency in the wake of the election as "the washington post" has detailed,

that presentation found its way into the inbox of mark meadows while he was the white house chief of staff. questions now, what happened to that executive order? why wasn't it signed? who wrote it. did the guardrails hold barely in this case and stop what have been a massive breach of norms that would have damaged our democracy? joyce vance writes that it is important for the january 6 select committee to uncover everything it can about these plans. she writes the existence of a draft eo doesn't inherently prove that trump or anyone else entered into an illegal conspiracy, but it does validate the fears of many reasonable officials and watchdogs who were worried about behind the scenes scheming before and after the election and it raises questions that must be answered about who thought it was a good idea to use the military in violation of basic principles to interfere on behalf of a candidate who lost an election. the truth cannot stay covered

up. the january 6 select committee uncovering what actually happened behind the scene of the trump coup attempt is where we start this hour. joyce vance is here. former u.s. attorney and msnbc legal analyst. also joining us today, julie davis and former rny chairman and msnbc political analyst, michael steel is here. michael, i'm going to start with you and we're going to dive into what we've learned today and the january 6 investigation. as i was reading all these different pieces today, we have to step back and talk about the simple fact that today's characters, trying to think of a way to describe how weird it is they were advising american president in the middle of a pandemic. an important hour for our country which was not to be. they went to vet it out to attend an event on the south lawn in any normal white house.

these are people with bizarre, way outside the norms. alex jones is i think a convicted liable or slander against the sandy hook families. phil waldrun is way outside the norm of any ex-military adviser and carolyn was a fund-raiser and event planner whose name was on those permits. talk about the kind of people around trump and his white house in the final days. >> these are affirmers, nicolle. people who affirm the baser instincts of donald trump. these are individuals who the president would call at 1:00 in the morning or 3:00 in the afternoon instead of conducting the business and affairs of state, he's conducting the business and affairs of trump enterprises and trump enterprises in the white house really boiled down to how do we hold the power we have? how do we prosecute those who

stand in our way? how do we get the advantage? these individuals played the various roles. they weren't serious players in anybody else's orbit. who were these people before trump? josh holly and ted cruz weren't calling these guys up and asking for them advice and insights on policy, but for trump, they filled that piece he needed filled that would give him the reenforcements he needed to make the case. so when it comes to this executive order, trump's executive order is a reflection of how trump feels about this matter. that he wants to put it in writing and they're there to reenforce it. you've got the media guy with the radio program who can then go out and talk about it firsthand, right? and reenforce the messaging that trump once reenforced.

you've got phone conversations et cetera that reenforce to joyce's great piece, what was going on behind the scenes and what you will find ultimately is the president's role was stamped with his approval. he stamped the roles that were played by various individuals out there with his own direct approval and that's i think probably going to be the more damning part of this for trump in the end despite that he may not have said yeah, i'll go out and take back the you know, the capitol, but everything but all the little pieces, the conversations he had sort of create this picture and the economy's been very deliberately and diligently putting that piece together. >> i mean, just listening to

you, michael, there's sort of a good news bad news result to what you're describing and i guess the good news is that bill barr left before this really became an attempt to overthrow the will of the voters. he left at the hands of jeffrey rosen who said if jeffrey clark takes over, you know, not only will i walk out, but all the white house lawyers will walk out. but also i think raises serious questions about what will be in these documents. i mean, if these folks are the likes of who donald trump was -- talking about him dialing for people who affirm his world view, you can think of the people who call radio hosts. i guess that's how old i am. can you play this one for my old boyfriend? that's how trump was on the phone. hey, man, can you send me over a key plot? i can't get -- to do it and barr left. so he's reaching out but that is a good point about what may be in these documents. this is what i talked to trump

about at 3:00 a.m. last night when he called me. >> yeah, we've seen that with the chief of staff conversations, with giuliani conversations, where you really begin to put the picture together and joyce, again, i go back to not just what she wrote, but replay some of the conversations she's had with us of what these people are already feeding into the narrative. we watched on ari's program last week three of the players just come on and lay out the case. oh, yeah, we had this conversation. yeah, i was involved with you know, making sure this, that, and the other piece came together. so when you piece all of that together with what the commission already has, nicolle, what it points up is yes, the role these individuals played for sure. but more importantly, at the center of that was the president of the united states who wanted his will exacted and executed

on. that's what he wanted at the end of the day. he wanted those 11,781 votes, right? he wanted that done. he wanted mike pence to go out there and recount the vote or throw out what he needed to throw out, but he wanted his will to be acted on and that's what all of these players from the vice president down to whomever, those are the roles they played and behind that was the ultimate puppet master. pulling the springs, directing the narrative and trying to finish out the story. >> and hitting dead ends. julie, i want to show you something that i think joyce writes about in this piece. but this is a public statement from bill barr on december 22nd, which was two days before he leaves, but i think it's five days after that eo was drafted on the topic of seizing voting chance. >> i say no basis now for

seizing machines. by the federal government. you know, wholesale seizure of machines by the federal government. >> you believe there's enough evidence to warrant a special counsel to investigate that perhaps giving power to someone else? >> if i thought a special counsel at this stage was the right tool and was appropriate, i would name one, but i haven't and i'm not going to. >> so julie, two things that were in that executive order. has some interesting reporting that there's a lookout for other executive orders that may be in that traunch of documents. ruling out the seizure of voting machines and a special counsel. two things that were in that draft eo. >> yeah, it's clear and you mentioned this a little bit ago that a lot of people around trump both in the white house and in the administration and the justice department were pushing back against him with this stuff.

the dangerous thing we're finding out and finding out the extent of right now is the number of people who were in his orbit who were really pushing these things and this is the alternative that he wanted to pursue. so it's true that at the time, barr was saying no, there is no basis for doing this. no need for a special counsel, we're not going to seize machines. the bottom line is the president is the one who sets the tone in the white house and what the president wanted to do was to find evidence of this fraud he insisted has occurred. he was bringing in people and people were being bought to him who were spinning all sorts of wild theories about foreign election interference and what would need to be proved to get a special counsel named. those were the ones who his enablers were bringing to him at the time. even though you had some guardrails and they did seem to work in this case, the case of

the eo we're talking about potentially others out there that didn't get sign, looks like we came close to the point where the president might have been considering signing those and whether he came up with the idea himself or whether he was just turning to these people feeding him a steady stream of these kinds of alternatives. we know that this was under serious discussion at the highest levels of the white house and that does give a really new perspective to what actually went on on january 6th. i mean, we have reported and some other news organizations reported in realtime that there was consideration of seizing machines and the president wanted to find a way to do this, but somehow seeing it this black and white when politico published the order on friday, really gave some chilling detail, there were real discussions going on at the time about taking this unprecedented

action. >> julie makes the key point here in that it's not that barr refused so trump moved on. barr refused so trump moved on to jeffrey clark. the reason today's headlines include these names is because trump just forum shopped. still does. >> i think that that's absolutely righton to how impor for the january 6th committee to continue its work is how much maneuvering was going on and to michael's point, ultimately, this really starts to smack of trump and the sort of methodology he used. i mean, this was a man who loved to announce an investigation as a way to push things over the edge in his direction.

