mika? >> i'm so glad you have never done that, joe, ever on this show. >> have you? >> yeah, do you remember -- >> it is a long run. i don't remember anything. >> willie, it is best to just forget. jay carney, we blame it on jay carney. >> back in the '40s. >> yeah, it was a long time. he dropped the most blatant -- bomb and you didn't know you did it. >> it was the summer of love. >> no, it was jay carney. good morning and welcome to "morning joe." it is tuesday, february 15 it. we hope you all had a wonderful valentine's day. >> did you have a good valentine's day, mika? >> i did. >> good. >> with us former chairman of the republican national committee, michael steele is with us. msnbc and nbc national affairs analyst and executive editor of "the recount" john heilemann. nbc news investigations reporter tom winter.

a lot going on this morning. in a moment we will get to the potential development out of russia. russia's defense ministry saying this morning some of the troops gathered around ukraine were being loaded on to trains and trucks and sent back to their garrisons. we will talk about how reliable the assertions are and get full reporting on the situation there. >> willie, did you see the lavrov? >> yeah, the table is back. >> what did i tell you about lavrov? lavrov being lavrov, you take that to broadway. i'm there every night, on the front row. lavrov -- >> pitch that to ari. >> i'm going to pitch it. >> oh, my gosh. the depth and feel. >> it is great depth and feel. the president, he doesn't like covid but he is saying, tell me what happened, lavrov. lavrov said, we've had the americans calling us, we had the french coming, we're going to have the germans coming. >> uh-huh. >> he goes down a checklist and the great thing is, and this is

why i think lavrov can do a one-man show on broadway. this was all spontaneous. there just happened to be a camera there, making sure that every russian -- >> they won't last long. >> -- saw what happened. i loved it. >> it will be a limited run, lavrov. it will be savaged by the critics. >> oh, come on. no, he's great. >> has there ever been an american lavrov? who's the best american analogous to lavrov. >> historically or currently? >> i don't know. >> i know somebody in my family. >> well, sort of a dr. brzezinski type character, which explains why dr. brzezinski -- >> he would not like this. >> no, he would. he would give respect to lavrov and say he does a lot with a little. diplomats understand the skilled

diplomats and would recognize that. >> i think there is a one-act play to be made, it is like lavrov and brzezinski playing chess. >> my dad -- >> who wouldn't watch that? >> we will get to the situation in ukraine, which is not funny at all, in just a moment. first, former president trump -- >> well, they did have a fake -- it said they were going to be invaded yesterday. >> that was incredible. >> later they had to come out with a statement, willie, saying, he was being ironic. this is a problem when you have a comedian as your president because you say, hey, yes, we are going to be invaded by the russians tomorrow. a lot of you people are going to get ta-da, your house will be blown up, we will be slaughtered, and later they had to explain he is a comedian. he was being ironic. >> comedy is all in the timing and it was poor timing for a joke. >> kind of a springtime for hitler thing, isn't it?

>> by the way, markets plunged after he said that and he came out and said, no, no, i was being ironic, i was making a commentary on the western media which said the invasion is coming tomorrow, it is coming tomorrow. he said, it is not coming on wednesday, don't worry. >> you americans, as you say, cheek in tongue. >> perhaps going forward google translate is where it came from yesterday, is what we should not be relying on about a war between russia and ukraine. it was like one of those, this is where we are at right now. it should be a little bit more clear. >> then we would have known, that he said it, actually the beginning of it, hey, a duck, a dog and a chair. >> lavrov and brzezinski walk into a bar. >> exactly. >> oh, my gosh. >> are we getting to the news? >> to our top story of the morning, president trump's long-time accounting firm is cutting ties with him and the

trump organization, saying it can no longer stand behind a decades worth of financial statements from the trump's family business. according to a letter released by new york's attorney general, the accounting firm says documents from 2011 to 2020 should no longer be relied upon and advised the trump organization to inform anyone who had received the statements not to use them when assessing the financial health of the company or the former president. the statements are at the center of two high-profile investigations, a criminal probe by the manhattan district attorney and a civil investigation by new york attorney general letitia james. just last month james said investigators had uncovered evidence that the former president and his company used fraudulent or misleading valuations of its golf clubs, skyscrapers and other properties to get loans and tax benefits.

the trump organization responded in a statement yesterday saying it was disappointed that mazars had chosen to partways but also noted the firm hadn't found material discrepancies in trump's financial statements. >> tom, talk about this move. people that i called yesterday trying to figure out exactly what this meant said bad news for the trump organization. accounting firms hardly ever do this, let alone discount what's happened over the past ten years. said this was pretty extraordinary move. >> sure. so if mazars was digging through the files of the trump tower on fifth avenue and found $100 million worth of cash in the basement, i don't think they would be picking up the phone or typing up letters that said, you know, we have to restate your financial statements for the last ten years. this is not a good development. every single expert we have spoken with has said it is not something that is normal, it is highly unusual that they would send a letter like this and -- >> exactly.

