particularly when we look at the education system, you can't ignore the fact we are seeing this fight across the country with regard to what students can learn about the past and about black history and other, you know, injustices against minorities, particularly in our history. it is very interesting to see how different schools are trying to celebrate this while also recognizing the issues that they're facing in their schools, particularly in some of the worst cases students aren't learning about the history that happened in their backyards. >> no, you are absolutely right. an important story we will definitely stay on in the weeks ahead. elena treene, thank you for being here with us. "morning joe" starts now. meanwhile, the big football story wasn't the game. on saturday espn reported that tom brady was retiring.

>> yeah. >> but then conflicting reports came out that said brady hasn't decided yet. see, this is what happens when you let the cdc announce your retirement. you just don't know. six feet, three feet, five days. i mean come on. >> is he or isn't it? >> they can't get it straight. we just don't know. good morning. >> it is february 1st, tuesday! >> is that groundhogs day? it is always february 2nd, isn't it? >> is it? >> we get bill murray tomorrow. bill murray fest. not on this show. i will be watching it all day after i get off the show. >> is tomorrow groundhogs day? oh, it is. you never know. i'm one of the people who doesn't know whether if it sees its shadow it is more swing. i guess i never invested enough

to care. that's what makes it fun, i guess. >> you and me, willie. >> it is like wordle. i haven't invested yet in wordle but i think i need to. puzzles scare me. i see cross word puzzles and i start twitching and everything. mika said, try this. it was like two down, a morning show host who co-hosts with joe scarborough . you got me. i got no idea. pete, this keeps showing up in my timeline and it is frustrating. >> willie, do you wordle? >> i don't. i see it on social media. i scroll past so many needy people posting their chart but i never checked enough to investigate. i guess we might have to check it out. i want to recommend to you the

"people" magazine cross word, found in most male salons from march of 2003. you flip it to the back, it is still sitting there. you will like that. >> beverly hills, three letters. i can do that. i don't like showing my test scores, willie, but it is bragging. in this case i need to. i mean just because once in a while you do some things that really, you know, you are very proud of. i almost -- my mom said, you almost got to 1,000. that's not bad. >> you are pushing four digits. nose bad. >> almost four digits. mika was about the same. >> let's not talk about it. >> very proud of it. anyway, so i'm very confused, willie. this tom brady thing. do you think somebody, do you think a relative might have said, hey, tom's retiring, and like tom got ticked off and said. >> wait. how do you know it was relatives talking that what? >> no, i'm saying maybe a relative was talking to espn or maybe, you know, the waterboy or something. tom gets upset.

he said, you know what? i may just play another season. >> oh, please don't. >> to screw 'em. i don't know. what is going through this guy's mind? gratest of all time. what he is thinking. >> adam schefter of espn broke the story. there is no reporter better plugged into the nfl. >> great. >> he is famously well sourced. i think what happened here is that tom brady was preparing to make the announcement on his own terms, jonathan lemire, and he got jumped by a reporter who knows everybody around the nfl. he has this docuseries. perhaps the final episode of the series may include an announcement. as joe said, now that all of this has happened he is the kind of guy that goes, you know what? i'm coming back to win the super bowl next year. >> there's a plot line where larry david opened up a spite store. this might be tom brady's spite season. >> there you go.

>> every other year with tom would be fine with me. >> sure. >> brady for a long time said he would play until he's 45. that would be one more season. the retirement talk that emerged took a lot of people by surprise. this year was a struggle in tampa, more so than the year before where, of course, he won a super bowl. there had been talk in the brady camp in the last few days that maybe he is starting to wind down. that espn docuseries we've been watching, which will not surprise you, the final and tenth episode was supposed to come out a week ago has been delayed, so that's added to the speculation it is the venue where perhaps he will announce his retirement on his own terms. maybe we will learn more about it in the next few days. >> let's go to mara gaye, she is a member of "the new york times"

editorial board. if anybody knows if they bought wordle, she would know. a lot of people are interested in this thing i have never seen before. do you wordle. >> i'm not sure it is a verb. >> do you play this wordle thing. i don't know what it is. >> no, in fact, i am hugely intimidated by it. i'm counting on my generation z friends to help me out. i'm addicted to the spelling bee, which is another fun games "the new york times" has and to the cross word. it is a natural next step. it is like when you meet a new colleague and it is too late to ask their name. >> oh. that's it! you nailed it. >> you can do what the former president of msnbc did and just call everybody buddy. >> phil. >> it is pretty bad. you would be with phil griffin's children and he would be like,

hey, buddy. i was like, you don't really know their names, do you? he called everybody buddy. it is interesting. before the show i was having this conversation with alex courson. i can remember paragraphs from a book i read when i was 9 years old. my mind sort of works that way. when i see a cross word puzzle i start shaking. >> he gets hives. >> i'm so intimidated about it. what is so fascinating is just how the mind works. something, you can do something, but i am so intimidated by cross word puzzles. alex does it every day. you are a cross word puzzle fanatic? >> i am a fanatic, but i will be honest. i only started doing it every day a couple of years ago. i can only get to wednesday without using the bumpers on the app, which is the auto check that tells you, no, that's not the right answer. so i'm not a genius on the cross word by any means.

>> well, see now, if i knew they had bumpers like in bowling, i would be more likely to do it, david ignatius. david, are you a cross word puzzle -- are you a cross word puzzle fanatic, david? >> i've become a big time spelling bee for the last week and it is driving my wife crazy because every time she thinks we're going to go to bed i'm still doing the spelling bee. >> wow. >> okay. >> i'm not a cross word nut yet. >> no, nut yet. >> i have to look into that. remember everybody used to do, what was the thing bill clinton would do with the number? >> sodoku. >> it is a dangerous question to ask. i had to moving quickly, i'm talking numbers here. i did it a couple of times,

sodoku. my dad was a big kentucky wildcat fan, racing fan. he taught me how to win a racing roll when i was 9 years old. it is what you teach kids to do in kentucky. >> guess what? the returns, potential returns are much bigger on that than somedoku. >> seriously. i have to check out the spelling bee. >> okay. so we have david ignatius and mara gay here to talk about none of that. we will get to the news. there's new reporting on just how personally involved donald trump was in trying to use federal agencies to seize voting machines in key swing states in the weeks after losing the 2020 election. first was the justice department. two sources familiar with the matter tell "the new york times" that during an oval office meeting in mid to late november truck told then-attorney general bill barr that he received legal

counsel that the doj could take control of the machines as evidence of fraud. according to "the times" barr replied telling the president that the justice department had no basis to do that because there was no probable cause to believe a crime had been committed. sources also tell "the times" that around that time trump tried to persuade state lawmakers in michigan and pennsylvania to use local law enforcement to take control of the voting machines in those states, but they also refused to do so. trump then moved on to the military. "the times" reports in a december 18th meeting michael flynn and sidney powell handed trump a draft executive order that would have authorized the pentagon to seize the machines. trump reportedly sought rudy giuliani's counsel, but two sources tell "the times" that giuliani was vehemently opposed to the idea. trump then moved to the department of homeland security.

according to two sources he asked giuliani to call dhs official ken cucinelli to see if he could help. cucinelli said he could not. getting a lot of nos here. nbc news has not independently confirmed this report and has reached out overnight to the former president for comment. so, willie, again, just all of this laying out something rear frightening and obviously corrupt. >> well, how bad is this? rudy giuliani reportedly was the voice of reason in that room. >> exactly. >> that's how bad it was. jonathan lemire, you are writing a book about the big lie, all that went into perpetuating it and all that happened to try to overturn this. it has been an extraordinary couple of days and embarrassment of riches for the january 6th committee, based on the president's comments in the rally and what we're learning about his efforts to seize

voting machines, to literally change results of the presidential election. >> thanks for the plot. is book is out in october. >> there you go. >> you're right. the president was doing this publicly and behind the scenes trying to use the levers of government to try to overturn the 2020 election results. this gives us finer details. justice department, defense department, homeland security department, going through every agency here to try to figure out a way on a fraudulent claims to try to grab the voting machines behind the conspiracy that the votes may have been mistabulated or there was some international regime that had ties to venezuela and china to try to alter the results and here they're trying to grab these and perhaps change them themselves. this comes on the heels of what we heard over the weekend where the president talked about, you know, plainly in a statement about how he did want mike pence to overturn the election. of course, he talked about his own precarious legal future

saying that he wanted crowds, crowds akin to those on january 6th to protest in cities where there are investigations into him, suggesting if they were illegal that they should indeed mass, which only can be interpreted as a sign of intimidation which comes after he floated pardons for the january 6th rioters, i.e. saying, hey, you go to these cities and riot on my behalf, well, if i'm elected i could pardon you again. >> you know, david ignatius, i'm looking at barr's role in all of this. he is a fascinating character, fascinating story line. he was a guy who was basically tapped by official washington as being, you know, sort of having the good housekeeping seal of approval before he went in as trump's head of doj, his attorney general. then he went in and official washington was shocked. he lied about the mueller report. he misrepresented the mueller report. he conspired with donald trump to break the wall down between

the white house and the department of justice. he committed emergency in front of, i think, the senate and the house on numerous occasions. he just -- he just behaved just in a loathsome way for much of his tenure. then around election time he had enough and he basically punched his ticket and he said, i've done my duty, i'm getting out of here. it is fascinating that in the final month or so it was actually barr that was putting up road blocks every step of the way, saying no to a president trying to steal an election. >> joe, i have written some columns about barr's role, in particular in trying to stop trump's takeover of parts of the intelligence community. trump had a desire through some of his closest aides to reveal some classified information that he thought would be -- exonerate

him and would support his arguments about the larger russia investigation. barr put his foot down. i think barr may have saved the tenure of gina haskell as cia director by intervening in a significant way. on a larger story of what we've been learning in the last several days, i think jonathan put it well, what struck me is the committee in the house and the justice department from what we know seemed to be building the case for a conspiracy prosecution against higher up people involved in january 6th and the whole effort to overturn the election. that's what i see. it is systematic, piece by piece, witness by witness way in which you build a conspiracy case. >> i will say, mika, if you look at what has been happening not only in the investigation on january 6th but what has been happening in georgia, what has been happening in new york, what has been happening in manhattan,

what has been happening across the country on the investigations, on grand juries and possible prosecution, it does seem that the weight of all of donald trump's actions and those around him appear to be catching up to him. just the sheer volume of it, and it does seem that not only are the january 6th people who committed crimes on january 6th, not only are they having to pay, they're not above the law. >> yeah. >> but it does seem that the department of justice and others are building cases against the higher ups who actually sent them there and who are actually responsible for them being in jail today. >> can you only hope the republicans who continue to bow to donald trump see this happening and maybe take a cue from it. yesterday we played for you donald trump's comments at his weekend rally in texas, suggesting he might pardon some of the january 6th rioters if he

were to be president again. republican congresswoman liz cheney says we should take him at his word. >> some of those people have been charged things like seditious conspiracy, and he says it at the same time that he also says that he acknowledges that he was attempting to, quote, overturn the election. he threatens prosecutors. he uses the same language that he knows caused the january 6th violence, and i think that it tells us that he clearly would do this all again if he were given the chance. >> mara gay, when trump was first running for president people would say, you know, take him -- the press takes him literally but not seriously. his supporters take him seriously but not literally. cheney seems to be saying we should take him literally. i agree. your thoughts? >> i completely agree. there's a saying, take the haters at their word. you have nothing to lose by doing so and everything to lose if you don't. cheney is extremely sober minded