he did that with hillary clinton in the 2016 election. made a lot of hay out of the notion she should be under investigation. we saw him do it again with ukraine and now here he is after he's lost an election doing it on his own, right? that's what this executive order had it gone into effect, would have ultimately done. it would have announced an investigation. the entire basis for that investigation would have been the big lie about a page and a half of this draft executive order is spent on continuing all this sort of notion of fraud in georgia, in michigan. they even bring back dominion voting machines. so this is vintage trump and we also see his fipger prints at the defense department where as you know, at the point in an administration where people are figuring out what their next act looks like, trump was busy installing a new secretary of defense. he was taking kash patel and putting him in as the chief of

staff. they were taking three under secretary positions at defense and putting their people in in an acting capacity. that is very odd. it has always seemed very odd. now it jumps into relief when we note there was a plan afoot to use dod to seize machines, to announce this investigation. it all begin to make sense. is it a criminal conspiracy? you know, we don't know yet, but doj had better be getting its act together and going to work based on what the january 6th committee is uncovering. >> we don't know what doj is doing. we have a good sense, julie. you and your team have been writing some of the most extraordinary reporting about how they view referrals as part of their body of work. i want to ask you about something in the paper today. you write about what maybe some of the testimony may direct the 1/6 committee to direct it sounds like. a copy of a draft executive

order about seizing machines was posted on politico's website friday. that memo's three pages. national archives describes a memo that's four pages. there's another mentioned in a recent disclosure by the committee to the trump ally that could also fit this description. it was withheld and described in a log of documents that carrick refused to turn over in. this made me want to ask if they were getting these documents or see what they're hunting if r. >> i think it's a little of both. i think they have a good idea of what they would like to find. of course there's the question of whether there was a concerted plot to obstruct a proceeding of congress, right? the counting of the electoral

votes and whether all of this, the talk about seizing machines, the talk about you know, appointing a special counsel. not confirming joe biden's victory, but instead waiting until this other bogus investigation could somehow uncover these false fake votes the president was basing his case on that he had actually won the election. so i think they would like to be able to tie the one to the other but you're right. every time they go down one of these avenues and get new documents, whether it's the text they got from mike meadows or this big cash of documents they got when the supreme court ruled in their favor and trump had to turn over that 700 pages that ween tated in the paper, they find new things and find new potential issues that may lead

to yet another charge, whole other aspect to this what they already have a pretty good picture of, a plan in the mind of the president and what they really need to do is nail down how much of that was actually sort of intrain a real scheme, conspiracy, if you will, as joyce said, to overturn the election. and they haven't been able to make those connections yet and i think some of what they're looking for when you talk about these executive orders, the conversations around those things. why were they not signed? who pushed back? are there memos, conversations, texts or e-mails where people are discussing whether this would be legal or not. did the justice department get involved? was there an attempt to vet this? all of those things could lead to a much more understanding of whether this was really a plan or something that the president was imaging that was in his head. >> and joyce, one of the big

pieces, whether you're analyzing this as julie just said, from the bottom down from the phony electors from five states with similarly formatted documents ending in fraudulent electors in the seven states that happen to be the ones outlined by john eastman or from the top down. whether it started with trump bringing in eastman and making that connection. eastman is at the center of it either way you go and courts have now issued one more decision that increases the odds of the january 6th committee finding out what happens regardless of whether people like mike pence ever talk to them. or if alex jones does something more than take the fifth. this is also from politico. a federal judge indicated monday whether he will reject a bid by eastman, the attorney who spearheaded the effort to single handedly overturn the 2020 election to invalidate a subpoena issued last week by the

january 6 select committee to chapman, eastman's former employer. instead, judge carter ordered eastman to work with the panel to produce a log of documents that eastman wants to university to withhold, citing a variety of confidentiality of restrictions and privileges. first of all, what executive privileges to kerik and eastman have and second, do you think that traunch of documents could tie up these unanswered between trump and the lot? >> this is a really interesting situation. this is a judge in the central district of california, a federal judge, and he enters an order yesterday at the close of the hearing and essentially he says this. i'm not going to permit you to argue, john eastman, that you don't have to turn over anything to the january 6th committee. their subpoena is legitimate, but the judge reserves for him

the opportunity to argue that specific documents inside of his e-mails are privileged, but then he does something that you don't see a federal judge do often. he ordered eastman to get to work with the january 6th committee by noon today. he asked the parties to give him a joint meeting, telling him where they were and compiling that privilege log by tomorrow and then again friday. and he's ordered them back into court on monday for a hearing on the status of these proceedings. in other words, this judge is telling eastman, don't sit around and play the delay game. i expect you to tell the house committee which documents in your e-mails and other materials are privileged and turn over everything else immediately. there's still some legitimate scope of privilege. i think executive privilege is out the door after the supreme court ruled last week against trump in that regard. it's tough to see much vitality there. that leaves these folks with

asserting the fifth amendment privilege saying they can't turn things over because they would tend to incriminate you and while you have that privilege while you're testifying, that's typically not a privilege that extends to turning over documents or physical evidence. so eastman and these other folks are going to be running out of excuses. >> joyce, julie, and michael, thank you so much for starting us off today. when we come back, virginia's new republican governor has only been in office ten days and he's managing to steal quite a few headlines already. not all of them good. he ran on a pledge to focus on moderate, relatable kitchen table issues but his first ten days are anything but. plus, the push to undermine democracy is getting help from one of the most visible people on conservative cable. how the far right embrace of

dictators could be getting in the way of u.s. foreign policy aims. and later, they're being called problematic political candidates. they're far more dangerous than that sounds. the head of the adl on the new crop of extremists running for office this year. all those stories and more when deadline white house continues after a quick break. don't go anywhere. adne white hos after a quick break. don't go anywhere.