what were they doing? why did they send this letter? >> they said that they, first of all, paid attention to what mika referenced which is the attorney general's filing in january and some of the filings that the attorney general says they've come up with in the course of their civil investigation. on top of that they said they had their internal investigation and received information from inside the company and outside the company that led to them making this decision. they said they have a non-waiveable conflict of interest with the trump organization which could be a potential problem saying no, the trump can't waive this here, this isn't a conflict of interest. they said the conflict of interest is on their side of things. as a result they made the statement. the letter was sent on february 9th and then provided to the attorney general and that's why we're able to see it today. >> they said they no longer can stand by the documents, does it mean they prepared fraudulent documents, they inflated or

deflated the price of properties, or does it mean someone further down the line doctored the documents and changed the numbers? >> it is the right question and probably too soon to say. accountants will tell you they're only as good as the information they're provided. so if they were provided with the wrong types of information, they were not provided with the underlying documentation or somebody instructed them to make material changes to it, those are all the types of things we will have to see what comes out in the course of these various investigations that you referenced. >> john, what's your take on it? >> well, the document that they released last night, if i read that document right, suggests that the accounting firm has already provided over 500,000 pieces of documentation. >> right. there's a bates number in the lower corner. >> which means there's 525,000 at minimum, which is a very large number. the second thing is that -- and this i'll ask you, tom. i saw some speculation from other legal experts last night that the conflict of interest could suggest that the accounting firm is now flipped

basically and is working -- is we're cooperating actively with the investigations, that's why they realized they were in trouble. they don't want to go for jail for donald trump or face huge -- face huge civil penalties and they're now all in on the civil and d.a.'s criminal procedures, investigations. >> it is certainly possible. it could signal, hey, our attorneys have looked at this and we might have an issue here where at some point we will have to say something that's adversarial to you, our now former client. it may not have gone that far just yet. we don't have any indication of that from the filings. known has told me specifically that's the case, but does the possibility exist? the possibility does exist. >> i know it is all just coming together. is there any -- everyone says this is quite big, this has a lot of significance, too. explain what that means. is there a precedence? is there an example of this happening before that would give insight to where it is leading? >> typically we see it in public

companies. when it happens to private companies it is usually not something involving a president of the united states and something that garners this type of attention. if it happens with a public company, if the trump organization was publicly traded the stock would be down 50%, 80% this morning because it is concerning to investors. that's not the particular case here. but i think when you look at this, the bigger impact might be for donald trump's wallet and the trump organizations future in that if there were material misrepresentations here there could be covenants in the loans the president has with various financial institutions where they could say, hey, look, we have a reason to call this loan in or we have a reason to perhaps adjust the interest rate that you are paying. this raises all sorts of issues according to financial experts that we have spoken with and my colleague gretchen morganson has spoken with, about where it goes for the future of the trump organization and outstanding loans. >> very hard if you are a company trying to service debt ordeal with loan covenants to have an accounting firm turn on

you in this way to ever hope to get financing again in the future. >> right. i'm trying to understand. >> i think short of an indictment, and so rare do accountants do this, short of an indictment it is one of the worst things that can happen. where it will go, who knows, but it is bad news. so the u.s. is closing its embassy in kyiv and moving staff out of the ukrainian capital. the white house says the window for a russian invasion into ukraine is open and could happen at any time. nbc news chief foreign correspondent richard engel has more. >> reporter: with diplomacy going nowhere, this is not a good sign. russian troops in belarus practicing urban combat. u.s. officials say this week is critical, declaring russia is now able to attack with little or no warning, so the u.s. is now moving its embassy personnel out of the capital to western ukraine, a move criticized by

ukraine's president dell ensky saying it showed weakness and zelensky was dismissive of u.s. intelligence saying russia could soon invade which he says causes panic. they tell us february 16th will be the day of the attack. we will make this a day of unity. his aides said he was referring to recent media reports. meanwhile uk's ambassador to ukraine is walking back comments that ukraine may forego its bid to join nato, a key russian demand. russia's foreign minister met the russian president at the end of yet another long table, telling him there's still room for diplomacy. putin, in a tight covid bubble, has met leaders at what seems like social distance plus. russia says it won't invade, but in ukraine some families are getting ready for war, training to handle an ak-46 is valentina,

a 79-year-old retired accountant and a great-grandmother. do you think you would actually be doing this? yes, if putin will come i should be able to shoot, she says. >> let's hope she doesn't have to go to the front lines. richard engel reporting there. there is developing news as we speak this morning when it comes to russian troop movements. russia's defense ministry says this morning some of the troops gathered around ukraine were being loaded on to trains and trucks and sent back to their garrisons. "the new york times" is framing it this way, ten take tour sign russia could be stepping away from the threat of invasion, that perhaps russia is deescalating the standoff. it comes hours after the associated press reported russian troop movements ramped up in the past 48 hours and the military is continuing with attack preparations along ukraine's border. satellite images taken over the past two days show increased

activity, including the arrival of helicopters, ground attack aircraft and fighter bomber jets at forward locations. joining us, forward chief of staff at the cia and department of defense, nbc news national security analyst jeremy bash. good morning, jeremy. that breaking report comes from state media about the roared pull back of troops. it conflicts with what a lot of people are seeing on the ground, what surveillance aircraft are showing as well. how do you square the two reports? >> i think it is way too soon, willie, to call this a deescalation. we don't have any information that russia is trying to deescalate. in fact, on the contrary. they've increased the number of their battalion tactical groups from about 83 to 105. they have 500 combat aircraft ready to go. they have 40 patrol boats and war ships in the black sea. they have the entire force postured for an invasion. if they wanted to deescalate, they would have to do something

much more significant than the signs we have seen in the last couple of hours. >> michael steele though, if you just listen to our reports this morning and read the papers, we are certainly giving vladimir putin exactly what he wants. he want to be talked about. he wanted to from 2016 forward. we are following reports where they're saying that he's -- the troops are being, you know, retreating or going back to their garrisons. other troops saying they're moving forward. it is a guessing game. one gets the sense that he and russia, they just want to stay relevant. they want to stay in the game. they want us talking about them every day. >> yeah, i think that's a big part of a lot of what we've seen at one end of it, but i also think this is putin trying to figure out, okay, just how far can i stretch the line here, how far can i go, what's going to be the west's response, particularly the united states, how easily will it be for the