by this. she has been out on a limb obviously for some time, and that alone should give her some added weight and credibility. unfortunately, it hasn't swayed too many of her colleagues but that's a different story. you know, i think one of the reasons it is so crucial for this committee to get these details out to the public and one of the reasons that i think my colleague's story this morning is so important is that the details matter. because really what we're seeing is not just that there was a conspiracy, but when there was one what it looked like. i think in this case, for example -- and i don't want to let rudy off the hook, the former mayor who i covered, right, because he did place a phone call to the department of homeland security to ask them whether they could legally seize the voting machines. in the end he was told no, but i think there was involvement at every level. one of the reasons it is important for the american people to understand how this

was done and what happened is that essentially the trump administration and trump himself it appears deployed the democratic institutions that have made us one of the strongest countries on earth against democracy. so what this looks like is not a coup that you may have read about, you know, in an elementary school or a middle school, but really what it reads like the institutions of democracy essentially turning on themselves, being weaponized against democracy. that's extremely important because that's the likeliest way this may play out again. >> joe, one more note on the toxic stew former president trump continued to stir over the weekend, the fulton county district attorney, who is looking into, you know, president trump's role in trying to flip the election and overturn, we heard the infamous phone call, it is on tape where he tells secretary of state

raffensperger to find the votes to win the state. she has now reefed out to the fbi for protection for the courthouse, for the government center in atlanta because of what the president said the other day where he said, we need to hold the biggest rallies we have ever had and hold these people accountable. some worrying about the potential for another version. he wants it to be bigger, he says, than what happened on january 6th. now law enforcement being called in to these capitals where investigations into president trump are underway. >> yeah. it is -- and, jonathan lemire, this is more of the same. he always crosses the line. he causes people, not only who cross him politically or legally, but also people in the media to actually have to get -- and we know about this. actually get security. >> yeah. >> because he doesn't make veiled threats. he says things that he knows are going to put people's lives in danger, put their health in danger, and he's done it again.

as liz cheney mentioned in that interview, you know, he basically said, it is time to go after these prosecutors. you know, newt gingrich talking last week, saying that the people that are investigating donald trump and january 6th or the january 6th commission are going to be jailed. just really irresponsible, reckless rhetoric that leads people to get their names on kill lists. >> yeah. we have seen the former president inspire violence, no moment more obviously than january 6th. he is -- when he talks like this, there are people who listen and respond to it. what we're seeing here is an unprecedented step. as we know, when he was president he didn't like a news story because it was negative, he would call it fake news. here he is suggesting that any investigation into him must be illegal. now he has added the idea it

must be racist because so many of the prosecutors involved are african american. he's trying to delegitimize this. again, i don't think we can overlook the idea of linking the january 6th pardons comes at the same time he is calling for the mass demonstrations where it almost seems like, hey, a quid pro could. if you go out there and protest for me, if things get violent, well, if i am elected again i will pardon you. that is -- we are sort of at an ominous new place with his rhetoric here, and it is no surprise. i doubt the prosecutor in atlanta will be the only one who has to increase security as a direct result of what the former president is saying. >> how telling that donald trump, a guy who really leads an ethno nationalist, some would say insurrectionist against the united states, is deeply offended by a black woman daring to investigate whether he broke the law or not, trying to rig the election in georgia and

telling the secretary of state to find votes after the election was over. >> just say you have recalculated. oh, my. >> i do want -- while we're reading the story and learning more about this, mika, i do again think there are -- it is fascinating to see the people who were so corrupted they were willing to undermine american democracy, undermine madisonan democracy, undermine checks and balances. it is also fascinating to see some people who refuse to go the final steps. >> yes. >> you have ken cucinelli, a guy who is a hard-line conservative, always a hard-line conservative, basically when he gets a call from giuliani he says, "get lost, i can't help you." you see it with mike pence's staff. they're all going to testify. they're all cooperating with the january 6th committee. you see it with kayleigh mcenany. she's going before the

committee. she's testifying. you see it -- well, i just talked about barr. >> yeah. >> i mean there's nobody i was more disgusted by, a man of the law acting the way that he did during the trump administration. it is fascinating to see where they all drew their lines. >> yeah. >> and there is no doubt that at some point barr checked out. said, "enough" and started pushing back on trump and let's be really blunt here, started pushing back on trump at the time we needed to do it. as a country we needed him to do it the most as a country when actually a peaceful transfer of power was on the line. >> well, these people will be remembered, i believe, decades from now as the tiny parts of this that held the democracy together. this still has a long way to go. i was talking to former secretary of state madeleine albright last night, thinking of her and the warning that she

gave to both of us about the trump presidency before it even began. people like my father, people who have lived through and studied fascism know to take him very seriously and see how serious every action that was taken during this presidency to undermine our democracy really is. >> i will say it is fascinating. the increased intensity that we've all heard from people from europe. >> yeah. >> we're not -- again, nobody here is comparing donald trump to hitler. donald trump is a force all unto himself and he is operating inside an extraordinarily strong and vibrant democracy despite what you read on twitter every day. >> right. >> but he is a bull in a china shop and he's trying to bolt through the front door. the courts have stopped him so far, but i do find it fascinating that people who escaped europe like your father,

like madeleine albright, your mother. i have talked to other immigrants that were chased out of europe in the 1930s, whether it was italy or germany or poland or czechoslovakia. they're the ones that come up and offer us the most intense warning, not just about donald trump but saying it can happen here. you don't -- >> yes. >> -- think it can happen here. we didn't think it could happen. >> that's when it starts. >> we didn't think it could happen austria, we didn't think it could happen in czechoslovakia, we didn't think it could happen in poland, but it can happen here. madeleine albright in 2016 offered us sobering warnings, warning this is coming to the united states. if donald trump wins you are just not going to be able to imagine what this country is going to go through. madeleine albright, as usual, was right. still ahead on "morning joe," the united states and russia accuse each other of

stoking tensions when it comes to ukraine. the latest on that diplomatic brawl. plus, a close ally of donald trump launches a new push to expel some of the former president's loudest critics from the republican party. also ahead, pfizer's coronavirus vaccine may soon be available for children under the age of 5. a look at that new timeline for approval. you're watching "morning joe." we will be right back. g "mornin" we will be right back. ♪♪♪ my name is austin james. as a musician living with diabetes, fingersticks can be a real challenge. that's why i use the freestyle libre 2 system. with a painless, one-second scan i know my glucose numbers without fingersticks. now i'm managing my diabetes better and i've lowered my a1c from 8.2 to 6.7.

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our national story about covid is one of a people that stood up when they were tested, but that will be forever tainted

by the behavior of this conservative prime minister. by routinely breaking the rules he set, the prime minister took us all for fools. he held people sacrifices in contempt. he showed himself unfit for office. >> that is kier starmer, the leader of the labor party with hash words for british prime minister boris johnson. the anger toward the prime minister is not just from the opposition. members of his own conservative party including his predecessor theresa may, lined up to come at him for holding parties at 10 downing street when the country was in lock down. johnson insists he and his government can be trusted despite the new government report released yesterday that slammed the prime minister and staff saying that -- let's bring

in keir simmons from london. our friend katty kay described watching that scene in parliament as shakespearean. >> reporter: yeah, willie, one senior political reporting in the uk describing downing street as more like a medieval court than a government office, a modern government office. look, here are these extraordinary split screen right now in the uk. the prime minister boris johnson is on his way to ukraine to meet with president zelensky with this report still in his inbox, a report that for example talks about the excessive consumption of alcohol in downing street, in his own government department, if you like, the top of the british government, knowing that scotland yard, the metropolitan police are still investigating 12 parties, including a party in boris johnson's -- allegedly a

party in boris johnson's apartments in downing street, in his flat. i guess in a sense you could say that's why it really matters for the biden administration because britain, this very close ally on such a crucial issue like ukraine, potentially distracted. what the prime minister tried to do yesterday was to say, i'm still in charge, i'm still leading. take a listen. >> firstly, i want to say sorry. and i'm sorry for the things we simply didn't get right and also sorry for the way that this matter has been handled, and it is no use saying that this or that was within the rules and there's no use saying that people were working hard. this pandemic was hard for everyone. we asked people across this country to make the most extraordinary sacrifices, not to meet loved ones, not to visit relatives before they died, and i understand the anger that

people feel. mr. speaker, i get it and i will fix it. and i want to say -- and i want to say to the people of this country, i know what the issue is. yes, mr. speaker. yes, yes, it is whether this government can be trusted to deliver, and i say, mr. speaker, yes, we can be trusted. >> reporter: but here is the crucial thing, willie. what will boris johnson's own party conclude about whether his leadership is broken or whether he can still go forward? amongst those fireworks in the house of common yesterday you had the former prime minister, theresa may, stand up and attack the current prime minister, suggesting that he is either arrogant or incompetent.

>> the covid regulations imposed significant restrictions on the freedoms of members of the public. they had a right to expect their prime minister to have read the rules, to understand the meaning of the rules and, indeed, those around to have done so too and to set an example in following those rules. what the grave report does show is number 10 downing street was not observing the regulations they had imposed on members of the public. so either my honorable friend did not read the rules or didn't understand what they meant, and others around him, or they didn't think the rules applied to number 10. which was it? >> you know, keir, when she said, "which was it?" she was sticking the rhetorical knife in her tory successor. >> yeah. >> and then a few minutes later a member of parliament, andrew mitchell, who had been an ally of johnson's for quite sometime

stood up and said, i have been with you all along. i have supported you from the very beginning. i was so happy when you became prime minister, and basically i've had enough. you must step down. i am just wondering, how many other torys are there like that? it was very damming for johnson taking the fire behind him on his own side. >> yeah, exactly right. one commentator talked about theresa may. said she came to the common with a cold plate of revenge. there is a genuine emotion in boris johnson's -- there is genuine emotion in boris johnson's party. i just described one moment in the commons yesterday. one member of parliament stood up, described going to his grandmother's funeral and said he couldn't hug his siblings, he couldn't go back to the house for a cup of tea. he just had to drive home. meanwhile, he said, in downing street you were having parties.

so it is genuine. in boris johnson's party there's a real danger to his leadership. he seems to have brought the party behind him for now, particularly in a closed door meeting in parliament, but one commentator saying he is on probation. in the end, the conservative party is a ruthless electoral machine, many people say. they will decide based on whether they think boris johnson can win the next election. >> yeah, you know, keir, i'm not exactly sure when it was but i traveled to london probably six, seven, eight years ago and would walk through hotel lobbies. i would say, well, he looks like a russian oligarch. i don't really know how russian oligarchs look but that guy kind of looks like a russian oligarch. i started noticing everywhere i went, kind of like i was in a swanky, upscale version of

moscow. sure enough, through the years london has become a playground for the russian oligarchs. "the washington post" has an article saying part of the problems with johnson's tough talk on russian is that london has become an amoral playground for kremlin-linked oligarchs. when i say amoral, i'm not talking about the oligarchs. i'm talking about britain's own laws that allow them to hide billions of dollars in that country. so the question is will johnson really have the nerve to stand up to these russian oligarchs who have bought up half the swanky residences in london. >> reporter: yeah, you know, joe, look, it is a colorful article. in many ways it tells us things we already knew. listen, you can go on instagram and see relatives and friends of russian officials prancing around in european cities.

we know roman abramovic is in the uk. so this matter is not a secret. i think as colorful as that article is, it does raise an interesting question though seriously about europe's split loyalties, if you like. i mean you only have to look at the question of natural gas. germany, for example, 60% of its gas coming from russia. europe has these extraordinary ties to russia and the oligarchs and billionaires in london is just one example of them, and that i think goes to the heart of the challenge for the biden administration in ensuring that america's allies are on his side as he challenges president putin. >> yeah. there are divided loyalties not only in london but in the

scarborough household on saturday and sunday mornings because my son joey is a huge chelsea fan, and he is a-okay with roman abramovitch laundering his money through chelsea given the alternative. so i may need to have a talking with him. i told him cheering for chelsea is like cheering for microsoft. he is still a chelsea fan and he doesn't want roman abramovic going anywhere. >> oh, my god. >> joe, you know, i think roman abramovic would say he is not laundering his money through chelsea, just putting his money into chelsea. listen, you have the saudis putting their money into new calf. so the premiership takes a lot of money from rich people. that's how a lot of them win the premiership. >> well, exactly. i mean the results actually are pretty much connected now, if you talk with roger bennet with where the money is coming from,

whether it is coming from the saudis, the uae, from fenway sports group, from roman abramovic. i was just joking about my son, talking about the whole laundering thing. he doesn't really care. he wants chelsea to win. >> okay. nbc's keir simmons, thank you for being on this morning. coming up, the co-founder and ceo of biontech joins us live. we will get an update on when kids under 5 could start getting the covid vaccine. we will be right back. d vaccine. we will be right back.