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among the dozens of virginia school districts already defying republican glenn youngkin's order making school mask mandates optional, seven are suing the get it overturned.

youngkin, who said he'd leave mask mandates up to localities and ran on governing for all virginians, has instead done a bit of a bait and switch, spending most of his first ten days in office dismissing concerns of the state's largest schools and banning inherently divisive concepts in classrooms. things like critical race theory, which is not actually taught in virginia public schools. yesterday, he told a conservative radio host he blames left liberals and school board bureaucrats for the mass chaos in response to his new order. more from "the washington post," quote, in the interview, he touted a tip line for parents to report to the state any school officials they find to be behaving objection bly. he's trump in a red vest, a supporter said in an interview with the post after they had him on the air. joining our coverage, ashley parker, "washington post" white house bureau chief and msnbc political analyst.

plus, david jolly is here. also an msnbc contributor and our friend, donny deutsch is here. donny, i want to start with you. the youngkin brand was the best sort of thing that the republicans had going, right? he identified as pretrump or post, i don't know what it was, but it appears he couldn't sustain ten day of that brand before he went full trumpster. >> one was running for virginia and one running for president. the simple formula if you look at a politician, algorithm, the more controversial things they say, the more pick up they get, the more interactions they get, the more fund raising they get. to layer on top of that, if you want to run in a presidential election, the further right you go, the better chance you have in the primaries certainly. so i think when you put those two together, that's what we have here. i don't think it's a general election winning formula, but it

is curious because he seemed to have this unique spot on how to keep trump in a box and not dismiss him but not bring him in and now he's got the trump stripes all over him. this is a guy that's already got national office aspirations. >> david, yesterday, we covered a story about equally new attorney general in virginia firing the top investigator on the january 6 committee who is the general counsel at uva. today, the potential for seven lawsuits against the from seven different school districts against the governor. what is the upside? what is the incentive structure to do things that are clearly a local district knows best if masks make sense at any moment. what drives this? pure politics as it seems from the outside? >> i think so. i think donna hit the nail on the head. we should not dismiss that

youngkin is not considering a run for president. if you look at it through that lens, you have to look at it through the same lens as you look at abbott and desantis. that's a very different political figure than we saw in the candidate. it means obliterating local control. overriding the interest of local parents and their school boards. it means ruling with a sort of trumpian touch. i think we will see more of that. the unfortunate thing for republicans though, youngkin really created an alternative pathway for republicans post trump. i mean, the republican party took it on the chin in 2018 under the trump version of politics. trump lost in 2020. they lost the high profile races in georgia. youngkin actually provided the first pathway to bringing the republican party back. capturing the suburbs. bringing back those voters who said i may have been be trump in '16, but i'm with biden in '20.

young kin represented what could be the future narrative of the republican party, but in his first ten days, he's gone back towards donald trump. it's back to a losing brand of gop politics. >> i want to say something really blunt, ashley. youngkin psyched democrats out. there was a sense that oh, he's good. and he's totally regressed. he's just like a middling normal trump era republican now. sort of a dud. >> you're right. there was the sense initially that he had cracked the code to be a republican who could win all those voters that president biden won that democrats pulled away from trump in the base. sort of those voters that are really the key ones that are up for grabs. there was no consternation about that. you remember that the race was viewed, in races this the first year of a president's trump, especially ones that close to washington, always take on outsized importance, but it was

viewed as cataclysmic for what it meant tor democrats across-country and now you have them thinking it was an upset in certain ways and frustrating, but it was a two point win in treating that as a mandate. it will be interesting to see what the voters in virginia, especially some of those more swing suburbs and counties do in response especially so early in this term. >> you can look at this two ways politically now. maybe more breathing room for democrats who i think were pretty freaked out by what ashley and david and you have all described is what seemed like a potential, if not post trump, sort of running next to trump but not to close. they have more time to figure that out. doesn't seem to be the case. that seemed to be a banner, a bumper sticker, a hat, if you will, not an actual governing philosophy. the other is, i mean, democrats had such i don't want to say

wasted anymore. virginia is a state they need to hang on to and seems like youngkin is giving them an opportunity to get right back in the game in an important state. >> yeah. it is a branding point of view as we've both been saying. he had this wonderful space. it was a space that was scary to democrats, but i'm going to go back to the chameleon nature of this guy. the same guy that got up and said he's going to ban critical race theory in virginia schools and there is no critical race theory in virginia schools. there's a difference, if you're running in a general election in virginia haves a primary election nationally and then a general election nationally. i think we have what is a real chameleon here. if we were going to fast forward, i would not be shocked to see the old glenn youngkin, if he ever became the republican nominee for president, i know we're getting ahead here, he would be the same guy who ran in

virginia. not the guy that's governing today, to get into the race on the primary side of it. i don't think it's any more politically complicated than that. >> ashley, donny, and david are staying with us. up next for us, tucker carlson just asking the question why does the u.s. support democracies as we're talking about. and yes, he actually said that. about. about. and yes, he actually said that ♪taking a break from all your worries ♪ ♪sure would help a lot ♪ ♪wouldn't you like to get away? ♪ ♪ ♪ sometimes you want to go ♪ ♪where everybody knows your name ♪ ♪ ♪and they're always glad you came ♪ to be a thriver with metastatic breast cancer means asking for what we want. and need. and we need more time. so, we want kisqali.

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i've spoken with every one of our nato allies. there's no reason for anyone, any member of nato to wonder whether or not we, nato, would come to their defense. >> president biden this afternoon reaffirming support for our nato allies and european democracies. that's amid escalating russian aggression along the ukrainian border. in the midst of this crisis, one anchor is asking why biden is being so mean to putin. >> why is it disloyal to side with russia but loyal to side with ukraine? they're both foreign countries that don't care anything about the united states. kind of strange. the government of some place called ukraine is demanding that we fight the russian army on their behalf. the question is we're the united states so why are we obeying them? we don't get anything out of pushing ukraine into nato, so why are we doing this? putin is our most dangerous enemy, they scream. then washington, the theme

remains in force. russia, russia, russia, is bad. >> and there's a reason they play him every night on russian state tv. it's not the first time tucker carlson has openly embraced dictators. he's been vocal in his support for hungarian leader viktor orban. last week, he announced he'll be broadcasting from that country for the second time in a year. we're back with ashley, david, and donny. so david jolly, tucker's, i think we could answer those questions for him, but is he so committed and why is fox news on his behalf, so committed to tearing down american embrace and support and alignment with the world's democracies? >> i suppose for tucker and fox news, it's about ratings and corporate profit. i'd say it's easy to dismiss the rantings of tucker as ignorant

and lunacy and someone seeking a headline. those are probably true. i think the danger in this, when you get to matters like ukraine and russia, whether it's opinion journalism or hard news, a lot of programming is built around political news that confirms somebody's viewpoint of the world and that's great. that's why some people choose in network. some choose others. it aligns with their view of politics. but when you're -- those are low information spaces with the message of those who cover the news really matters and informs and so for a large audience across the country when tucker carlson delivered this message, it's dangerous because it's actually informing and educating people that the western alliance that protects freedom from dictators and authoritarian des pits like putin somehow is not valuable and there's equity between putin and the western

alliance. that's the danger of what people believe he is telling them on a nightly basis. >> shouldn't be any message from cable anchor. there should be experts and questions. i wonder, ashley, president biden's comments were important for another reason. i mean, famously, pouille and mcmaster had a hard time getting trump to say what biden said there. that he would affirm the commitment to defend our nato allies in any crisis. so the idea that one of the most watched, tucker has incredible ratings. fox news is played on just about every military base, and yesterday, 8500 u.s. troops were put on high alert. so what is again, what is the acknowledgment that he's doing grave harm to american national security i guess cohesion or sort of a purpose of the united states national security doctrine over decades to democrats and republicans to stand with democracies against autocracies?