united states government to galvanize nato. that's why you see and have seen over the past year or so trying to create those fissures, throwing up china in the face of washington, and that relationship. so i think you are right, joe. i think there's a multi-level approach by putin here. not saying he's some svengali in this stuff and there's brilliant strategy here. my sense at least, and from very smart people in the know on this, that he's trying to figure out, okay, where are the new lines going to be. he wants to have a hand in pushing where those lines will ultimately end up. i think at the end, i just think it will be harder for him to make a full frontal approach into ukraine the way this may have started out, because you have seen the west galvanized, you have seen a greater unity of purpose and focus by the biden administration to make very clear this is where the line is.

>> and jim heilman, there's no doubt he basically thought he walked into crimea, the united states at first didn't provide defensive weapons. he probably thought it would be a repeat. misread some things biden did in afghanistan. where we're sitting in february is far different than where he thought we would be in december. you have nato shoulder to shoulder. we talked a bit about the germans being off the reservation. not really. the germans are actually now shoulder-to-shoulder with us and, in fact, will be delivering a message to putin that an invasion leads to really tough sanctions for him. >> yeah, and i think, you know, it is one of those things where i mean obviously the circumstances are wildly different, but, you know, the course of human events, like things have knock-on effects, right.

one of the things that you saw here, i don't want to say that the politics are driving this, but the combination of the history which biden's intimately familiar with what happened in crimea, the administration could not be doing anything more different than the administration did in 2014. they're like we're going to do something very different. we have learned those lessons and we're going to try to apply them, and they're in a situation where they recognize the stakes here. not just the stakes on the global stage, which are huge, but also the political stakes and the notion that -- biden does not believe what he did in afghanistan was weak, but he also knows there was a perception and certainly one pursued by political opponents to cast it as weak. i think in this moment the stakes for a perception of resolution, pulling together the allies in this way, taken a different path, they've risen to they. they may not succeed. we don't know what is going to happen, but i think you can see how putin would have misread the situation and how in a predictable way the biden administration saw a way to take the misreading and use it to their advantage in the way they kind of have so far. >> and in a way, willie,

afghanistan worked against putin, worked against russia in this respect. if the people that were doing intel for russia followed joe biden closely enough they would have known he was going to withdraw from afghanistan, and you could go back and see statements starting in 2009. he was out. so to say, wait a second, he is backing out of afghanistan because he is weak is a fundamental misreading of it. the political blowback in america actually made it even less likely that biden could afford to be seen as weak again. >> right. >> so biden has actually had to appear more muscular, have a more muscular response against russia, stand shoulder to shoulder again with nato allies against russia, even more so than if afghanistan hadn't have happened. >> yeah, that's interesting. afghanistan is unique unto itself and, as you say, a campaign promise from joe biden he was going to get out of that country.

>> right. >> jeremy bash, as you listen to the ukrainian president, you listen to ukrainian diplomats they will say privately they believe putin is bluffing, even president zelensky saying western media and the west has overstated the likelihood and stepped up the rhetoric too far, and yet the west continues behind president biden to threaten sanctions, there are troops moving into eastern europe. so obviously the united states and the west is taking this very seriously. you are extraordinarily plugged in. what is your sense of where putin is right now and whether this may be a bluff or whether he may actually go across the border? >> well, i think he is putting in place all of the mechanisms to invade, but i don't think he's going to make that decision until the 11th hour. i think he is going to assess the tactical situation. i have to give the biden administration a lot of credit, as we've been discussing because there's a military adage that the most decisive stage in war is phase zero. that's what we're in right now, the stage before the shooting

starts. that's an information warfare campaign. i think the biden administration has done a phenomenal job of declassifying information, calling putin's bluff, saying any predicate he might concoct to invade is fabricated. in that way they maintained alliance unity, deterred putin, allowed us to close our embassy, move 5,000 troops to poland and send a clear signal if putin invades the west will be ready. i think the biden administration has handled this stage, stage zero, absolutely perfectly. >> jeremy bash and tom winter, stay with us because we will dig into the story that donald trump and his allies are claiming is bigger than watergate. >> bigger than watergate. lots of luck with that. >> we'll talk about the facts behind this story. >> by the way, there's so many things wrong on this cover, it is going to be -- it is going to be an interesting few weeks ahead. >> i hope you didn't watch fox news at all last night. >> oh, no. no, no, no, i actually spent

yesterday -- >> it is just the most -- >> i spent yesterday reading through this stuff, reading through durham's indictment seriously, i don't know -- >> for hours. >> -- who wrote that because it was gobbledy-gook. you were wait a second, did it happen during the trump administration, the spying on the -- then you had editorials saying hillary should be hung at high noon. of course, they didn't charge her with anything or suggest she did anything wrong or we don't really know when this happened, and you sit there going, wait a second, it really is the biggest cluster. >> okay. now we've started this way. >> it is going to be very interesting to see what durham does next because it is -- well, we will have -- >> alex says next block.