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with a qualifying bundle. 46 past the hour. the fda has granted full approval of the moderna covid-19 vaccine for people ages 18 and older. the approval was based on data showing high efficacy and favorable safety approximately

six months after the second dose. the vaccine had been available since december of 2020 under an emergency use authorization. pfizer's vaccine already received full approval in august. as for pfizer, a covid-19 vaccine for children younger than 5 could be available far sooner than expected. pfizer is expected to ask the fda to grant its vaccine emergency use authorization as soon as today. the request will be for a two-dose regimen. while the drugmaker continues to research how well three doses work. if approved, this could potentially allow for the vaccine to be available for kids under 5 by the end of the month. joining us now co-founder and ceo of biontech, dr. uger shaheen. researcher, physician and lead reed search in the novel

approach to fight infectious diseases. he is co-author of "the vaccine vaccine." you see on the cover his wife, and she was recently on the 50 over 50 list. it is an honor to meet you, sir, as we talk about the fight against the pandemic and the book you have put together. first, can i ask you about the vaccine for children 5 and under? we are still waiting to see if two or three doses might be actually effective for children 5 and under. do you suggest all children 5 and under should get the covid vaccine when it becomes available to them? >> so once the vaccine is authorized, of course, then there would be an assessment of the risk/benefit of such a vaccine, and we have in the meantime provided, of course,

our data to the fda from the clinical trials which are data based on two vaccine doses. the fda -- is continuing whether kids will continue to get a third dose, encourage us to submit, submit our data and request authorization and this will be decided very soon. >> and tell us about your book, which really looks at the race to develop the vaccine, the dramatic story behind it. what are some of the key moments that come to mind that you have written about that you think are not just vital to history but also what it took to make it happen? >> yes. so we started the development of our vaccine already in january 2020, and at that time point it was not clear that this pandemic

or this outbreak in china is going to become a pandemic. but we were convinced by based on first cases coming out that this will become a global pandemic, this will be a deadly disease and the only way to stop this would be to develop a vaccine. so we started with our company, biontech, which is based in germany and has a main focus in development of cancer vaccines. we decided to start the development of the vaccine. and since it was very clear that this vaccine would be needed as soon as possible we called the project light speed to really ensure that we used the shortest possible path without taking any short cuts to develop a vaccine.

this book written by joe miller, "the financial times" journal list, depicts 11 months which we had from beginning of the vaccine development until the vaccine -- vaccine was approved. >> dr. sahim, good morning. it is not every day i get to say this, but thank you on behalf of humanity for the work you and your wife did to bring this vaccine to the world in extraordinary record-breaking time. there was some projections it would take five years, ten years or whatever it was and you had it in less than one. can you speak a little bit about where you see this going? because you do study this so closely. you saw it coming in january 2020. you were convinced it was going to become a pandemic and that's why you went into warp speed mode to get this done. where do you see this pandemic going from here? not only here in the united states but around the world as well. >> so, of course, it is difficult to make concrete projections, but what is

happening is -- is just to summarize the most important, important -- important steps that we encountered so far. the first step was, of course, the authorization of the vaccine which is highly protective and prevents infection, disease and severe disease. this was the first phase. the second phase was -- out of the vaccine. the second phase was the emergence of variants and the first generation of variants were still -- still the vaccine could prevent disease and prevent infection for the first generation of vaccines. we under at a certain time a third dose would be important. now since a few months we have to deal with a new variant. this is the omicron variant, and the omicron variant escapes, escapes from antibody response

but it is still amenable against the t-cell response. we know that people who have received three doses of a vaccine, of an mrna vaccine are very protected against severe disease. what we are doing at the moment is on the one side continuing to supply the current vaccine, which is effective against severe disease, but we are also asking the question can we develop a vaccine which really installs protection against any type of disease. and this is part of ongoing work and we have just recently published last week that we started a clinical trial with testing this approach. >> the new book is "the vaccine: inside the race to conquer the covid-19 pandemic." co-founder and ceo of biontech dr. ugur sahin, thank you.

i want to point out that your wife, you guys are an amazing team. you have been on our radar since we honored on the europe, middle east and africa 50 over 50 list. it is very nice to meet you, sir. thank you both for the pioneering work you have done to save the world from a pandemic. joe. a new polling shows most americans think it is time to accept that covid-19 is here to stay and just get on with our life. in the latest monmouth university poll 70% say they agree to that statement compared to 28% who disagrees. among republicans, 89% agree. among independents 71% degree but democrats are more divided with a slim majority saying they disagree with that sentiment. mara, it is a fascinating question about whether we should just move on with our lives. every time i drive through new york and i see all of the businesses shuttered up, i think about all of the small business owners, i think about all of the workers, people that have lost

so much and just can't afford to go through another pandemic. i also think about people who have underlying conditions and certainly we have to balance getting everybody back. but "the new york times" did a -- has a fascinating op-ed that everybody should read talking about the pandemic of 2020. that's right, if you didn't read it, everyone, the pandemic of 1818 really went on to 2020, and in a lot of cities more people died in 2020 than died at the height of the pandemic because americans said, enough of it, we have been on lockdown for two years, if we die, we die. even historians sort of brushed aside all of the deaths in 2020 because they were over it, too. but it certainly is a clear warning to us 100 years later that if we say, "the hell with it, we're going to do what we

want to do," there will be consequences. >> yeah, you know, it is something i have been thinking a lot about personally. it comes up obviously just socially, who is willing to go sit indoors in a restaurant right now, are we ever going do that again. so it is very easy to be tempted to just throw up your hands and say to hell with it, but i think it is really time to push for a third way, which is to say we cannot live this way forever, we need to continue to move forward and get back to the new normal as it is for so many people. but it does not mean throwing up our hands and saying, well, we're not going to continue to push people to get vaccinated, we're going to end those efforts, or we're not going to help increase nursing staffs, hospital staffs across the country, or we're not going to continue to do research on new vaccines and also treatment for long covid. no, we need to do all of those things. i think if we fail to do those

things then we will have -- we'll continue to see that slow, preventable rolling crisis of tragedy in this country that has been the hallmark of the pandemic in the united states from the beginning, and it doesn't have to be that way. the question is not should we keep everything on hold. the question is how do we move forward while actually limiting suffering and bringing everyone, including the most vulnerable people, people in disabled communities, for example, with us. so we need to think about the most vulnerable, and the best way to do that, of course, is to continue to push to get people vaccinated. we have had enough suffering in this country. i think there's a real temptation to kind of give up and put the blinders on. i really think there's a much healthier third way that is also integral to healing as a country. if you think your neighbor doesn't care about your health or your job, it is going to be

hard to move forward together, and we also need to strengthen democracy. we have to think about this holistically. >> amen. mara gay, thank you for being on this morning. still ahead, a group of moderate health democrats says it has a winning message about the mid terms and it is all about the economy. we will talk to the lawmaker responsible for putting that strategy into action. imagine being one of the people who had to tape back together documents that donald trump tore up while in office. some pieces as small as confetti. we will have that reporting straight ahead. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. we'll be right back. we could bring it right to your door. with 1 to 2 day delivery from your local cvs. or same day if you need it sooner.

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"the commanders" is a name, you know, that hopefully will be one people will talk about going forward. there were so many different options, but commander, basically it is washington, d.c. a lot of commanders in washington, d.c. in the pentagon and a lot of different branches of the service. so to me that's sort of the way i'm looking at it, as positions of leadership when it comes to the new name. >> wow. willie -- >> out loud again. >> former washington quarterback joe theismann saying the quiet

part out loud. i don't think we have to say the washington commanders, is that it? >> i like it. i think it is good. >> willie, i wanted the washington generals. i mean, willie, that name has been used in a way -- come on. come on. they had a bad run against the harlem globe trotters. let the washington generals win. >> you know, they actually won a game once. they won by mistake. >> no. >> one of the guys like by mistake hit a three at the buzzer and they beat the globe trotters and they had an all-hands meeting to make sure it never happened again. former washington, great quarterback, you know, during the 1980s. >> yeah. >> plugged into the organization, without question. so i'm sure there was some sort of a briefing that the management and the ownership gave imploring them to not disclose it until it was announced and joe went right on the radio there and spilled the beans. >> i mean it happens. it happens.

we have jonathan lemire and david ignatius with us. let's bring in eugene robinson. eugene, i was thinking about this this weekend. the redskins, that's obviously -- if you have your meter here, that's all the way over to one side, right? so that's gone. >> yes. >> the indians, the cleveland indians, sort of a generic cowboys and indians thing. that's gone. >> correct. >> the atlanta braves though are still playing. they still get the tomahawk chock. they don't have chief nockahoma anymore, but you will remember that. but then this weekend the kansas city chiefs when they're there, they were still doing that fsu chant that the braves fans also do. it is just kind of fascinating. i guess it depends on the individual communities and what the ownership wants to do.

i know i saw a lot of polls that a lot of people, a lot of the washington fans didn't want them to change their name. >> well, yeah, a lot of people didn't want them to change their name but they had to change. >> yeah, they had to. >> the name was awful and terrible and racist. >> correct. >> and so it is gone. you know, i think that the tomahawk chops and that stupid chant need to go, need to go a long time ago. just on obnoxiousness grounds they needed to go. >> yes! i totally agree. >> i mean seriously. and i just think the time is over for those indian derived names for sports teams. i mean, you know, we are not your mascots i think should be the guiding principle there.