>> there's a central irony here that's sort of delicious for someone like former president trump, which as you alluded to, he was hammered correctly in many ways for four years of not being tough enough on russia, on putin. this was the message by democrats. this was the message by president biden when he was candidate. and what's interesting in what we're seeing now in terms of the actual politics and actual sags situation of it is that republicans and democrats on theory of policy are incredibly aligned in terms of what they want, what they think the administration should do, how they think it should be handled, what they want to see from russia, but because of what happened in part under the trump presidency, those domestic politics are scrambled. so you see some republicans who are being critical of someone like president biden in part because these are to be clear sort of the more trumpian maga base because they were just so

furious that for four year, democrats and biden hammered trump for not being tough enough on putin that they want to say biden will not be strong enough on putin. and they're hearing these messages from people they watch and listen to like tucker carlson, so you're seeing partisanship in one of these areas where really when you talk to democrat and republican lawmakers, they say we should actually all agree what's best for the country and what's best for the world, but that's not totally what we're seeing now on capitol hill. >> i mean, some of this was obviously the matched or sort of intersecting in 2016 as outlined in the first volume of the mueller report that russia sought to influence the election in trump's favor and the campaign welcomed that support and called out, russia, if you're listening. "washington post" has some analysis of that. it wasn't until 2016 election when putin and russia sought to influence the outcome on behalf

of trump who excused putin's assassination efforts, but a gulf emerged. suddenly, democrats were more likely to see russia as a threat than we are republicans. among those who reported having voted for trump last year, twice as many view putin with some favorability. putin's goal during the 2016 election was to amplify divisions in american politics. five years later, that effort has generated a weird side effect that seems to have widened the gap on perceptions of putin himself. i remember, i don't know if you were there that day, donny, but i remember trump saying to joe, you know, we do bad things too, and joe said killer. i mean, has embrace of putin and tucker following his lead or leading him now, i don't know who leads who this the tucker trump relationship, but has that made it harder for any american president now to lead this

country in terms of a challenging russia with the feeling that the country's behind them? >> a new poll said 33% of americans think democracy, it's okay to tammer with it a little bit and the autocrats on the other side of that and obviously come out on the winning side of that formula with that 33%. let's get this straight. there's a little, the point i brought up about glenn youngkin in the first segment that the more polarizing you are, the better your ratings are. he's a ratings whore. that's it. it's a game. let's stop saying -- performance art. that's what it is. by the same way, last week, he said that doing, making kids wear masks in schools is no different than experiments the nazis did on the jews and it's the same kind of mandate situation. he's a ratings whore. that's what this is. period. >> with unbelievably dire

consequences. we'll leave it there. ashley, thank you for being part of our coverage. a second new york city police officer has died after a shooting in the city last friday night. the very latest on that story and what the city's new mayor is trying to do to put an end to gun violence in his city. t an e gun violence in his city what happens when we welcome change? we can make emergency medicine possible at 40,000 feet. instead of burning our past for power, we can harness the energy of the tiny electron. we can create new ways to connect.

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you're a one-man stitchwork master. but your staffing plan needs to go up a size. you need to hire. i need indeed. indeed you do. indeed instant match instantly delivers quality candidates matching your job description. visit indeed.com/hire when i noticed that we have a sea of violence that many rivers are feeding this

violence. we have to dam each one. we look towards the police department and believe they are not doing their job. that is not true. we are taking thousands of guns off the street. over 300 guns were taken off the street since i was elected. 6,000 guns last year, 22,000 subway, another thousand cops going into the subway station. when you look at what the police is doing, that's just one river. now let's look at the others. >> that was new york city's new mayor this morning talking about described as a sea of violence that to residents can feel like it's reached every corner of our city. the mayor speaking just a short time before news broke this afternoon that a second officer has died. that shooting in harlem from friday evening. officer will boar and his partner were answering a domestic disturbance call when a gunman opened fire. he lost his life on friday.

the shooting is one of several high-profile acts of violent crime the mayor has had to contend with since being sworn in. he's unveiled an ambitious plan to curb the volence. let's bring in investigations correspondent tom winter. first, on the officer who lost his life today? >> the officer died just a short time ago. according to the report, the reason why he was taken from the hospital where he was shot on friday night to nyu is because they have a special donor harvesting team. so the idea was as soon as he passed away and he was in very, very difficult shape and was always unlikely to make it through this, is that that team would then go to work to try to salvage some of his organs so he could continue to help others after his death.

a family member maybe a match for some of his organs. they are in the process of trying to figure that out now. the process of trying to figure out if any of his organs can be donated. if so, we're told aviation units are standing by to be able to transport those organs, if necessary, to anybody who may need them. so that's the latest there. the funeral expected for his officer who died who responded to ha call with him, jason rivera, that funeral is slated for friday just a block from us here. typically, the nypd expects 10 to 12 blocks for a funeral like this lined with officers saluting the casket and the body a as it goes by en route to the cathedral. i'm told this afternoon that it maybe double that amount of officers that maybe coming in from across the country as well as obviously his fellow nypd officers to line mid-town

streets. >> these shootings have rattled the city. they have rattled the police department. talk about the mayor's doing behind the scenes. we heard what he had to say publicly today. >> yeah, so it's really interesting. everybody from the cardinal to republican members of congress to democratic city council members, all in support of what the may yor had to say yesterday. usually that would be enough for headline for me to join you that everybody could get under that tent and agree. but i think the real challenge going forward, the finer details on huh this enforcement comes together, it's not just nypd issue you have five district attorneys in new york city representing the five burros and they all have different approaches to crime. how will manhattan deal with it. initially those elected to replace vance said if somebody brandishes a gun he would not charged that person with armed robbery, which shocked people this manhattan. he has since walked that back, but that's the type of different

approaches that we're seeing city wide. so the question is going to be whether or not there's going to be some sort of a cohesive approach to this. the mayor referencing 6,000 guns that were taken off new york city streets last week. a big component of that are the amount of people under 18 in possession of those weapons and a big part of his program is going to look at whether or not they can get a sizable amount of teenagers and even kids younger than that off city streets and back into the classroom or meaningful employment. that's going to be a big part of his focus in stopping this iron pipeline, as it's called. the amount of guns finding its way into new york city and the kids are carrying for adults because they were typically charged as teenagers. if the kids give up who gave them the gun, they will still be charged in family court. if not, they could be charged as adults. that's something he's going to try to go for, but that requires the cooperation from the district attorney's office it and then you have the mental health program.