>> next block. >> alex says next block, much to say about this matter. >> it is really the coverage of this -- >> the word you are looking for this is fuster cluck. >> thank you for saying that. >> oh, my. also republicans attacked hillary clinton nonstop for her handling of government records, but it has been all quiet when it comes to donald trump. >> i saw marco yesterday. >> yes. >> i don't know if it is true because they lie about him so much. >> yeah, marco rubio, the senator. >> when you are like, wait a minute, actually you've got the documents being taken out of mar-a-lago, marco, your state. >> he is down playing the reports that the former president had documents at mar-a-lago. we will show you the new comments. >> we will be right back. . >> he was so bad. comments >> we will be right back >> he was so bad >> he was so ba. d

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28 past the hour. now to the latest court filing from john durham, the special counsel appointed under the trump administration to investigate the origins of the fbi probe into russian interference in the 2016 election. prosecutors accuse a tech executive first identified by "the new york times" as rodney jaffe of using his access to white house computers to, quote, gather derogatory information about donald trump. the tech executive's company was maintaining servers in the executive office of the president at the time. the filing does not allege that the content of any communication was compromised or read, but that information was compiled about computers and servers the white house was communicating with. prosecutors say the tech

executive gave some of the data collected to a lawyer who advised the clinton campaign. that lawyer then gave the data to an unnamed federal agency claiming it, quote, demonstrated that trump and/or his associates were using supposedly rare russian-made wireless phones in the vicinity of the white house and other locations. that attorney is michael sussman. he was indicted last year for making false statements to the fbi about his relationship with the clinton campaign. sussman's attorney said the indictment was based on politics, not facts. this latest filing about the tech executive exploiting access to the white house server is part of the case against sussman. a spokesman for the tech expert released a statement saying that claims in part quote me joffe as

an apolitical internet security expert with decades of service to the u.s. government. he has not been charged. the durham investigation is ongoing. >> all right. let's bring in tom, i want you to set this up real quickly. first of all this joffe guy, who is seen as a key player in this field and has been for a long time, this tech executive that is mentioned, is he charged with anything? >> has not been charged with anything. >> has not been charged with anything. okay. you read the "new york post", you read editorials, the breathless -- the breathless coverage yesterday, the op-ed in the "wall street journal", i mean a lot of charges flying around. has durham suggested, has he charged hillary clinton or the clinton campaign with, quote,

spying? >> quite the opposite, joe. one of the things that's contained in that court filing that mika was just reading from, there is no mention at all that sussman when he presented information to a second u.s. agency in february of 2017, which we know to be the cia, that when he presented that information he was not being paid by the clinton campaign anymore. there was no, according to his lawyers in a filing made last night, there was no clinton campaign anymore. >> so you look at the "new york post", which as everybody knows is my favorite publication on the face of the earth for the stuff, the swill that we read every day from it for fun. but they said, quote, paid for. they had something else. people are desperately trying to connect hillary clinton with this lawyer, giving him money saying, go, spy on donald trump. that never happened. he wasn't being paid, like you said, in 2017 when he went

there. if you look at other people that have dug into this, even the single charge -- i'm sorry. i should ask you, how many charges? >> there's one charge. >> and they're saying he lied to an fbi agent. >> nobody is objecting here. >> this is what is frustrating me for so much because they've been reading into this for two days because they assume there has to be something here. even that single charge of supposedly lying to the fbi is so weak. >> the attorneys for sussman really attacked that last night and said, in fact, it wasn't until two months after sussman was charged that they say special counsel durham's team went and spoke to the clinton campaign to figure out if the things they allege were even true. >> so they charge and then go get the facts, and the charge is based on a scrap of paper that he said, oh, he wasn't working for anybody. >> it was a 27-page indictment covering one specific count.

i think when you look at the totality of this, you know, time will tell whether or not payments were made and what those payments were for and whether or not it had to do with research into alfa bank, which is something that most news organizations didn't even touch. you will never find a story with my name on, pete williams' name on it, i will throw the whole kitchen sink of reporters in here on the alfa bank allegations. >> you know why? because it is so confounding and so hard to follow, which is kind of interesting, john heilemann. this pleading, which is indecipherable unless you have an agenda and you want to shoot first and ask questions later, which is what they did legally. this is confusing as the initial story. i remember when the initial story came out and i read through it an i was like, what? everybody did. that's why nobody paid attention to it the first time because it was so convoluted looking about dns lookups. >> let's pause for a second and, tom, i'll ask you.

i know the answer already, but one of the things about this is there's this willful or either incredibly stupid or willful misconstruing of what this is all about. >> can i just say, willfully stupid, a lot of people being willfully stupid. >> or misconstrued. on fox news have tucker carlson and others saying they're intercepting internet traffic. >> no, who could be that stupid? i ask you, who could be that stupid to actually say that on their television show. >> you don't want me to make a list, do you? >> a lot of people did. >> most of the fox -- >> or else they know -- they know that they're lying to their audience, that they're liars and they're deliberately lying about that. >> yes, lying liars who lie. i would say this is most of what right-wing media is doing and this is why i want to focus on it. the dns data lookups are not

substantive things, they're not reading e-mails, to extent anything was going on has nothing to do with what we think of as communications. >> people had the analogy it was the next watergate. watergate involved people breaking in trying to go through filing cabinets. when you look at the analogy here, if you want to call it watergate it is that the security guard while being paid to do security, observing who was coming in and that person was then paid to send the information to somebody else. it doesn't mean they were asking what they were there for, it doesn't mean they were going through their briefcases, it doesn't mean they were going through the files they were bringing in. that's the correct analogy if you are going to use the watergate analogy that has been thrown around so often about it. if you are doing dns lookup it is not possible to dig into the heart of the communications. nobody in this particular instance according to durham's own words it is not possible for somebody to have been reviewing the communications. >> these are non-private -- this