it is done. >> yeah. >> it had a long ride and you don't have to necessarily hang your head in shame for having rooted. you know, i used to root for the redskins. >> right. >> so, you know, and did so proudly, but that's over and we should just decide it is over and move on. >> makes sense. >> i have to say, yeah, no reason for anybody to put on sack cloth and ashes and march around and talk about how horrible they are as human beings. you are right. stick a fork in it. it is done. it is time to move on. i guess that's why i was so surprised the chiefs are still doing that chant, the braves are still doing that command, fsu is still doing that chant. it is sort of spotty. now, we haven't talked to you since the games. i mean can you believe -- >> that's right. >> -- speaking of the kansas city chiefs, i still was trying to figure this out yesterday, patrick mahomes, man. there is a guy who i think he is one of the most exciting, greatest quarterbacks i have

seen in football. he is amazing. but the tale of two halves. i did not recognize the guy that came out in the second half. by the way, he's not a guy that chokes. he is such a cool customer. i just think maybe he was trying to do too much in the second half. >> look, he just picked the worst possible time to have a bad half. everybody has a bad half, you know, occasionally. tom brady used to do it. everybody does it. he happened to do it at about the worst possible time. when have you ever seen patrick mahomes blow -- what was it, a 21-point lead, 18-point lead, whatever it was, like that? he simply was ineffective in the second half. cincinnati woke up. they're a second-half team. they came on, they did what they had to do.

they had that young stud kicker of theirs at the end, and they're going through to the super bowl for the first time in -- i was going to say the first time in our lifetimes. not quite, but the first time in decades. so let's applaud them. kansas city is going to be right there again next year. everybody in the afc is going to have to deal with kansas city. >> yeah, they're so good. willie, i'm not a football analyst though i play one on tv. talking about patrick mahomes, you do just kind of wonder -- again, i'm not second guessing this guy because he is so extraordinary. i am kind of wondering though, why didn't they -- when he was having problems in the second half, just do some short passes, dump the ball off, let your guys run. you have extraordinary people just to dump the ball off, run yourself. it seemed to me that, again, they never really picked up any

momentum in the second half. with all of the weapons that they had, starting with mahomes, that just wouldn't have been that hard to do. >> and they were killing 'em at the beginning of the game. it was 21-3. we looked around and said, all right, let's go outside and play in the snow, the chiefs are going to the super bowl again, and then they came back. you have to give credit to the bengals' in the second half. mahomes had time. he was scrambling but nobody was open. you consider who his targets were, tyreek hill, one of the fastest humans i have laid eyes on, but he wasn't open. look, patrick mahomes is one of the greatest quarterbacks, full stop. he just got outplayed in the second half by joe burrows and the bengals' defense did a good job. >> the key play was at the end of the first half, 21-10,

chiefs' lead. they have the ball, no time-outs. they don't get it. they ought to go for it. instead of taking the safe three points, they get nothing. yeah, mahomes played poorly, but he is a great player and he will be back. we shouldn't overlook how good the bengals were, particularly joe burrow who was playing with such incredible swagger and style. willie, it was pointed out to me you have noted people have noted to you there's a resemblance between yourselves and joe burrow. >> yes. >> in fact, you took to twitter yesterday, i don't know if we have that handie, but you took to quitter to point out joe burrow, now of course in his send year in the nfl, taking his team to the super bowl, very similar to your high school exploitness the great state of new jersey. >> i got enough messages about it i had to post something. i had a high school football picture of me in 1991, go maroons, state champs. you remember that game, joe,

when i beat north bergen. >> i'm looking it up right now. >> not a big deal. >> it was amazing. >> you were there. but, yeah, there is a striking resemblance i'm told between myself -- except i can't dress like him. he has the black turtleneck, the chain and the shades. i can't pull that off. >> i was going to say, willie. i was actually going to say -- >> very cute. >> mika has it up right here. i was going to say the diamond chain really is what -- oh, my god. look at that. >> they look good. you can't see it, willie? >> no, he can't. >> go to willie geist's twitter. >> people are still talking about willie geist's diving catch. they got him into the red zone and he did it with his diamond encrusted -- oh, look. there they go. with his diamond encrusted necklace on which joe burrow had on, and he bragged, of course they're real, i'm rich. not sure why he did that. there's willie. i love it.

>> okay. gentlemen, i think -- >> come on, mika, i just wanted to -- >> i appreciate, that's cute, the twitter thing. go to willie's twitter. but we are talking about a game that's two days ago and we have news that's new. >> i want to ask david ignatius about the bills -- >> no, you don't. david ignatius, there's new reporting on just how personally involved donald trump was in trying to use federal agencies to seize voting machines in key swing states in the weeks after losing the 2020 election. first was the justice department. two sources familiar with the matter tell "the new york times" that during an oval office meeting in mid to late november trump told then-attorney general bill barr he received legal counsel that the doj could take control of the machines as evidence of fraud. according to "the times", barr replied telling the president the justice department had no basis to do that because there

was no probable cause to believe a crime had been committed. sources also tell the times that around that time trump also tried to persuade state lawmakers in michigan and pennsylvania to use local law enforcement to take control of the voting machines in those states, but they also refused to do so. trump then moved on to the military. "the times" reports in a december 18th meeting michael flynn and sidney powell handed trump a draft executive order that would have authorized the pentagon to seize the machines. trump reportedly saw it. rudy giuliani's counsel. two sources tell "the times" that giuliani was vehemently opposed to the idea. >> that's when you know you have crossed the rubicon when rudy giuliani says, i don't know, i'm uncomfortable with this. >> that's not good. >> is this the ethical thing to do? trump then moved on to the department of homeland security.

according to two sources giuliani said, okay, i'm back in the game. yeah, let me do this and he called dhs official ken cucinelli to see if he could help. cucinelli said, drop dead. maybe not those exact words. >> no, he said he could not help. >> get lost. nbc reached out to the former president overnight for comment. let's bring in one of the reporters behind the story, michael schmidt. michael, we have read the story. you can tell us a little bit about it. what strikes me there's an old rolling stone song called "time is on my side." time is not on the side of donald trump. the further we get away from january 6th, the more we find out about him trying to seize voting machines, trying to use the federal government to seize voting machines. the more we find out about fraudulent electors, people who lied about being electors from states, they probably will be going to jail as well. these january 6th convictions

keep going on. you have people testifying in front of the january 6th commission that were in trump's inner circle. i mean things are going from bad to worse for the former president, isn't it? >> well, i think what you are pointing out is that you sort of have three really large, powerful institutions all looking at the same thing. one of them is the courts where, you know, you have the justice department bringing cases related to january 6th and there are dozens, if not hundreds and hundreds of these cases which produce new details and facts and witnesses. you obviously have the congressional committee which is conducting one of the largest congressional investigations we have ever seen and trying as hard as they can to get into trump's inner circle. and then you have folks like us in the media who now here more than a year out from january 6th are still trying to understand what happened in that period of

time between the election in november of 2020 and january 20th when trump ultimately leaves. the biggest, most important point out of our reporting in this story is bringing trump into it, is what these new facts do. they tie trump directly to the efforts to overturn the election in a new way. yes, we know donald trump was trying to overturn the election. he says it out loud. he did things out loud. we now know more about what he was doing behind the scenes, the attempts to, you know, having giuliani ask the department of homeland security whether they could do this related to the voting machines. it shows that the voting machines' ploy was more than a ploy of the odd, outside individuals who were advising the president in this period of

time. we also now know that trump's interest, trump's looking at this idea extended over a longer period of time than we knew before. we know it extends as far back as the middle to the end of november. so this is just a few weeks after the election -- >> right. >> -- where trump in an oval office meeting brings up the idea with barr and says to barr, is this something that the justice department could do, and barr says no. this is part of a pattern of barr emerging as a guardrail in these final days of barr's term as attorney general, saying no to the president. but within a month you have trump again looking for someone else, looking for someone else to do this and another part of the government to do this. >> yeah. >> it is part of a pattern in which trump tries to get other people and other parts of the

government to do things for him. >> yeah. you know, david ignatius, i just -- while michael was talking i was taking notes what he was saying, writing some things down and thinking about what had happened over the past several weeks. donald trump got slapped down by the supreme court, 8-1 decision, no executive privilege meaning katie bar the door, documents will be flooding out from the white house, continue to flood out from the trump administration over to the january 6th commission. the committee is getting tons of incriminating documents and also a lot of testimony from people in trump's inner circles in the final days. grand juries are being impanelled where there's that smoking gun evidence of the recorded telephone call where he is telling the secretary of state of georgia, steal this election for me, i need you to steal one more vote for me. fraudulent electors, we are hearing about fraudulent electors, we are hearing about seized voting machines, we are

seeing polls, the a.p. has a poll out where 44% of republicans are saying, no, we don't want donald trump to run again. suddenly him becoming even more extreme in his rallies over the weekend is making sense. this is a guy who understands the walls are closing in. he is losing a good portion of his base, and that's -- >> sorry, sweetie. >> -- why he is amping everything up. >> i have had the same feeling, joe. it is as if the dam is finally beginning to break. the most important development in some ways for me is the early signs that republicans, the republican base that trump has been able to count on are beginning to turn away from him in terms of the future of the republican party, the future of our country. that's the decisive issue, is if people say, "enough, i've had it." trump clearly dreams of run

running in 2024. there was a terrific piece in the last couple of days making a point there's sign in the polls of disaffection among republican voters, they're fed up with all of this. as you say, trump's frantic behavior at his rally over the weekend is a sign that he sees something is wrong. michael schmidt described reporting that it is beginning to make this look like a conspiracy in which you can directly link the president of the united states to actions that followed. where that goes, what the house committee does with the information it is finding, how it connects with what the justice department is doing is a mystery to me, but this fundamental seeming shift beginning, just beginning in public attitudes toward trump is striking. extraordinary. >> gene, we just learned some records handed over to the

january 6th select committee from the national archives were previously torn up by then president donald trump, then taped back together by staffers. we've heard this before. "politico" reported in 2018 the former president had a habit of tearing up reports and records. the national archives confirmed that in response to a question by "the washington post." the preservation of all written communication is required related to the president's official duties. some of the taped pieces were as small as confetti. he can tear up as much as he wants, the staffers put it back together. what he can't tear up is electronic communication. we know kayleigh mcenany handed over a bunch of texts, mark meadows handed over a bunch of e-mails. the committee has what it needs, even if it has to tape some back together. >> absolutely. the white house staff did what it was required by the law to

do. you have to preserve the records. trump would tear them up because he hates a paper trail on anything. that's why he doesn't use e-mail and so forth. he doesn't want a record out there, but, in fact, the records were there and they had to be taped back together. now, you know, they went to the national archives as required by law and now they've gone to the committee. you know, there is the sense that as somebody -- i guess joe said earlier, somebody said earlier, time is not on his side, that every week, every month that goes by, yes, his support among republicans may be slipping a little. people have said that before and have been proved wrong, but it feels a little different this time. the sense of, yes, this was a conspiracy and, yes, it was being directed by donald trump,

it seems to be emerging from what the courts are finding out, what the committee is finding out and what reporters like michael schmidt are finding out. and all of this is very much walls closing in, and i think -- look, judging by history we will see him become ever more frantic, ever more crazed, ever more desperate as time goes on and the walls do, indeed, close in. >> michael schmidt, you well know if you are going to tear up a document, you don't want anyone else to see it, you have to eat the pieces. that's the only way to prevent anyone from finding it. let me ask you about the guardrails that did hold in the 11th hour of the trump administration and what is your cooperation they may be providing to the january 6th select committee. we know bill barr has had some interactions with them. what about ken cucinelli, not a

name we have heard that often during the probing into what happened in the aftermath of the election. what is his role here? is he also aiding investigators? >> i want to pick up on something that joe and david ignatius were talking about, gene was just talking about. i've had a chance -- i covered the original russia investigation, the mueller investigation, the michael cohen stuff, impeachments one and two, and versions of these conversations happened on television or amongst journalists privately where we felt it was truly awful and there were cracks and signs. i get this may be different and it may be truly a movement against the president. at the end of the day trump still lost the election and had a strangle hold so great on the republican party that they weren't able to do a bipartisan commission to investigate january 6th even after republicans said they should do