over a billion dollars spent on mental health and i can tail light you whether it be law enforcement professionals or medical professionals, i don't think anybody thinks we're getting our money's worth here in new york city when it comes to those programs. so how will those programs move forward, that might deal with some of the crime we're seeing. i have the statistics in front of me. crime year over year in new york city up 35%. that's just for the first couple week this is year. shooting incidents up over 22%. we used to look at how did we do last year, how was it the year before. going back 12 years, we're seeing jumps in car thefts of 48%. that's versus 12 years ago. a bit of a retracement here. >> we'll have to have this conversation next time as well. it's also reshaping public opinion in realtime just in the

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unfortunately, as you noted, mr. chairman, january 6th was not an isolated sln. the problem of domestic terrorism has been metastasizing

for a long time now and it's not going away. >> it's 5:00 in new york. not going away any time soon. that was the fbi director warning us about something unfortunately he was all too correct about. those comments were from testimony before congress a few months following the january 6th attack addressing a situation we have only seen intensify since then. in the past year, we have seen extremist voices in this country grow louder. in fact, a bunch of them are now running to hold positions of power as elected officials. a new report released this morning by the antidefamation league examines the sampling of the over 100 people they are tracking who they characterize as problematic political candidates running for office this year. problematic because they promote extreme views associated with extremists or promote potentially dangerous conspiracy theories. the list of candidates which continues to grow on a near daily basis includes a dozen candidates with exple sit

connections to extremist groups or movements including white supremacists, extremists and members of the far right proud boys. the report also finds that at least 45 candidates running for office this year had credence to the conspiracy theory in some way. these candidates running a at a time axios describes as a perfect storm for extreme politicians. axios reports, redistricting and a flood of departing incouple bants are paving the way. at least 19 house districts in 12 states are primed to attract such candidates. hard partisans running in strongly partisan districts. that's according to an axios analysis of districts as measured by the cook political report index. open seats are the biggest accelerate rant of extremism and breeding fwrounds for warfare. one open seat that's received a lot of attention is the one

being vacated by senator portman, who counts as moderate these days. today one of the most extreme voices serving in the u.s. house weighed in on that race picking her favorite. marjorie taylor greene endorsed former venture capitalist jd vance in the republican primary saying he's, quote, the kwept warrior. vance has done a 180 a couple times over running now as a trump loyalist who has built up a an online presence and the endorsement is sure to boost his standing. extremism on the ballot is where we start this hour with some of our favorite reporters. jonathan greenblat is here, author of the book "it could happen here." also joining us is former assistant of counterintelligent

intelligence at the fbi. jonathan, jd vance is a good case study because he's made a choice. he knows what extremism is and know what is it leads to. he endorsed evan mcmullen in the republican primary because he was, i think his word was revolted or repulsed by dopd j. trump. now accepting and celebrating the endorsement of one of the republican caucuses most extreme and frankly nutty members, marjorie taylor greene. talk about how the green lighting from people who know better ushers in this more extreme bloc in american elected officials. >> this is really a remarkable moment in american politics. i would think reagan is turning over in his grave when he thinks these are the inheritors of his legacy. marjorie taylor greene, with her jewish space lasers and her

compatriots in the qanon movement, the idea she's the arbiter of who is an able member of the senate should terrify all of us. when she's the one doing the political hand picking. and as we released in our report today, it's alarming when you consider the surge of extreism that we're seeing all across the country. we're tracking racism more than 32 states and the list grows every single day with people running for office who are former white us is premisists and proud of it. with the oath keepers, with the proud boys movement and i should make a note of this, they are not only running for the u.s. senate like jd advance, they are running at the county commissioner seats for secretaries of state so they can influence the election process. so think about this. people who don't believe the legitimacy of our democracy want

to undermine the democracy from within by controlling it. that should scare everyone. >> i'm going to read something from it. it says this. one example of an extremist candidate. a lifetime member of the oath keepers wendy rogers a member of the state senate running for reelection has appeared on the anti-semitic news platform and tweeted support for a white us is premisist leader and organizer. she's one of the loudest voices in the 2020 election denial movement. in a december 2021 post she wrote, trump won and anyone who doesn't see the election was stolen is a fool. there's so much about her, but i want to understand the criteria. being a lifetime member of the oath keepers, adhering to and furthering the lies about an election conspiracy that we all know aren't true, being a part of the white supremacist movement and a backer of nick,

talk about the burying things that will land someone on the recommendation city of extremist candidates. >> that was a comment he made on an antisemites version of twitter. it only gets worse from there. so we found three types of candidates. two dozen who expressed admiration for or appeared in public alongside extremists like nick, who is essentially a neo-nazi. 45 candidates running for office who have led credence to or the qanon conspiracy theory. we all know habit that. and dozens of candidates that are dangerous. the idea that the january 6th insurrection was just a group of tourists milling about the capitol,s lies about the deep state or the pandemic it's

somehow a bioweapon engineered by the jewish people or the federal government or take your pick. all of this stuff is frightening. in the past, there's always been a lunatic fringe. the differences today, the fringe is in front and center of our political process. like a away that we have never seen before. >> you and i talked so many days about my pressing you about what republican who know better. jd vance isn't that category anymore. he choose this is path to align himself with the extremists. but we talk so much about that old guard. we talked about some of the folk who is populated national security posts in the trump era. and i wonder, not if if there's remorse, their actions speak for themselves, but i wonder if it there's any sense it can be addressed from a security

standpoint or are we living in this place where violent extremism is at that intersection with elected republican officials. fpz. >> i think you're turning your laser to a really important question, because just as the antidefamation league's report comes out telling you that, hey, by the way, these people are run ing for senate, but also running to try to control state and county elections, what about whether these folks will be in charge of deciding american security decisions? how will they make good decisions if they automatically revile exparts who spent decades in understanding china, in understanding russia, in figuring out the geopolitical pressures that could come to bear and harm our country. we don't want people rejecting what they decided is the deep state and is actually the group

of people who are supposed to help protect our country. it's very worrisome. i would also say there's another worrisome thing about the report, which is that the post, "the washington post" where i work had done a very similar assessment. numbers of candidates running for state and also national office and the percentage of them who were promoting the idea of the big lie. what's interesting is how much that number has swollen in just a few months's time. it's really like this i wouldn't say tidal wave, but it's apt to describe it as a flotilla now in the center of our election discussion, our campaign discussion. >> frank, you and carol have been part of our coverage of this audit in arizona. we cover it every day because it was our sense it could radicalize people who thought there was fraud. and efforts to do that kind of

recounting in other places most likely contributed to i think a swelling is putting it mildly. there is an explosion in support. and a renewed acceptance and mainstreaming of the january 6 insurrection and adherence to the big lie. it is a litmus nest a way it wasn't on election day. i wonder if you can speak to the new reporting that domestic violent extremists in the u.s. have been developing plans to attack the u.s. sector from the department of homeland security that was issued this week and obtained by the daily beast. they have developed credible, specific plans to attack electricity infrastructure since at least 2020 identifying the electric grid as a particularly attractive target giving its interdependency with other infrastructure sectors. i have to just say i'm old enough to remember when i was involved in efforts to declassify intelligence about foreign terrorists targeting the same kinds of systems and critical infrastructure. it's surreal to read that about