data traffic that travels on the internet that's non-private, that -- there's a giant industry that does dns data mining. >> huge industry, it is enormous. >> does it all the time. it has nothing to do with hacking into people's computers and looking through their computers. nothing to do with that. >> if there were hacking here somebody should be going into the jail, if someone intruded into the white house. >> what the russians did to hillary clinton for instance. >> i want to be clear on you all going back and forth and what you are talking about. if what they did had been illegal we would have had a charge. >> correct. >> there's not been a charge against joffe. there's not been a charge against hillary clinton's campaign. there's not been a charge against anybody except this lawyer sussman on such an extraordinary weak charge that, again, most legal observers down the middle are saying there's no way they're ever going to convict him on this. >> it is going to be difficult because when you talk about lies

to the fbi, you have to -- you have to prove that they were material lies, that there was an intent there. i think that's going to be something that, you know, time will -- time will bear whether or not that comes to fruition. >> because -- yeah. >> so trump and his allies said the filing was proof that trump was under surveillance while he was in office. >> he originally claimed obama did that. >> i know. i remember. >> that was the initial tweet. >> for example this headline from fox news claims, clinton campaign paid to, quote, ill filtrate trump tower, white house servers citing john durham, but the word infiltrate doesn't appear anywhere in the durham filing. >> it does not. >> watch this exchange on fox news during an interview with trump's former director of national intelligence, john ratcliffe. >> help me understand this. the word infiltrate has been used. i am assuming that -- is that another word for hacking a computer when you are trying to infiltrate a server? define that. >> no, i think based on the

allegations a tech executive and tech company used what was originally lawful access into government servers, but to gain information and to use it for an unlawful purpose. >> again, the special counsel durham makes no charge of illegal wire tapping here. first, as we mentioned the word infiltrate does not appear in the durham court filing. ratcliffe admits the tech executive had lawful access to the data. lastly, he claims the data was used for unlawful purposes but the fbi was being alerted to possible conflicts between trump and russia at a time donald trump was saying this. >> russia, if you are listening, i hope you are able to find the 30,000 e-mails that are missing. i think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press. >> july of 2016 there. so, tom, let me take one step further backwards and that is to

ask what is going on with this investigation, the special counsel investigation of don durham. may of 2019 it began, millions of dollars of taxpayer money. why is this taking much longer than the mueller investigation itself? >> it is the ultimate question and it is taking longer than the mueller investigation. we used to receive regular reports from the special counsel's office when it was headed by robert mueller as far as expenditures. you know, we even had office space information, computer information, how much they were spending on that. we haven't seen that level of transparency and clarity here on this investigation, so it is a little bit difficult to figure out what is next. it is clear they're going after this idea whether or not the investigation into donald trump and whether or not he had any sort of communications or contacts or coordination with russia, they're looking into whether that investigation was properly predicated in the first place. before you kind of open an investigation you need to have some underlying facts there. that's something they're looking

into but it is not happening in real-time. it is not like the boston marathon bombing where there are incidents involving real-time that you are trying to catch up on, get ahead of from an investigative standpoint. all is historical at this point. you might need to do additional interviews, but to your point it has been approaching three years now. >> but, jeremy bash, again, the investigation into the investigators is taking longer than the investigation. and if they were moving at a rapid clip that would be one thing, but we're going months without really hearing much of anything. and when we get something it is -- it is this jumbled -- this jumbled pleading from durham. the question is how much longer does merrick garland allow this to go on without demanding some sort of transparency to let us know what is going on? like, again, even this pleading,

you know, they should come out and explain the pleading because you've got people saying, well, wait a second, did this happen during the obama administration, did it happen during the trump administration. it is like he actually just threw words out there to allow people to draw the worst conclusions from them when he could -- he could very easily clarify this this afternoon. >> yeah, i'm with you, joe. on the face of the pleading, i read it too, it makes no sense. hillary clinton's campaign was over when donald trump was inaugurated president, so how could she have had her campaign spying on him while he's president? it makes no sense. not to mention the fact dns data is public, that looking into that, doing opposition research by doing public data mining is not anything other than opposition research. by the way, what was the predicate for the investigation into donald trump? maybe it had to do with the fact that trump while he was a presidential candidate had his people in moscow begging putin

to build trump tower moscow. maybe it had to do with the fact a trump tower meeting occurred with the russian delegation asking for dirt on hillary clinton. may it hard to do with the fact a russia oligarch employed paul manafort to have him doing lobbying. what did trump do? he not only benefited but rewarded it. >> tom winter, if you want to go back to see how dangerous the so-called russian hoax was, you don't have to listen to msnbc primetime hosts. you don't have to read "the new york times" editorial page. just read the republican senate intel committee report. >> that's a very good point. >> when marco rubio was running that committee, talking about the danger to america's national security that donald trump's contacts, his campaign's contacts with russia posed. >> and they actually advanced mueller's report understanding of that.

>> right! >> they brought new information before. you mentioned something interesting about merrick garland. one of the things that happened towards the end of the trump presidency is when bill barr was attorney general, he made him a special counsel. that means that merrick garland if he can upset today, if he is angry about this it doesn't matter because john durham is there. he is special counsel. it is really not a position, and i know some people will say, tom, there are various ways that he could be removed, but for all intents and purposes he's a special counsel. he's there and he does not necessarily have to report or do anything for merrick garland and he doesn't necessarily have any control over him. >> so everybody stand by. this is complicated. it is important to get it right. we have a journalist who has been following this, also a cyber and homeland security expert at the same time. so we will talk to her when we come back. stay with us on "morning joe." come back. stay with us on "morning joe."