that. so, you know, with trump and these investigations, i think we always look at them and we're astounded by the disclosures. he asked his personal lawyer to call the department of homeland security to seize voting machines as a bunch of outside advisers who had very unusual views of power were trying to keep him in office in a coup. that is an incredible fact and really brings trump into it in a new way. but, you know, it is hard not to, as someone who has covered a lot of different versions of this story, just wonder where will it truly go because it just seems that no matter what has happened, dating back to, you know, whether it was asking don mcgahn to fire mueller or firing comey, or the michael cohen investigation where it looked

like trump was in a massive amount of trouble, trump found a way to get out of it. it is one of the things about the trump story that makes it just one of the more incredible ones i have certainly ever covered. >> yeah. michael schmidt, thank you. fascinating reporting. you know, david ignatius, i noticed something in the story i have noticed in other stories, too. donald trump asks staff members to cross the line and he asks staff members to do things that he knows obviously are extraordinarily wrong. it is just like michael said. he was constantly asking barr and others, don mcgahn, to fire mueller. they refused. asking ken cucinelli, seize voting machines. refused. time and time again through

trump's presidency, on numerous occasions he asks somebody to go beyond legal boundaries, to go beyond constitutional boundaries, to go beyond constitutional norms, and yet when they didn't do it he had the authority to do it and he did not, which i find to be fascinating. that he was constantly pushing at the edges, constantly wanting other people to do his dirty work for him, and yet -- >> that's the truth. >> -- when the time came he didn't step over the line himself time and time again. i will say the first couple -- the few years of the mueller investigation, the thing that just frightened me the most was the constitutional crisis that was going to erupt when he fired bob mueller. >> uh-huh. >> never did it. neither did anybody else. i just think when the history is written of this presidency years from now, they're going to find

repeated instances where donald trump asked other people to breach constitutional norms, they refused to do it and then trump backed off. >> joe, i've had the same feeling. he has gone right up to the line of so many national security issues. he wanted the troops out of afghanistan for more than a year. seeming presidential orders would arrive at the pentagon. general milley would say, wait a minute, what's this and would raise a stink, go back to the white house, and they would back down. the same thing with firing his intelligence chiefs. he would rant and rave, we're going to get rid of this one, get rid of that one. he didn't do it. he had the power to do it, but in the end it was as if making that ruckus or issuing the inflammatory tweet or being seen to be enraged satisfied his

urge. in terms of actually using the presidential power to do some of these extreme things, it is amazing how many he didn't do. take afghanistan. trump again and again said he was going to pull all of the troops out. joe biden comes in and whether you think it was a good idea or not, he just did it. he didn't let the generals talk him out of it, which they tried to. he just did it. it is a big difference in behavior. but we'll see where -- just listening to that voice again of trump, that strange, high, thin voice at his rallies, it is like falling into a sudden time warp. are we really going to go back to all of that? as you read some of these poll numbers, it is obvious there are a lot of republicans scratching their heads and thinking, maybe we don't want to go back there, just back to precisely that place that we were four years ago. >> yeah. again, mika, the a.p. poll that

just came out, 44% of republicans say they don't want donald trump to run for president again. 56% do. that's still though -- i don't think those numbers have been that close on sort of an approval/disapproval inside the party since the early days of 2016. >> yeah. david ignatius, thank you very much for being on this morning. good to see you. still ahead on "morning joe," we're breaking down the money race as we head into this year's midterm elections. republicans are in the lead, but democrats are working to keep their majority in congress. we'll talk to a member of the new democrat coalition about how the party intends to do that and what is at stake. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. joe. we'll be right back.

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democrats have taken control of the house of representatives. >> a historic accomplishment for the democrats. >> new dems make the majority because we represent the majority. >> we listen. >> we listen. >> we listen. >> we listen. >> we listen. >> we listen to what america needs. >> we fight. >> we fight for our principles. >> abigail spamberger is my name. >> we just made history. >> we defend american values. >> we believe in an economy that works for everyone. >> everyone getting a fair shot to earn a good life. >> that's a new add from the new democrat coalition looking to turn out the vote in november to keep democrats in control of the united states congress. joining us a member of the new democrat coalition congressman brad schneider of illinois. he sits on the house committee

of foreign affairs. it is great to have you with us today. >> it is good to be here. >> you wrote an op-ed for "the hill" saying the center of our party, despite what you may see on the cable news or hear on twitter, the momentum is at the center tv party. what makes you believe that? it doesn't look that way from the outside. >> i'll start with the numbers. when i was elected in 2012 when i first came there were moderates, and today we are at 97. that growth reflects the that the center of gravity moved toward the middle. these members you saw in the ad are focused on growing our economy, protecting our security, educating our kids and lifting up the entire country. we have 97 folks who point to record success, we made the majority in 2018 bringing in those members and we represent the largest share of the most difficult races, 22 of 32 front line races are new dems.

that's how we will hold the majority. >> there are some within your own party as well as some outside that will say build back better is a progressive wish lift that goes too far and it overstates the mandate president biden got when he was elected. do you think build back better as it is as a giant bill should be passed as is or picked apart and broken into more popular pieces. >> the first thing i will say and i have this conversation at least once a day where people say, there's so much here. when you go through and you talk about universal preschool, investing in children and expanding the child tax credit, lifting kids out of poverty, making sure we're investing in supply chain, that we are growing our economy and protecting our lead in technology, all of the other things, the individual policies, people say no, i'm for that, for that. >> right. >> we have to make sure we're working on explaining what is in the bill, why it matters and doing the things that will move us the furthest most quickly.

i'm of the camp, let's pick a few things and do that well and let's get them done and build on top of them. i have always said if you try to do everything at once it is a recipe for focus. but if you focus on doing one thing at a time you can get it done well. >> so pick it apart. >> i will take it anyway we can get it. because of the function in particular in the senate, we can't say, all right, let's do this, do that, one or the other thing at a time. with a 50/50 shot, you get one shot, you get reconciliation. let's pick the things that will have the biggest impact, the most effect on raising people's standards of living today, put it in a passage and pass it through. >> what about voting rights, congressman? there's been so much talk about the two pieces of legislation, joe manchin can't get on board with some of it, republicans won't vote for any of it. where do you think it goes from here? it is a priority promise president biden made to the people who put him in office. >> i think it is a promise to the whole american experiment.

our country is built on the pedestal of every kmen citizen having the ability to safely and security cast their vote, be confident it will be counted and that it will reflect the will of the people and it is upheld. >> you sit on the house foreign relations committee so we want your assessment currently in the russian/ukrainian border. the president said he would send troops to eastern europe. do you feel it is appropriate? what other steps should he be taking as there's no other signs of deescalation in that part of the world? >> first we have to take it as a serious threat. russia is amassing these troops and we need to take it seriously. the president is signaling there will be dire consequences with sanctions if russia takes any action to cross the border into ukraine, signaling we are working with our allies and nato stands united and will confront this. if russia invades, those

sanctions will not only have bite on russia but it will mean sacrifice and pain for our european allies and even here in the united states. i think what the administration needs to be signaling is we're willing to do what is necessary to protect the sovereigty of all nations and push back on russian aggression. >> congressman gene robinson of "the washington post" is here with a question for you. gene. >> yeah, congressman, my question is about once again sort of intra party relations. are you getting -- are you and the moderate democrats whose jobs are very much on the line in the fall, are you getting the kinds of support you believe you need from the speaker, from the progressive caucus in the house and from the dnc? >> look, the democrat party talk about a big tent. i prefer the metaphor of a big raft. we have room for everybody, but

the only way we will get where we want to go is if everyone is rowing in the direction. we need the progressives, the new dems, the blue dogs all working together. we need to make sure that we are communicating how these incumbents and in the districts where we are bringing in challengers, our members are the ones who are going to bring it or address the issues that matter most to people. the kitchen table issues that affect them, the economy, education, health care, national security. all of these are issues that i think the new dems lead on and we'll work together and have the support of our party. >> congressman brad schneider of illinois. great to have you here with us. >> good to be here. >> come back soon. >> i will. mika. >> a look at the money race overall. major republican organizations ended last year with significantly more money than their democratic counterparts. republican campaign committees and pacs focused on taking back congress have almost $220 million in cash on hand.

democrats have about $176 million. at this point in the 2020 election cycle, democrats led republicans by some $50 million. as for donald trump, new filings show he has a massive political war chest despite fundraising slowing down. according to a federal election commission report released yesterday trump started with -- he started 2022 with $122 million in political cash. while his haul was down $11 million in the second half of 2021, it still represents a major sum for an ex-president not currently running for office. filings show trump's main political action committee doled out less than $1.5 million in the second half of last year despite raising more than $51 million in that same period. coming up, we will speak

with a woman who used to work at facebook who says the company is not ready for this year's election wave. she will explain that. plus congressman ro khanna who represents silicon valley joins us with his take on how to hold tech companies accountable. "morning joe" is coming right back. "morning joe" is coming right back throughout history i've observed markets shaped by the intentional and unforeseeable. for investors who can navigate this landscape, leveraging gold, a strategic and sustainable asset... the path is gilded with the potential

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president joe biden has called important the release of u.s. navy veteran mark fredericks who was taken hostage in afghanistan two years ago. the 59-year-old civil engineer and contractor who worked in afghanistan for a decade on development projects, he was kidnapped in january 2020 while in kabul. he is believed to be in the

custody of the taliban- linked haqqani network. threatening americans and innocent civilians is an act of particularly cruelty. he said, the taliban must immediately release mark before it can expect aspirations for its legitimacy. this is not negotiable. joining us staff writer for "the atlantic" george packer. he writes that america's chaotic withdrawal from afghanistan added moral energy to military failure. george, good morning. it is good to see you. >> good morning. >> as i said you wrote an excellent short book of 20,000 boards, "the betrayal." but an important document for history. i want to talk about how we got here but let's talk about the current state of affairs. you and i were discussing veterans i know, journalists we both know are having to privately rally contacts, planes, money, afghan

translators, people that served alongside them 20 years in that country. how hard has it become to get afghans out? >> it has become almost impossible. there are tens of thousands, both former interpreters and also those who have in some way become at risk because of associated with the united states. the numbers qualifying for refugee status or museum tarian parole which allows them to come into the country on a humanitarian basis. the department of homeland security have taken a slow and sluggish stance towards applicants. the bureaucracy has come back full force and we are back where we were before august where they're in long lines and it is difficult to get out. there are a lot of practical reasons as well but basically the biden administration has not

taken an urgent approach to those still stuck in afghanistan under threat and left it to private citizens, as you say, to veterans and civilians and some active duty military to spend their own money and their own time. some of them are still doing this night and day in order to get people out and they're having very little help from the u.s. government. >> the question is why. i mean this is a moral question. this is a question of honor for the people i know. these people fought alongside us. they helped us in that country, we owe it to them to get them out. by the way, we explicitly told them we would take care of them whenever this war ended. why is the state department, why is the biden administration making it so difficult? >> let's go back to where the biden administration began. they inherited two disasters from the trump administration. one was the special immigrant visa program had ground to a halt. the trump administration did not want afghan muslims coming into this country so they pretty much closed the program down. so the biden administration had to begin from zero in order to begin getting visas to people.