domestic threats. >> when the head of the fbi says something like the domestic threat is now equal to or greater than the international threat, we better pay attention to that because they have the data and the intel this front of him and that's what he's been saying in public testimony. the whole domestic terror movement and violent extremism movement is really based on two pillars. fpz hate, and white nationalism and then the big lie. the deception is and disinformation that they have been suckered into accepting. the problem is because we live in our own echo chambers, because they are so hard to breakthrough and expose to truth and show them the result, the fact that there's no systemic for others certainly on any kind

of an overturn an election, you can't get through to them. they believe what they believe to the point of fur investigator and everyone else who doesn't see it like them results in what i'm now calling a semipermanent violent insurgency inside the united states. so when organizations start targeting our power grid, our energy infrastructure, we have had to worry about that, as you say, from international terrorists and hackers. now we have to worry about the guy down the block, the militia group in the hills, many, many people and it's becomeing legitimizes when we're here talking about people running for office and being believed as credible candidates with these belief, we now have this mainstreaming of madness, lunacy, that's where we are right now. and the national security challenge is incredibly significant here.

>> the adl has always been able to just with a statement, a piece of paper impact the conduct of elected officials. you look at the anti-semitic fly yers that were found in neighborhoods, a man attacked in brooklyn is the headline in the post, the fbi director describing an anti-semitism attack. i wonder if you feel like the power of our words to shine a spotlight on what is anti-semitic and what is beneath our discourse still has an impact. who is listening? >> i think it is fair to point out anti-semitism has been weaponized by both sides. we had rfk jr. claiming that his status was worse than that of

ann frank. that's the kind of holocaust distortionism comparing the covid-19 precautions to ann frank living for fear of her life in an attic for two years. it's just stunning. and then we have like the right wing extremists running for office from the inside. words do matter, but i must say in this environment, where you have anti-semitism, it was six cities over the weekend, not three, unfortunately, and we have seeding ain't semitism and hate, wrds matter, but it's who speaks the words. so we need fwrks op leadership to tell the other members of the gop that this is not okay. we need leaders on the progress i-side to tell rfk jr. this is not okay. once and for all, if we don't

want it to happen here, we need responsible people on both sides to literally call a timeout before things unravel even further. and the unthinkable really does happen. >> i guess, caroline, who are those leaders? is it mitch mcconnell and kevin mccarthy? have they done that yet? >> they haven't done it in any public way. my understanding, is i think i have shared this with you before. mitch mcconnell is very worried about the actual undoing of our democracy. he actually believes in a democracy. and yet the undoing is not that valuable a talking point for him as republicans seek to gain power of both chambers. the house is on. to win the midterms. and we have talked a about who might fill those seats based on the reporting that suggests as many incumbents leave, it's a

ground swell advantage to those with domesti extremist views that would have never been accepted or tolerated in the chamber before. rejecting expertise and science, aiming a dagger at half of the american people rather than representing all of them. but to your original question, no one is doing anything publicly except for liz cheney and the departing adam kinzinger. so it's not a as though there are any forces coming forward. i have been in talks with people who are what i would called not boldfaced names. republicans who want to fight this and feel they have a chance to do it, but i have to agree unless lawmakers who hold office start telling their constituents the truth, they will reap a

temporary gain of rewinning the house and senate and they will lose the republic. >> i want to ask if you can sort of pull back the curtain on how the fbi retools itself or the threat described there in the con texas of what we're talking about. the threat that since that testimony has exploded. there may now be people aligned with white supremacists who are in congress. how do you protect the country from them? >> a couple things are happening. one thing i'm still seeing no evidence of happening, which concerns me. and that is so bodies are being moved. resources are being moved. that's never a good thing when you're talking about what is becoming this semipermanent problem. because you're taking resources from something else. in an earlier segment, you refer to the violent crime of gun problem in new york city.

who is not doing what if we're shifting fbi resources to the domestic threat. by the way, the international threat doesn't go away. some say al qaeda and isis will rebuild out of afghanistan. so that's all good. resources are there. things are not getting done otherwise, but what has changed about investigative techniques operating guidelines from doj, the tools and the tool kit that has allowed so successfully the fbi to battle international turf? those techniques and the tool kit have not changed. until they change, the fbi is going to still be in a reactive mode cleaning up the wreckage after it happened. we have to get them in the proactive mode just like they are with international. that's going to require changes in their operating guidelines. i don't see that happening in the near term. >> is christopher the leader to

do that? >> he has to get that from doj. it has to come with congress. they want to know that the operating guidelines are being changed. you can imagine what that's going to look like trying to get a polarized congress to agree the fbi should have more freedom to do what they need to do to battle back domestic extremism. >> it's amazing that's a partisan question. depressing but enlightening conversation. thank you all so much for starting us off. when we come back, u.s. military aid has begun to arrive in ukraine as fears of a russian invasion are running high. we'll look at the process effects for a diplomatic path and the current standoff that could avoid war next. plus the british prime minister facing demands to resign as police in london are now investigating his parties while the rest of the country was on lockdown. and some breaking news. new york's indoor mask mandate

is back in effect for now after a judge temporarily blocked a decision yesterday striking it down. it comes as democratic leaders around this country are starting to talk about how we put restrictions aside and learn to live with the coronavirus. don't dpo anywhere. coronavirus. don't dpo anywhere or necessity. we can explore uncharted waters, and not only make new discoveries, but get there faster, with better outcomes. with app, cloud and anywhere workspace solutions, vmware helps companies navigate change-- meeting them where they are, and getting them where they want to be. faster. vmware. welcome change.

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there will be enormous consequences if you were to go in and invade the entire country or a lot less than that as well.

not only in terms of economic consequences and political consequences, but enormous consequences worldwide. if he were to move in, it would be the largest invasion since world war ii. it would change the world. >> daunting and very serious sentiment there for a very serious moment. president biden this afternoon making it clear to russia and to the world that while he currently has no intention of moving u.s. forces into cain, any hostile action on the part of vladimir putin would have consequences. the kremlin today accused the u.s. of building up tensions, sharing what they call profound concern that the pentagon's decision to have 8,500 u.s. troops on high alert. putin has it backwards on purpose. the american military's readiness strategy is a countermeasure of response. there's some 100,000 russian troops amassed along their border with ukraine right now.