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♪♪ 48 past the hour. a live look at the white house as the sun comes up over washington. let's bring in independent journalist marcie wheeler. she's a former senior fellow at george washington university, center for cyber and homeland security, and perhaps she can shed some light on this hillary so-called scandal. >> ms. wheeler, what is so fascinating about your work is you were extremely skeptical of the original story when it came out in 2016, and you were telling everybody at the time this is bogus, this is nonsense, nothing to see here. so you've already hit that side. but now tell us about this

durham filing because you have been quite critical of durham as well. >> well, tom mentioned the filing from sussman overnight, and one of the things he revealed in that which i have heard from other people is this claim that rodney joffe was accessing data from the white house. all of that data precedes trump's inauguration. so you have trump out there calling for these people to be put to death when really what happened is rodney joffe was trying to keep barack obama safe from hackers. that's all it is. that's why trump wants these people killed. durham knows that. durham knows that this data precedes crumb. he didn't include it in the filing so he has everyone worked up on fox news. john ratcliffe, you showed him earlier. cash patel is the source of many of these false claims. they were both witnesses to john durham and cash patel has known

about this allegation going back to december of 2017 because he's the one who asked michael sussman about it. michael sussman was honest about it back in december 2017 and cash patel when he was homeland -- the intelligence committee staffer, when he was working in the white house, when he was the chief of staff for dod, he did nothing about this because he knew that all rodney joffe was doing was trying to keep the white house safe from hackers. that's what this is about. >> john heilemann. >> well, i'm just curious, mary. where do you think -- to the extent you can kind of discern, a, what the motivations are of some of these players, of durham, for instance, and where does this go from here in the aftermath of this pseudo scandal that we are seeing? >> well, the durham investigation is in real trouble. one of the things that -- and tom mentioned this briefly, but one of the things that sussman revealed overnight is that durham didn't interview -- like

one of the allegations in the indictment is that sussman was coordinating with the hillary campaign on these alfa bank allegations back in october. sussman was like, name the people. in october durham said i don't have any people. in november he first interviewed a hillary staffer. he hadn't actually investigated this. we also learned recently that even though durham and bill barr flew to italy to get the phones from joseph masoud, if you remember, is that italian who was talking to george papadopolous. he never walked across doj to get the phones from james baker, who is the single witness to this conversation with michael sussman. he didn't find out that doj ig had two of the phones until january. then after he revealed that he had these phones but he should have looked four years ago. he then had to disclose that he

had been told about one of the phones back in 2018 but he didn't remember it anymore. that's not the only thing that durham didn't do before charges sussman. he didn't investigate how "the new york times" killed a story that was going to come out before the election which is what sussman did, which counters what durham said he was working on. he didn't investigate that until after he charged sussman either. so sussman on friday probably is going to submit a motion to dismiss this entire indictment, and probably what last friday's stunt was about for durham was an attempt to preempt that, an attempt to pretend that this investigation isn't kind of post-hoc a discovery of things. for example, he didn't investigate what the fbi's relationship is with rodney joffe before he charged michael sussman. he only pulled the

communications when sussman said, why don't you find out what kind of relationship the fbi has with joffe. he discovered there were thousands of communications. so durham is very close to position where sussman is going to have the opportunity to say, you didn't do an investigation before you charged me. a week before he probably is going to have to do that this stunt comes out and you have all of these people who were witnesses, who fed these conspiracy theories to durham on the front end. >> wow. >> who then go on fox news and make false claims about it. that's what the story is, cash patel garbage in, cash patel garbage out and trump threatening to kill people as a result. >> wow. that super it up, marcie. >> thank you, marcie. we appreciate it. >> you know the right is feasting on this. >> i think it is fascinating. then again, michael steele, let's follow up on what she said. you have trumpists and donald

trump calling for the execution of people. he said in tougher times people would be executed for this. you have marco rubio going on last night saying that trump's white house was spied upon when, in fact, it appears if you look at the pleadings that this all happened during the obama administration and they were checking the traffic because, because there were republicans and democrats who were deeply disturbed by what donald trump was saying during the presidential campaign. they were leading up to an election and they were very concerned. >> yeah. you know, the thing that struck me in sort of listening to the last two segments, it just -- it just reminds me of just how many times we get caught in the donald trump stupid trap and how many times, you know, you watch this process unfold, joe, in

which donald trump and his ilk are out there massaging, trying to maneuver the messaging around because, as we have already indicated and as marcie clearly laid out, the facts don't line up. it is not there. you are having a post-hoc discovery of something that actually on its face makes no sense. it hasn't made any sense since 2016. why the heck do we think it is going to make sense now? you have durham out here who is in the position and just put it on the street, when he was put initially into the role, what was the purpose of it? it was to create a set of facts to meet a narrative donald trump wanted executed. so as the system grinds to a halt yet again because of the crazy world of trump colliding with real life, we are sitting here looking at and reading pleadings in which anyone who

has a scintilla of brain power left in their head recognizes this makes no sense. this is grist for the mill for fox news to further gum up the works, to create a whole lot of noise about nothing. at the end of the day like benghazi, after all of the noise and all of their sabre rattling comes to what, right? the reality of it is that we can persist in this game or we can call it crazy, let the judicial system, the justice system play itself out in which they put a stamp on it and go "nothing here" and let's move on. i think what they're trying to preempt is that end, joe. they don't want that end because they know what happens after that? nothing. >> yeah, you know, in benghazi, of course, willie, they politicized the death of four americans. >> yes. >> and with benghazi there was the death of four americans. here you are going to have an