they also inherited a deal with the taliban which basically left them very little room. when biden announced we were ending the war, there were something like 18,000 afghans in line for special immigrant visas plus tens of thousands tens of f family members and others, and between april and august the biden administration could have accelerated evacuations, could have appointed an evacuation czar, could have begun collecting names and contact information in case of an emergency if we needed to reach these people, could have begun negotiating with the taliban for how we're going to get our people out when we leave. it did none of these things. it delayed and delayed, it tried to fix is broken bureaucratic program. when august came and kabul fell faster than anyone expected they were completely unready to evacuate tens of thousands of afghans who had risked their lives on behalf of their country and united states. into that void came all these private citizens who spent money and time, night and day some of them hardly sleeping in august

using essentially what's app and signal to get people into the airport and out of the country, but for every one who they got out there were five or six or seven who they couldn't get out and those people are still there. >> joe? >> george, talk about why the biden administration didn't move more aggressively. talk about the meeting with the afghan government where they pled with the biden administration not to show any overt signals that they were abandoned the country because it would expedite the government's collapse. >> right. the president of afghanistan told biden on a visit to washington in june that if he began these evacuation it is would signal loss of confidence in the afghan government. they were essentially -- the afghans were essentially telling the biden administration what it wanted to hear because the biden administration had already by omission decided not to do early evacuations. yes, their argument is that it would have caused a collapse of the afghan government, but basically the afghan government

had already lost the confidence of its own people and of the u.s. government. so to wait and delay and to not prepare for the emergency that came in august showed not just that they wanted to show confidence in the afghan government, but they had made a decision not to commit the u.s. government to bringing tens of thousands of afghans into this country before the final fall of the afghan government. and i think that was a political decision. that was a decision that president biden and his advisers made. my sources told me that it was partly because of the fear that it would kind of be conflated with the crisis at the southern border, a huge immigration disaster that the administration would have on its hands in the middle of negotiations over infrastructure and other bills, and so in a sense they punted it. they decided to do it quietly and bureaucratically which was wholly inadequate to the crisis. >> you say that all four presidents over this century have betrayed the afghan people, have abandoned the afghanistan

people. let's go through those. george w. bush, how did he abandon the afghanistan people? >> i think immediately after the fall of the taliban with the kind of hue bus and arrogance of our victory that we somehow assumed they were gone, were never coming back, very quickly bush his attention shifted to iraq and we left it to the afghan people to try to rebuild their society with some outside help, but basically the precious attention of the u.s. government moved elsewhere. barack obama then came in and spent a long time deciding whether or not to add more troops, he finally did under pressure from the military, but he also immediately announced that they would be withdrawn in 18 months. donald trump came in and negotiated the deal i mentioned earlier which essentially said we're out of here and we're going to leave it to chance to see what happens to the afghan government, and especially the afghan people, women and girls under the tender mercies of the

taliban. joe biden came in, inherited that deal and decided to make good on it and to withdraw the last troops. really in a sense were we ever completely serious about this country? did we ever take seriously the position we put the afghan people in? they did rebuild their society, they created a civil society in the cities. they gave some freedoms to women and girls. they created the most vibrant media in the region. there were things worth saving in afghanistan and what i find remarkable is not the decision to leave, which i can understand, but the cavalier way we left. the callousness of the way we left, as if we had no commitments any longer once we decided to end the war. as if our job was done. and that's what put afghans in the nightmarish position they were in when kabul fell in august. >> there are diplomats and activists across afghanistan who have tried to prevail upon the biden administration that the women and girls at the very least need our help and support

because we all know what the taliban would do and that's happening. you have a scene from 2010 in which richard holebook goes in to speak to the vice president, he has an audio diary of this moment and he asks vice president biden to consider the women and girls of afghanistan. you quote biden as saying, i'm not sending my boy back there to risk his life on behalf of women's rights, talking about his son bo who had been deployed to iraq. why didn't that argument hold more not just in that moment but in the last few months with this administration? >> i think biden made a judgment and it's not at all a wrong one that human rights is not a lone sufficient cause for committing u.s. troops. we don't send our troops anywhere that human rights are in danger. that's an obvious national security argument. what i don't understand is this blind spot the president had. it's as if once he lost confidence in the afghans and in our project, in our war there,

it's as if he wrote it off. he no longer thought we had any lingering commitments. he was ready to move on. and he did the same in vietnam, interestingly, in 1975 when he was a senator from delaware and gerald ford asked democrats on the foreign relations committee for money to evacuate vietnamese just ahead of the north vietnamese triumph in saigon and biden said not one dollar, we don't owe them anything. we will evacuate americans but not south vietnamese. in a sense there seems to be some early foreshadowing of what happened in afghanistan and, i don't know, there's a blind spot there, a sense of not having a debt once the troops are out and the afghans have paid the price for that. >> the piece is titled "the betrayal." it's in the atlantic. george packer, thanks for being here to share it with us. >> my pleasure. coming up next, the white house is brissing for what is expected to be a disappointing january jobs report. one of president biden's top

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beautiful shot of new york city as the sun is coming up. 8:00 on the east coast. welcome back to "morning joe." it is tuesday, february 1st. jonathan lemire and eugene robinson are still with us. and this morning we've been digging into the new reporting on just how personally involved donald trump was in trying to use federal agencies to seize voting machines in key swing states in the weeks after losing the 2020 election. nbc news senior washington correspondent hallie jackson has the latest. >> reporter: as former president

trump ramps up his rhetoric while weighing a run for office, new questions this morning over his role in attempts to interfere with the last election. overnight "the new york times" reporting that six weeks after the 2020 race, which he lost, mr. trump directed his attorney rudy giuliani to ask the department of homeland security if it could legally take control of voting machines in key swing states. the dhs official, giuliani reached, said he did not have the authority to do so, the "times" reported, according to three people familiar with the matter. nbc news has reached out to representatives for mr. trump and giuliani but has not heard back. it comes as backlash, including from some republicans, is intensifying after a weekend rally where mr. trump called for mass protests in cities where prosecutors are investigating him. >> if these radical, vicious, racist prosecutors do anything wrong or illegal, i hope we are going to have in this country the biggest protests we have ever had. >> reporter: those comments described as alarming by fulton

county da fannie willis. she is looking into whether mr. trump broke the law by trying to interfere with atlanta's 2020 election results. the fbi is gathering information on any potential threats and sharing it with law enforcement partners. the top republican on the committee investigating that attack on the capitol, congresswoman liz cheney, what she sees as a warning sign. >> i think it tells us that he would do this all again it given the chance. >> reporter: mr. trump suggesting that he would go easy on the people charged with breaking the law during the capitol attack. >> if i run and if i win we will treat those people from january 6th fairly. if that requires pardons, we will give them pardons. >> reporter: but even long-time trump ally, republican senator lidsy graham, concerned. >> i don't want to reinforce that dee filing the capitol was okay. i don't want to do anything that

would make this more likely in the future. >> new polling suggests former president trump may be losing his grip on the gop. in the latest ap norc center poll, 44% of republicans say they do not want the former president to run again in 2024 compared to 56% who do. and in a separate poll from nbc news 56% of gop voters defined themselves as supporters of the party, compared to 36% who define themselves as supporters of trump. this is a major reversal from a poll taken right before the 2020 election where 54% designed themselves as supporters of trump rather than the republican party itself. >> gene, these are some dramatic shifts and you see it when you have people like lindsey graham coming out criticizing him for what he said this weekend. i saw yesterday even josh hawley -- even josh hawley said

people who committed crimes on january 6th should pay for those crimes. i guess he is excluding himself. but, still, it's dramatic how many republicans are speaking out against donald trump now and you look at the numbers -- okay, thank you -- wait, we don't need to see that. the bone structure of a small bird. >> stop. >> anyway, these numbers, especially that identification, do you identify yourself as a republican or do you identify yourself as a supporter of donald trump, that was always so telling when they were selling out in my opinion conservatism and basic republican beliefs, like balanced budgets and nato. but this is a shift. and i wonder if that's why donald trump sounded so extreme and desperate this weekend, more extreme than usual. >> oh, i think absolutely that's why. i think -- look, we haven't really seen a trend like this in trump's numbers since, you know,

2016 or when they were on the rise. you know, the party was clearly with him. you don't want to be premature, right? and say, oh, trump is finally finished, finally this is the time. we've said that before, that has been said before and has never been true. this does feel a bit different. trump's reaction is different this time and also when you see somebody like lindsey graham who was really all in on trump being the future of the party, he has said that explicitly in those words basically, that if you're going to be a republican you have to be on the right side of donald trump, that he would take even a step out of line tells me something. something might be going on, which tends to -- will tend to

make trump yet more volatile, yet more desperate as time goes on. we're certainly not out of the woods in terms of donald trump, but something is changing for him and we can be hopeful that something is changing. >> one of former president trump's closest allies is pushing the republican party to formally expel both liz cheney and adam kinzinger. according to the "washington post" david bostic, trump's former deputy campaign manager has submitted a resolution to party leadership calling on the rnc to endorse the ouster. the resolution is expected to be debated by rnc members in salt lake city this week. this comes as congresswoman cheney just broke her own fundraising record. she pulled in just over $2 million in the fourth quarter of 2021, more than she has in any

previous quarter. "politico" notes that part of the funding came from former president george w. bush in october, he donated the maximum individual contribution of $5,800 to cheney's reelection campaign. willie? >> jonathan lemire, obviously liz cheney has gone out again and again along with adam kinzinger to publicly and relentlessly criticize former president trump. she's raised more money than all the challengers but still have a white on her hands in wyoming and it will be a litmus test what it means to step out, criticize donald trump and see if you can survive it. >> she has fallen out of favor, kevin mccarthy has been sharply critical of her and the role she has played on the select committee, the former president goes after her quite a bit. this haul shows that she's got some support certainly from establishment, institutional republicans including george w. bush. it should be noted on the

financial disclosure form you have to list your occupation and he wrote former president of the united states. fact check true. she does face steep odds. there's a number of challengers, the trump maga wing left to coalesce around one of them, were that to happen polling suggests that cheney is in trouble. were she could be defeated after kinzinger is not going to run again and some other republicans who have stood up to the former president who voted for one of his impeachments have suggested they won't run again either. though we're seeing some perhaps polling that suggests that the rank and file voters are tiring of donald trump most politicians in the party aren't. his hold on the gop remains pretty firm. all right. joining us now is the director of the white house national economic council, brian deese. we are looking ahead to some jobs numbers that could be potentially disappointing. what can you tell us? what are you expecting? >> well, we can never predict the future of the numbers, but what i can tell you is this,

we've seen extraordinary progress in the labor market the last year we saw the most jobs created of any year on record and the fastest decline in the unemployment rate on record. so we've seen a really strong labor market, which is driven a lot of benefits for americans. the number of long-term unemployed, for example, fell in half, those are people who often find the hardest time getting back into the labor force, but we also have a january where we had omicron and we do expect that that will affect the numbers, in particular when the survey the department of labor does the survey, they ask employers how many people are on the job. if somebody was out sick during the week that they asked that question and were not receiving paid sick leave they will not count as employed even if they have stayed on the job. we expect that that will have an impact on the numbers, obviously early in january we saw a lot of people out sick for short-term periods. so that may lead to a number that is a little confusing. we will have to see.