and even today a show of might from vladimir putin with military drills across russia involving tanks, drones, missile systems and navy ships as the biden administration rightly searches for diplomatic offramps ahead of a potential conflict, a shipment of u.s. military aid arrived in ukraine. the ukrainian government is still seeking to project a sense of calm, but the u.s. continues to make preparations. new reporting from nbc news suggests another possible response strategy includes more gutting sanctions barring tech exports to russia as a way of targeting its strategic sectors. from that reporting, these novel export controls would be imposed in addition to sanctions and would have a similar damaging effect, the official said. under the plan, the administration would block russia from obtaining software and technology in order to harm key economic sectors such as artificial intelligence and

computing. the goal would be to target sectors that vladimir putin has championed this a way for russia to diversify economy. joining us is pentagon correspondent helen cooper and former ambassador to russia michael mcvalue. lucky both are mississippi nbc news contributors. we talked about tucker karlson today. i want to put up some counterevidence. mitch mcconnell and the editorial board voiced support for some of the administration's precob flikt measures. they represented a pivot. talk about how the administration got there. >> the administration, thanks for having me, the administration for years now ever since russia invisiting

invading crimea has been restrained in its dealings with ukraine, which as you know wants to join nato, the administration is taking pains to provide defensive military equipment because they have been tiptoeing around russia and not wanting to provoke the exact thing we're seeing now. they didn't want to give vladimir putin a reason to say ukraine was being belligerent and that he was going in to defend russian interests. so the united states has for years now presented the military equipment that we give to and sell to ukraine as defensive, not offensive and we hesitated about providing that much. we put skids. you debit see the trainers. a few were in ukraine, but you don't see the administration talking about deploying american troops to ukraine.

and you're still not going to see that. nobody in this point in time is thinking about sending troops to ukraine. but right now, the administration is look at sending american trip troops to the eastern flank. those are the eastern european countries that join nato after 1997 when president bill clinton and boris signed a an agreement basically ushering that in. putin hates that. he doesn't like seeing his former soviet satellites joining nato and a lot of thiz his complaining has been about that. he definitely doesn't want to see ukraine anywhere in that alliance. and ukraine, as the years have gone by, has made clear they want to join nato, they are shifting more to the west. so you're seeing the administration now in the united

states kind of starting to give up on this whole idea of we cant provoke russia. because they think at this point that that hasn't worked so far. we just mentioned 100,000 russian troops now at the border and they are pivoting to a more muscular strategy, and that probably means providing more military id to ukraine and you're seeing that now talking about seconding troops not to cain kraip, but to eastern europe. >> what are you watching for? i should just say nbc news is reporting that president biden is weighing public remarks on the strategy doing some of the kind of story telling, i guess, that i have asked you to do on this program. this is a report. president biden is considering outlining his strategy, explaining how u.s. response to any russian invasion could affect this country. talk about john kirby wassen this program. the administration is certainly

doing its best to be super up front about what they are it doing and it seems like they are also trying to bat thl notion that we're constantly reacting, even though some of the foreign policy doctrine is to react. talk about how they are juggling those. >> it's such a fine road to walk. let's face it. the country is not necessarily in american national security interests. and you see some critics talking about that. the united states doesn't intend to go to war with russia over ukraine. vladimir putin cares about ukraine much more than "morning joe" does. so that's fundamental truth. . but the at the same time, the united states is very much sees as part of this national security interest of rules base

world order. that means that countries that are democratically elected can do what they shouldn't be invaded. what vladimir putin is trying to do is redraw the map of the post soviet era to take us back to the way things were during the cold war where you had these soviet satellite countries but these countries have gone to the west, that the united states view it is it in their view nato as a strategic american national security interest. president biden needs to walk the american public through why this is so important while at the same time, assuring people that we're not necessarily going to war with russia or over ukraine, but at the same time, we all know that things can escalate until it's unforeseen

circumstances. >> so ambassador, you and the colonel put us on alert this was a really serious moment and you explained the stakes. i want to ask you to update us on how you see the events and i'll ask you what i just asked about the president communicates about this. >> the update is that the escalation continues. the announcement that they are going to be training exercises in belarus with russian forces that. that gives another front so there will be four fronts for the russian soldiers to invade. should putin make that decision. i don't know what the decision is. my personal view is he hapt made a decision. therefore, what you saw in the biden administration just in the last five days, two big changes. one was to move those soldiers on alert to move them closer to

borders. that was not their policy several days ago. and the military assistance, they changed it. and he proved more military assistance and now you're seeing them on tv with in front of the plane showing everybody that that assistance is there. so their public relations piece has changed about that assistance. and finally on this why do we care about ukraine? i think the administration has rightly understood and that the american people don't understand the answer to that question. i think they were right. i think secretary blinken gave a fabulous speech. there's just one problem with it. he gave it in berlin. he should have gave it in chicago. and that's why i think they are rethinking and including even a presidential address to bring that message to the american people. >> can you give some clarity to

what seems like a loose construct for this administration that if they do anything, it will be seen as provoking putin, but if they let putin go, it will be an act of american weakness. can you just give us the strategic framework in which we should be examining and sort of probing and following this crisis. >> so my view, having negotiated with vladimir putin, written about him for 20 years, he's not going to be, quote, unquote, provoked by military assistance to ukraine or nato troops moving around in nato courthouse countries. he will inhaven't a provocation if he wants to invade. so the idea that somehow we're in a provocation game is the wrong analytic frame. instead, i think the number one question is does he want to actually negotiate or does he

want to invade. and we don't know the answer to that. if he wants to unvad, like i said, he's invented provocations before and previous military operations, he will do that again. but if he's staked out max positions, which he knows president biden can't meet. president biden can't say i'm closing the door to nato. it's been open since 1949. i'm gong to be the first president to close it. he can't do that. and putin knows that. what we don't know are they still just putting out that position to begin a serious negotiation about european security matters. by the way, which demand and i think could use some updating. or is it just a pretext to invade once he decided he's ready to go in. >> putin is going to do what he's going to do. thank you both for coming and talking to us about your incredible reporting. when we come back, a live report from london where the uk prime minister is fighting for his political life a as police

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i expect my leaders to shoulder the responsibility for the action as they take. yesterday he did the opposite of that. so i will remind him of a quotation altogether too

familiar to him. you sat there too long for the good you have done in the name of fwod, go. >> firework there is on the familiar of parliament. that was a member of the prime minister's own conservative party asking him to step down from leadership in the british government. all this coming as the metropolitan police have opened an investigation into boris johnson and the parties that he and other government officials held at 10 downing street during lockdowns for covid while most of the public was isolating including the queen herself seen here isolated. it's the response to the scandal has been laughable. but it presents the most serious threat to unseating him from power as a vote of confidence looms. let's bring back for his return to the show, senior

international correspondent keir simmons live in london. what's happening over there? we describe that as chaotic, but that's just normal in parliament. >> reporter: those are pretty normal scenes in parliament. i'm outside 10 downing street, which we know as the party house. listen, there were allegedly 16 parties, a party for christmas, a birthday party, three parties and a party on an evening. a party the night before prince phillips funeral. pretty hard to refute, but the prime minister has done his best to refute them claiming that they didn't happen or that they were a work have been, even though there are pictures of his wife at that event saying they were only there for a short time. listen, boris johnson is famously able to escape

political quad mires, but his party, as you know, the british conservative party is perhaps one of the most ruthless parties in the world. and what they are looking at right now, it's astonishing, a police investigation into whether those lockdown rules were broken inside downing street as well as this internal investigation, which we think may publish any time now. we're not sure. we're not sure whether we will see all of it. this famous political address is currently deep in political intrigue. >> so 30 questions. i'll start with two. you're reminded watching the party rebuke him of the party of a party policing itself. has he gotten away with a lot until then? is this a water shed moment for him politically? >> reporter: i'm still here.