investigation that -- into an investigation that lasts longer than an investigation, and i would be shocked, shocked if there is one criminal conviction in this entire thing. but there will be a lot of headlines. >> oh, yeah. >> and there are a lot of people making assumptions that are going to look really foolish months from now but they don't care because they're just gaslighting and they will just continue. >> and it is an effort to change the subject from the investigation into january 6th. that's another element of the story. tom winter, over the last 30 minutes or so we've heard a lot. we've met some new characters, some new names probably for our audience. we talked about the arcane details of dnl lookups. let's try to crystallize it a little bit for the audience here, who has heard a lot. what is the important takeaway from the filing and what happens from here? >> the important takeaway from the filing is there were people monitoring traffic in and out of the white house but not able to see their actual communications, not able to look inside what it was. it is very standard information. it is available publicly.

there are a number of groups that do this and that that information was passed along by an attorney according to both the attorney and special counsel john durham at one point to the cia but that hasn't been charged. nobody has been charged with hacking. nobody has been charged with some sort of cyber intrusion into the white house. as far as where this goes next you have already seen an effort by the attorney, by attorneys for the attorney who has been charged here, michael sussman, for him to dismiss all of the factual details that were included in this filing that we are talking about here. i think we are going to have to watch going forward if there's any sort of additional information that comes into this case by way of filings not included in an indictment. why might that be the case? that is something that we typically report on so we will have to follow that. lastly, i think we will have to see when the investigation wraps up. as you said, it has lasted longer than special counsel mueller's case. >> tom winter and jeremy bash,

thank you both for being on this rng. coming up we are taking a look at the new bipartisan effort to fight crime in the state of georgia. plus, two stories to come out of the super bowl after the game. one player for the rams had more than just a championship ring on his mind after the game. another was running for the exits while the confetti was still falling on the field. we will explain next on "morning joe." we are back in two minutes. we are back in two minutes men put their skin through a lot. day-in, day-out that's why dove men body wash has skin-strengthening nutrients and moisturizers that help rebuild your skin. dove men+care. smoother, healthier skin with every shower.

i'm going to ask i think coach to come up first, and we'll take a couple of pictures and then you can hear from coach. you want to hold it? >> okay. >> it is yours now. yours now

>> it is an incredible honor to be here. it is also tortuous to have a team win a championship and make you come the next morning to do a press conference this early. >> i know how you feel. rams' head coach sean mcvay posing with the lombardi trophy along nfl commissioner roger goodell, before describing yesterday's early news conference as torture the morning after the 36 year old became the youngest head coach in the modern era to lead his team to a super bowl title. >> so, willie, it is exciting. i mean it was a pretty good super bowl. >> yeah. >> it was a game. >> yeah, it was a pretty good game. >> a lot of people were watching it because the lead-up was so great in the playoffs. i'm just wondering, not the best super bowl ever and maybe not even the two best teams in the super bowl. >> i think we were spoiled by the playoffs. any super bowl that comes down to the last drive, that's fun. it is a good game, but it wasn't a classic. but it was down to the last drive. the amazing thing in that game

was how well the bengals' offensive line held up to the great rams' defense for the first two-and-a-half quarters and completely dissolved in the third and fourth quarters and led for joe burrow running for his life most of the game. >> have to be happy for matt stafford, spent all of the years in detroit. he said part of this title goes back to michigan so you have to be happy for him, and you have to know that joe burrow and the young bengals likely will be back for more given how young their roster is. >> yeah. go to be happy for matt stafford county toiling in detroit year after year after year with no chance of getting some far. >> there were some other -- >> he came through. >> and for l.a. a perpetually -- >> no, boo. >> what kind of city. >> no. >> you know, we hardly ever have any sports success out in l.a. the tiny -- >> stop it. >> you know, seriously. >> payrolls and all. >> i like the fun stuff that

happened after the games. >> more bengals fans than rams fans. >> hey, we don't have a big football tradition in l.a. it is not been there long. it is not like lambeau. sorry. >> listen. this is cute. rams' starting safety taylor rapp had more than just a super bowl ring in mind on sunday. after the championship victory rapp took the opportunity to propose to his long-time girlfriend on the field. >> what is she going to say? he just won the super bowl. >> as they celebrated with their families. she said yes. meanwhile, wide receiver, ben jefferson, these guys are busy. he didn't stop running after sunday's win. he was hustling out of sofi stadium. >> where was he going, mika? >> on the way to the hospital because his wife was in labor with their second time. she left mid game, didn't tell him, which he was against, and he posted a picture later in the night holding his newborn son on instagram live. >> how do you feel about babies?

>> i love babies! i'm always holding them. i love them, and i love this story and i love how committed he was when he ran out. also, his wife is amazing because she kind of -- he wanted her to tell him. >> yeah. >> and she just went off. >> didn't want to be distracted during the game. >> you focus on the game, i'll focus on me. you do you, i'll do me. >> any final thoughts about the super bowl, john lamire? >> not a classic. there was a stretch where it was straight three and outs and there were some turnovers and neither team could run the ball at all. i agrees, it was not the two best teams. the bills a few weeks ago was probably the pinnacle of the post-season. it was good playoffs. the game threatened to be overshadowed by the brian flores

lawsuit, aaron rodgers winning mvp. i still feel bad for the bengals, a franchise that's never won a super bowl. they're 0 and 3 and they take their spot on the list with the lions, vikings and bills, other torture franchises that have never won. >> but wait, the commercial. >> i loved it. i'm sure you did, too. top five for me. >> yeah, top five. >> prince, youtube. >> yeah. >> gaga. >> prince is definitely number one, i'll give you that. >> do we agree, prince, number one? >> prince is the greatest. >> i thinkgaga a few years ago -- >> oh, that was amazing. >> it was incredible when she jumped off the -- >> what the heck? >> don't forget michael jackson, 1983, was an incredible performance. a long time ago, but --. >> '83, was that '83? >> '93. >> i was going to say. >> '93. >> we're going to show. >> we're not finished mika.