i think we will -- we never put too much weight on any individual month. this will particularly be true in this month because of the likely affect of the short-term absences from omicron. >> and what is the white house doing at this point to help create more jobs and also push back against what all consumers are seeing and are frightened about, inflation and also still some supply shortages? >> absolutely. inflation is clearly a serious problem, it also needs to be viewed in context of the historic economic success that we've seen. in addition to the labor market we saw the economy grow in 2021 by 5.7%. that's growth we haven't seen in nearly 40 years in this country, so what we are doing is trying to continue that economic momentum while addressing prices head-on. one of the best things that we can do is focus on reshoring and building resilience in our supply chains.

i think we have all seen in our individual lives that these supply chain challenges have affected how we buy, what we can buy, when things get here. the more that we bring that production back to the united states, the more resilient we will be. and the good news there on the jobs and resilience is we're seeing a real emerging come back in american manufacturing. last week intel announced $20 billion investment in building semi conductors. we had boeing here yesterday announcing the largest purchase of airplanes from qatari airlines, that will create jobs all across the country. we're seeing companies increasingly interested in bringing production back to the united states. we need to keep that going and there's a number of things we can do working with congress to try to get that momentum continued. >> brian, good morning. it's jonathan lemire. president biden's predecessor used to talk about the stock market and equate the success there with suggesting that it was an overall picture of a healthy economy which of course we know the two things aren't exactly hand in hand.

the market has been up and a lot of down lately and adding to a general sense of unease a among a lot of americans. what's the white house's message about that and also as you eye potential interest rate hikes from the federal reserve in the weeks ahead? >> well, look, we always keep a careful eye and monitoring capital markets but as you mentioned joe biden's view of a metric of success for the economy is much broader than the financial markets, it's really a question of are working class people able to achieve their economic goals. on that front we are making a lot of progress. in addition to jobs, in addition to growth, last year there was a new report that came out this morning that showed that the bottom 50% of earners, people in the bottom half of the income spectrum, saw their incomes, real incomes after inflation, go up by 8.5% in 2021. that's real progress. that's the kind of progress that we need to continue. so, you know, we are -- we're obviously focused on the market developments and certainly that is a factor, but it's one of

many and building an economy where we see strong wage growth, strong economic growth and we get these prices in check, that's really our overall goal. >> director of white house national economic council brian deese. thank you very much for joining us this morning. willie? joining us in new york democratic member of the house arms services committee congressman ro kahner the author of "dignity in a digital age: make tech work for all of us." you've been listening patiently to our conversation and brian deese there. what is your view of where the focus should be of democrats in this midterm year? you've sort of had interesting takes on senator manchin, for example, where you said i understand what he's dealing with. he's running in west virginia, in a state that voted for donald trump overwhelmingly. some of your progressive colleagues have suggested he would be primaried. what do you think that your party should be looking at on the hopes of holding on to a house? you've had retirements, it

doesn't look good at this moment from the outside. >> i'm still cautiously hopeful, but we ought to respect senator manchin, we ought to understand why he's coming from, we ought to give him the deference of coming up with what he wants and he's going to propose climate investments, he's going to say let's have preschool for every three-year-old and four-year-old, he's going to be for medicare expansion. let's pass that, it will show we can get something done. i think we ought to get it to the president's desk. i have a lot of respect for him and i think we can come to a compromise. >> when you look at these massive pieces of legislation like build back better, how are you viewing it? we were talking to congressman schneider of illinois and he said he'd like to see it get through however it can and maybe that does mean pulling the popular pieces out of it and voting on them one by one. what's your view of that legislation? >> i think we can get a narrow version centered on climate that all 51 senators, including senator manchin can support and we get that through, and then other things we can do one by

one, such as expanding the child tax credit or a $15 wage or paid family leave, but we have to be flexible. people want to see we can get things done. the other thing which brian deese mentioned, he mentioned it as one point, but the entire democratic party should descend to new albany, ohio, and talk about the 3,000 manufacturing jobs that are being created there, talk about the 7,000 construction jobs, intel in my district investing in the heartland. this is economic revival. if it were donald trump with the carrier deal it was like 600 jobs and all he could talk about and why isn't the whole democratic party in new albany, ohio, saying we're revitalizing the heartland of america? it's not about this statistics and provision and legislation. that's not how politics works. politics is about stories, we have to tell our story. >> joe, it's something we talk about on this show, too much talk about process, too many members of congress out talking to members of press out in the halls and not going out in the country and talking about things

they passed,. >> just as observers we talk about it all the time whether you're supporting democrats or supporting republicans or just looking at it. if donald trump had this economy over the past year, if donald trump had this stock market over the past year, if donald trump had the record growth in jobs over the past year, if donald trump had the gdp that biden's white house had over the past year it's literally all we would talk about and you touch on this. you touch on this plant in ohio. this is extraordinary, extraordinarily important not just for the future of our economy but to our national security. why aren't democrats talk being it more? >> we need to be out on the campaign trail, joe. look, you're absolutely -- you're absolutely right.

semi-conductors, you want to talk about inflation, part of the reason for inflation is that we were dependent on semi-conductors coming from south korea, coming from taiwan. republicans talked about china, china, china and the threat. we are actually doing something about it. we're putting semi-conductor manufacturing in ohio. talk to folks in ohio, they are so excited about this, their kids aren't going to have to buy one-way tickets out of the community, out of the state. they get to stay in that community. they get good-paying jobs. these aren't the coding jobs in my district. these are -- go become a coder. these are manufacturing jobs, these are the new construction jobs, $20 billion investment. it's more than donald trump did for, quote, unquote, the forgotten americans in his whole four years. this president is delivering and we are not out there, we are not telling the story. we ought to be telling the story as opposed to talking about abstract legislation and numbers and data and inflation. have people in that plant who are going to get jobs talk about

what this means to them and their kids. >> if you are talking about joe biden -- i mean, if you are talking about joe manchin you're losing. unfortunately that's the obsession instead of what's going on in ohio, what's going on in the stock market, what's going on, you know, in this economy. let me ask you a couple quick questions about silicon valley, something you know a good bit about. let's first of all talk about monopolies. we really are in the age, the gilded age, the second gilded age, and you've got facebook, you've got google who completely control advertising in their space. not apple so much, but those two companies especially, microsoft also. a budding monopoly there as well. what can congress, what can the president do to break these monopolies up and allow entrepreneurs, more entrepreneurs, not just in silicon valley, but across

america to actually start competing with these massive, massive corporations? >> joe, i agree with you, we need antitrust legislation that doesn't allow them to privilege their own products and discriminate against sellers. people say i don't pay anything to use facebook or google why am i being armed? there are two arms, one, the small businesses are paying for the advertisement and they don't have much choice, they're only going to a couple places so it's hurting small businesses. second, if you want to decentralize tech, if you want tech to start in ohio and other places you can't just have two or three big companies. you need to have strong antitrust enforcement. i think we will get it done in congress, senator klobuchar has a strong start on a bill and i certainly support strong antitrust legislation. >> i mean, two or three corporations that are buying up all potential competitors when they're still in the crib, it's terrible for innovation, it's

terrible for entrepreneurs, it's terrible for the free market. other thing, silicon valley responsible -- and this is just happened -- for the greatest wealth transfer in the history of this country from middle class americans to the richest of the rich, the accumulation of wealth among the .0001% extraordinary. they are not paying taxes for the most part, income taxes. why can't democrats fix that? why can't democrats in the house focus more on capital made by billionaires instead of income made by people who are actually working, small business owners that may be making 100, 20, $300,000 a year. >> they keep sending me back to congress and i keep saying tax the billionaires, take the

people making hundreds of thousands of dollars. >> why can't democrats do that. >> you have a democratic house, democratic senate, democratic president and the tax bills didn't do it, they lit well neris -- the democrats ways and means billet billionaires off the hook. >> you know, i agree with you. i think we ought to go with a billionaire tax. senator manchin and sinema were for that. i think we can get that in this new version of build back better. i'm proud of silicon valley, a lot of innovation, a lot that it's contributed to the nation and the world, but you can tax the people who have made extraordinary profits and invested in the rest of this country. >> jonathan lemire, i'm very proud of silicon valley, i mean, it's people from across the planet look at silicon valley, they want to come here, they want to be a part of it and that's fantastic. all i'm asking is that they pay as much in income taxes as the small business owner down the

street that may have a family restaurant. they're just not doing it. as far as percentages on income tax, they are not paying their fair share. >> they're certainly growing momentum at least rhetorically for that is correct the question is will it follow up with legislation. i wanted to ask you about your book "dignity in a digital age." tell us a little bit about why you wrote it and what are a couple of the key themes in here? i know one of them is the idea of decentralizing the economy as you and joe were starting to talk about. >> look, my district $11 trillion of market cap, 40% increase in the two years during the pandemic. it's more health has been created anyplace in history yet the new economy for many places in this country has been deindustrialization, loss of jobs, kids leaving their home towns. we ought to bring economic opportunity in the modern economy to places left out so people can prosper in their home towns. 25 million digital jobs in 2025, more than manufacturing, construction combined. we have to figure out a way of getting these in places like

ohio and the rest of the country. >> congressman, let's talk about another big theme in the book, that's misinformation that spreads like wildfire online, impacted the 2020 election, impacted january 6 where people gathered, impacted the aftermath of the election, people still believing that somehow donald trump won the election. he didn't of course. you kind of lay out a little bit of a roadmap at how to get at this problem which has frustrated lawmakers. you're talking to tech companies that aren't idea in putting profits to the side. how do you get at the problem of misinformation on social media? >> there has to be regulation and responsibility. on the regulation part, here is what we should agree on, facebook knew before january 6th that there were threats of assassinaion on their sites with specific days, specific times, specific people named and they sat on that information. they didn't share that. they didn't take that content down. how is that legal? we ought to make sure that they don't have the section 230 protection to have content that inn cites violence.

then in terms of social media ethics you don't sit here all morning and spew misinformation. why? it's not because you're going to get sued. it's not because you're fearful of repercussions it's because you have some ethics, some sort of responsibility. there isn't that yet in silicon valley on social media, they have to care as media companies. they need to accept that their media companies and they need to have some journalistic standards. >> how do you impose that on them? you're plugged into silicon valley, as you say, many of the leaders of those companies support you and send you back to washington. what do they say when you confront them with this? >> well, they give this absolute defense of the first amendment but here is what the first amendment doesn't protect, joe and i have talked about this before, instagram. the fact that you're selling a consumer product that is causing depression in teenagers don't tell me that's about the first amendment. the fact that you're allowing for misinformation on the climate or misinformation that is killing people because they are not taking a vaccine, that's not about the first amendment.

so, yes, you need to have a first amendment, but you also have to be responsible and consumer protection and basic requirements of not spreading this disinformation. and congress should regulate some of that. >> how do we know the companies are doing this? from their own internal documents we have read. they know and they continue to do it. an important conversation. it's all part of the book "dignity in a digital age: making tech work for us of us." congressman ro khanna. >> shoe. we will have the latest on the standoff in eastern europe. plus, potential good news for parents with kids under five years old. pfizer is expected to seek approval for its covid vaccine for that age. we will have that new reporting. and some new information about what you need to know before you file your taxes this year, mika. and a quick note before we get in a break. if you have woken up on "morning joe" for the past year or so you've probably heard us mention

our u.s., asia, europe, middle east and africa 50 over 50 lists with forbes and know your value. the response here and around the world has been remarkable and so that's why we are taking things a step further. next month with the forbes 30/50 summit in abu dhabi. from march 6 to march 9 we will be bringing together generations of the world eights most powerful women to mark international women's day. we will be sharing what we have in store in the coming weeks. it's lining up to be next, next level in terms of impact. the global event in partnership with forbes links 30 under 30 and 50 over 50, the lists, where we highlight the remarkable work of women, leaders in all stages of their careers. you can sign up now by visiting forbes.com to register. some high-powered women that i know are using this opportunity to send members of their teams. it's a great way to pay it forward and lift up other women. much more on all of this on my