ask me the question. a water shed moment for him? >> we're not used to in this country seeing any minute of the republican party rebuke another republican. so it's extraordinary to hear the criticism for boris johnson. is that what makes this the most lethal political threat to him or the police investigation itself? >> reporter: the police investigation doesn't help. that's for sure. that being said, the conservatives who are now coming out and saying that they think he should go like you played a clip from there, they need 54 members of the parliamentary conservative party to say that they want to a a vote of no confidence. that's a pretty tough hill to climb.

every one of them is looking out just like in u.s. politics is looking out for their own political futures. the polls right now don't look good. we're in the middle. we're right between two elections, so often just like the polls do sink during this time, it's not impossible for boris johnson to climb out of this. but again, there's a reason why it was a british politician who said all political careers end in failure. the nature of politics is by next week, the removal could be hear at downing street if everything goes wrong for boris johnson. we shall see there's a lot of politics to go in the days ahead. >> we'll continue to follow this. thank you so much for staying out in the cold for us. it's nice to see you. when we come back, the

political pivot underway in this country. a way for mandates and lockdowns as optimism starts to grow for what maybe a normal spring. that story after a quick break. g that story after a quick break welcome to silversneakers. are you ready to get moving? (throws punch) our new virtual classes were designed for you and millions of seniors like you. you can now choose from thousands of live virtual classes every week. get moving wherever you have an internet connection. and when you're ready, enjoy access to thousands of locations nationwide. with silversneakers, you're free to move.

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temorary stay putting that mandate back into effect just temporarily. the state education department is telling schools that they must continue to mask up. it's all because of where we are right now. cases are coming down, but we're still seeing more than 668,000 new covid cases a cases a day a than 2,000 deaths a day nationwide. in the future experts say we're looking at a mandate-free new normal with covid. some democratic leaders are skipping mandates to reflect a change in the threat. from "the new york times," democrats are keenly aware that americans including some of the party's loyal liberal voters have changed their attitudes about the virus and it could be perilous to led republicans brand the democrats the party of lockdowns and mandates. joining us dr. nah hereby bhadelia director of boston university center for infectious diseases policy research and sam stein, white house editor for

politico and an msnbc contributor. let me first ask you, dr. bhadelia, where, in your view, we are. >> i think, nicolle, you have to admit we're still in the middle of a surge. there are areas of the country that haven't come off the peak. the slight amount of optimism is on the other side of this surge, maybe in the best-case scenario, what we've done is this wildfire of omicron has created some population immunity enough so that you don't have so many cases leading to hospitalizations which are leading to deaths. so you may be in a place where you can pull back but we aren't there yet. the other part is we do have new tools in hand. rapid tests are more readily available. these oral antivirals which we haven't really seen the true benefit yet because they haven't

been available in enough numbers. come march, you'll start to see a lot more of these. hopefully if we can get this in people's hands and link it to testing and say, here is a pill, this will keep you out of the hospital. of course, the two things, the reason nobody can predict the future, one is the potential for a new variant that could outcompete omicron and the immunity and maybe more immunities. if so, it can fool us out of our current immunity against omicron that we've developed or you see waning of immunity, that we see more and more people get vulnerable over time as our immunity from either infection or vaccines fades over a longer period of time and then we face the same kind of resistance that we're seeing right now with people not wanting to get vaccinated or get boosted. >> here is something that is such a wake-up call about how we are fighting this virus in america.

so, if you are vaccinated and boosted, 68% of you are worried about getting sick from covid in 2022. if you are unvaccinated in america, only 39% of you are worried about getting sick from covid in 2022. even though, if you're unvaccinated you have a 68% higher chance of getting -- it's all upside down and backwards. omicron feels like it's everywhere and even people who have done all the right things for two years have tested positive, if they can avail themselves of testing. the unvaccinated seem at very low numbers concerned about getting sick. >> i'm a little offended you didn't go to me for the medical expertise. i'm maybe not a doctor, but i can pretend to be one. >> we'll let you do a swab one

day, sam, if that floats your boat. >> i would say those numbers don't surprise me. if you're par noid or concerned about getting the virus, then you are more likely to get vaccinated. it seems logical to me that people worried about getting sick will take precautions in order to not get sick. what i've seen anecdotally is our opinions on the virus and how we go about treating it and the protocols we take to prevent spread have completely hardened. it comes at a time when answers about what covid policies should be are complex. we're in the middle of this omicron variant. it's very clear that it's not as deadly as prior variants, but it spreads much farther, and we're having these very passionate debates about should we mandate

vaccines, mandate masks in schools. they're complicated issues that will change over time as the virus spreads and dissipates. i will just echo that we're going to be back in the situation in all likelihood in a couple months, maybe a little longer where we need to say, okay, do we have the political will power to implement these policies. does it make sense to implement these policies? what steps does it take in the interim to prevent it from happening again. the administration needs to stockpile vaccines. they've discovered it's smart politics and good policy to send out free tests and free masks. will they do this for the likelihood for the new variant? ir think that's what they have to prepare for now. >> sam, what do you hear from your sources at the white house about this messaging shift, j. ashish jaw has talked about it, about living with the pandemic.

>> if you look at the rhetoric coming from the president and white house advisers, they're not talking about defeating the virus anymore. they're talking about taking precautions. they're talking about getting therapies out to people, about getting the boosters out to people, about getting preventative measures out to people, but it's all about, okay, we need to get to a place socially where we understand how to both suppress the virus and treat it when it comes out. it's the classic sort of dance and the hammer we knew about in this pandemic. that's where they are politically. they know they have to get to a place where they say, okay, this is part of our daily lives, we need to figure out how to manage it better. >> dr. bhadelia and sam stein, thank you for spending time with us, a quick break for us. your blood s ugar. you moving with diabetes.

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thank you very much for letting us in your homes during these extraordinary times. the beat with ari melber starts right now. hi, ari. >> hi, nicolle. we begin with breaking news. the justice department has just spoken out in the most certain terms to date at the highest levels on the giuliani-led fraudulent electors scheme which msnbc's rachel maddow and here on "the beat" we've been reporting on. the deputy attorney general saying in a new statement to cnn they are formally investigating the fake elector certifications that would appear to be an escalation, at least according

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