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today secretary of state antony blinken is scheduled to speak with rufgts's foreign minister amid the fierce public face-off over ukraine. nbc news chief white house correspondent peter alexander reports. >> reporter: with russian forces by air and sea ramping up their training missions as the showdown over ukraine escalates, president biden says the u.s. remains committed to diplomacy but will respond forcefully if russia invades. >> with russia continuing its

buildup of its forces around ukraine we are ready no matter what happens. >> reporter: those tensions on full display monday during a meeting at the u.n. security council, a bitter diplomatic clash between the u.s. and russia, reminiscent of the cold war, with both sides blaming the other for the crisis. the u.s.'s u.n. ambassador condemning russian aggression as dangerous, a threat to ukraine and to europe. >> russia's actions strike at the very heart of the u.n. charter. this is as clear and consequential a threat to peace and security as anyone can imagine. >> reporter: russia's ambassador insists moscow has no plans to invade, accusing the u.s. and its allies of whipping up hysteria to try to weaken russia. >> translator: you are almost calling for this. you want it to happen, you're waiting for it to happen as if you want to make your words become a reality. >> reporter: still, despite its

protests russia is showing no signs of backing down and in ukraine u.s. military advisers are training local troops. the pressure is building here at home as well. a bipartisan group of senators could soon have a deal on stiff sanctions meant to deter vladimir putin from invading and severely punishing russia if it does. and the white house says it's now developed specific sanction packages to target russian elites who are in or near putin's inner circle if he proceeds. >> that was nbc's peter alexander reporting. coming up, it's a move millions of parents have been waiting for, a covid vaccine for kids under five. new details on when that could happen next on "morning joe." cd cd happen next on "morning joe. real cowboys get customized car insurance with liberty mutual, so we only pay for what we need. -hey tex, -wooo. can someone else get a turn? yeah, hang on, i'm about to break my own record.

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kids between six months and five years old are in the last age group eligible to do a two-dose covid vaccine, but as nbc news national correspondent gabe gutierrez reports, the wait could sooner over. >> reporter: a covid vaccine could be available for children under the age of 5 by the end of the month according to the "washington post," pfizer is expected to submit an emergency use authorization request to the fda as soon as today for its two-shot covid vaccine. this comes after the company added a third dose to its clinical trial, saying two doses did not provide a strong enough immune response for children between 6 months and 5 years old. >> previously we had data showing that the childhood vaccine for 6 months to 4 years wasn't as protective against infection as the adult vaccine. that's the reason why they pushed it out and asked for that third dose. >> reporter: in response to the report pfizer tells nbc news at this time we have not filed a

submission and we're continuing to collect and analyze data from both two and three doses in our younger aged cohort. kids between 5 and 11 are already eligible for pfizer's covid vaccine and just over a quarter have received one dose. while still high, new covid cases in children are declining, falling to about 800,000 new infections recorded last week, that's nearly a quarter of all reported cases in the u.s. >> we're still at a really high level of hospitalizations and daily deaths. there's going to be a rapid decline from that. we are rapidly approaching the definition of what an endemic respiratory disease looks like. >> reporter: mean while, new york city's mayor is reminding municipal employers, including police officers, they will be fired unless they're vaccinated by the end of next week. >> the worst thing i can do is to state that here is a rule that we are requiring of new yorkers and then change that. then what about all those other new yorkers that followed the rule? that's the problem. >> reporter: other cities are

changing their covid safety policies. starting today san francisco is loosening its mask rules, but only for people who are fully vaccinated and boosted. in denver masks won't be required inside businesses and indoor public spaces by the end of the week. >> denver will not be extending our public health order. >> that was nbc news national correspondent gabe gutierrez reporting. coming up, some important changes to note when it comes to how to pay your taxes. that is next on "morning joe." that is next on "morning joe." age is just a number. and mine's unlisted. try boost® high protein with 20 grams of protein for muscle health. versus 16 grams in ensure high protein. boost® high protein also has key nutrients for immune support. boost® high protein.

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details. >> reporter: when was the last time you used cash? >> now it's easy for customers to venmo your business. >> reporter: millions of americans use payment apps transferring am unto friends and family at garage sales, etsy, ebay and small businesses but suddenly the tax rules have changed. the irs used to require small business owners to report payment app income over $20,000 and 200 transactions annually. now for tax year 2022 they must report income over just $600 a year. brianna is a hairstylist in san diego, a lot of her customers pay with venmo. the new rules could complicate things. >> a big headache is a good way to categorize it. it just makes it another thing that i then have to do. >> reporter: jeff is a professional music teacher in akron, ohio. >> it's really just the convenience. everybody has got one of them,

venmo, paypal, zell. >> reporter: the first will send forms to anyone who earns at least $600 in payment app income, making it very tough to hide cash income. >> it's not just income tax, i mean, there's the additional self-employment tax that applies to these businesses and that's a big burden. >> reporter: if you use venmo this is important. the irs is not taxing your personal transfers. paypal and venmo say users can separate business from personal transactions with a simple button. zell says it's not subject to the law since it doesn't handle funds itself. the irs rule is meant for businesses large and small, and a small business can be really small. >> where do we draw the line? if you are a kid out of high school and you're mowing lawns over the summer and make more than 600 bucks would you have to have one of these forms?

>> potentially, yeah. keep good records. in that instance there's a good chance you may get a form, especially if you're using paypal or venmo. >> that was nbc's tom costello reporting. coming up, our next guest worked at facebook for a decade and says the company is woefully unprepared for this year's election. that conversation is next on "morning joe." conversation is n "morning joe."

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the company's leadership knows how to make facebook and instagram safer but won't make the necessary changes because they have put their astronomical profits before people. >> former facebook product manager frances howken testified before congress last october before exposing tens of thousands of the company's

internal documents. joining us is another former facebook employee withcriticism of the company. katie is a chief executive of anchor change, a company focused on issues at the intersection of tech and democracy. over the weekend she wrote a guest essay for "the new york times" entitled "i worked for facebook. it's not ready for this year's election wave. responsible plans cannot be spun up in days and weeks. facebook must begin serious, concerted, well-funded efforts today. facebook will need to car hiring at least 1,000 more full-time employees to be ready for the next big election cycle. if the company is cutting it close for 2022, it is just enough time to be really ready for 2024. facebook needs to continue to recognize the responsibility it has to protect elections around

the world and invest accordingly. governments, civil society, and the public should hold it accountable for doing so." if you could, katie, go deeper here in terms of what exactly you know about what they haven't done. and i take it this isn't just u.s. elections. you're worried about it being a global problem. >> it's absolutely a global problem. we have elections here in 2022 in the u.s. but in brazil, the philippines, france, hungary, and kenya. in 2024, there's going to be an unprecedented number of them with not just the u.s. presidential election but those in india, indonesia, ukraine, taiwan, mexico, the uk, and the european parliament. so to be ready for all of those elections, i don't have any insider knowledge anymore of how the company is prepare, but we also haven't heard them share anything. i think they should -- them and many other platforms should

share their publicly available roadmap of how they do plan to hire the right people with the language and cultural expertise needed to build the product to detect hate speech and election misinformation across their platforms. >> katie, what are the chances they'll build these guard rail where is we've read horror stories in the pass people trying to warn sheryl sandberg about elections in russia on facebook. shechastised them and said don't do it again. >> that's very disappointing and it's something that frustrates me about the direction the company is going in. and part of the reason i'm trying to raise awareness about all of these elections and these problems that we continue to have is not just that facebook wakes up to the responsibility that they have but many of the other platforms and media, government and civil society have to hold them accountable and to also get ready for the many, many challenges that we're

going to face to protect democracy across the world both online and offline. >> katie, good morning. you worked there for a decade at facebook. as a view from the inside, what more practically could facebook be doing to combat some of the misinformation and some of these challenges we saw to the 2020 election? they say, well, you know, we're a platform, not a publisher, getting into that whole debate. but from the inside, what could they be doing today that they're not doing? >> there's lot of great people that are doing, you know, research and looking at into all of these problems. and i think, a, putting a lot more resources into the integrity teams that are trying to build these products, and also putting a lot more attention again on what is happening around the world. there was an aun precedented number of tools that facebook put into place for the u.s. 2020 election such as putting labels on content where people might have been saying they didn't believe that the election was true or things around voter suppression and fact checking.

i think the big thing for me is hire the language and cultural expertise to build the products to detect this type of bad behavior and bad content that needs to be taken care of, because i have not seen them putting those types of resources into languages other than perhaps, you know, english and spanish. >> hey, katie. good morning. it's john. facebook has been home to misinformation about the pandemic, the vaccines, elections as well. but it's also sometimes been home to things more sinister, conspiracy groups, qanon, but oath keepers and proud boys have used facebook as a launching pad. how does the company fight that, groups that are trying to stay one step ahead of them? >> absolutely. this is where i think a combination, again, of human and technical expertise is needed. if you look at facebook's recent report of the takedowns they did in 2021, more of them were domestic than they were from overseas. this is kind of around the world. this is a phenomenon happening

in many different countries. and technology cannot necessarily detect quick changes in how bad actors are trying to circumvent the rules. this is where you need humans with the intelligence and being able to track some of these conversations to then be able to influence the technology to try and combat some of this bad behavior at scale. >> katie harbath, thank you very much for your insight. you can read her guest essay for "the new york times" online. we appreciate it. so, we started the show today with football and may as well end with football. the children of cincinnati will have something to cheer about no matter who wins the super bowl. that's because cincinnati public schools have canceled classes for the monday following the big game in order to give staff and students the day off to celebrate what they believe will be the city's first-ever super bowl victory. i like that. thinking positive. >> a good lesson to teach

children -- count your chickens before they hatch. >> they're going to be up late. >> as an atlanta falcons fan, i find you don't even count your chickens when they're halfway out of the egg because tom brady's going to put them back in. so, willie, you're our "new york post" correspondent. any good stories in "the post" today we should know about before we leave? did i not get your "new york post"? >> i got one. >> he's got one. >> nothing fun, i'll put it that way. but i agree with you, that's a complete jinx to me from the cincinnati public schools. the only people who can do something like that are the 1985 chicago bears who recorded a song called "the super bowl shuffle" in november of '85, accurately predicting their victory. i don't know what they think the kids are doing on super bowl night. either they need the day off or hitting the white claws. >> cincinnati men. heavy drinking going on with fourth graders.

jonathan, we have to go, but really quickly, looks like some trouble still with negotiating between the owners and the players in mlb. they need to put the difference on these things and play ball. >> they'll meet again today. it's encouraging they're meeting at all. some progress made last week but a long way to go. the clock is starting to tick. you can't lose regular-season games. there eads knob a sense of urgency. >> stephanie ruhle picks up the coverage right now. stephanie r coverage right now hi, there. i'm stephanie ruhle live at msnbc headquarters right here in new york city. it is tuesday, february 1st, the first day of black history month. we have a lot to get to this morning, so buckle up and let's get smarter. we have breaking news overnight. "the new york times" reveals just how far former president trump was willing to go to seize