>> we're not? >> he wants to talk about the halftime show this year. he thinks it may have been the best. you think prince is the best? >> i think prince is clearly the g.o.a.t., no doubt about that. definitely top five. u2s in 2002, the emotional impact of that was was overwhelming. gaga. a lot of people think beyoncé was super strong in that kind of category but i think it is in the top five. i put it closer to one than five, the one this year. >> prince was so extraordinary, i just have to say -- >> in the rain. >> -- because of the time, because of the mood, because of the setting, because when the name started rolling down, u2 right after 9/11 was, you know, very few things just make you start tearing up at halftime. >> didn't he open his jacket with the american flag inside? >> and it was the most secured event that had ever happened. this was just four months after 9/11. it was like a fortress and there

was real concerns that super bowl was going to be a target. >> yeah. >> it was the period of uncertainty after 9/11. >> in new orleans. >> yeah, in new orleans. the bottom of the flag in his jacket and the names coming down and the bright lights. that's tough to top. >> that was unbelievable. >> although prince in the rain. >> also, who has the guts aspirins did in that performance to go out and do mostly covers? he did most of his own songs. >> prince, yeah. and also again lady gaga. you just sat there going -- >> extraordinary. >> he's incredible. >> -- you know what? she has no boundaries. this is like incredible. what an artist. >> that's how you rise to a moment. >> yes. >> you talk about you have the stage, what are you going to do with it? >> you take risks. >> this part of the show, i'm going to actually -- you are going to rappel me down from the top of the stadium and i will come down singing. >> and there was great story how she caught the pass and how they replaced that. they got a quarterback, i think

a backup quarterback from baylor or something. said, you need to go up on a secret mission. he is going up, loosening up his arm, and they go when lady gaga walks up, you need to teach her how to pass. >> that's wonderful. a member of the "morning joe" staff actually starred in a super bowl commercial. can you believe this? seriously. very late start to news this hour. the u.s. is closing its embassy in ukraine capital in kyiv. this morning it is moving operations to the west of the country near the polish border in the did of lviv. secretary of state antony blinken says it is temporary to protect embassy staff. meanwhile, moscow is signaling it is ready to continue talking with the west about security grievances that led to the current crisis. in a stage-managed televised session yesterday russia's foreign minister suggested to

president vladimir putin that the kremlin should hold talks with the u.s. and its allies saying possibilities for talks are far from being exhausted. the white house says the path for diplomacy remains available if russia chooses to engage constructively. this as the ukrainian diplomat appeared to offer the possibility of not joining the nato alliance. this is one of moscow's key security demand. but later backtracked, and ukrainian officials are down playing threats of an invasion. ukrainian president zelensky declared wednesday a day of unity as he addressed reports that a russian invasion of ukraine could begin that day. he called on his people to fly flags and sing the national anthem. >> oh, yeah, and there's the developing news right now that russia may be pulling back. >> they might be pulling back. we are hearing this from russia's defense ministry, that some of the gathered troops were

being loaded on to trains and trucks and sent back to garrisons. we will be looking at that. jonathan lemire, you say it should be taken with a dose of skepticism for obvious reason. >> there are a few things at play and i have been talking to administration officials in the last hour or two as it has been going on. there are encouraging signs. some troops are moving back, they believe that to be the case, though it should be noted they're the troops that were already stationed closest to the ukrainian border. they're not going far and it wouldn't be hard for them to go back if they wanted to move them back into a more aggressive posture. the troops that came from across russia 11 time zones away are still there. none of them have moved. they're still a massive portion of battalions there, helicopters and other equipment that are still there. another positive sign is that the ukrainian defense minister said he will be in belarus observing drills the next couple of days which is a good sign

because the thought the u.s. has warned an invasion could come at any minute, it probably would come from belarus. therefore if the president is there it is perhaps not as close as we thought. the administration officials are saying is this potential misdirection, russian state media has given false information before, not just about the situation in ukraine but in syria in terms of troops moving or not. they said, look, there are still plenty of troops there. there's still a chance it could turn in a moment's notice. they're not relaxing at all yet. >> what was the reaction to lavrov and putin yesterday? did they see it as a positive development? >> they did. they acknowledged it could just be theater. they know it would not be the first time the russians have done propaganda like this to try to change direction, to try to catch their opponents off guard. >> right. >> but they did view it as a positive development, certainly considering that on 48 hours ago the message from the white house

was an invasion could come at any minute. the fact that there is just more time here, more delay is a step in the right direction. in fact, there is still an avenue for diplomacy. >> all right. the judge in sarah palin's libel suit against "the new york times" told lawyers yesterday he will likely dismiss the case, saying her attorneys had not met the high burden of proving actual malice on the part of the paper when printing an inaccurate 2017 editorial. district court judge jed rinkoff allowed the jury to continue to deliberate saying because the decision is likely to be appealed he wanted future courts to have both his decision and the jury's to consider. however, he did not spare "the times" criticism for the error that prompted the suit, a collection of phrases within a larger essay that inaccurately suggested a link of incitement

between the crosshairs that palin's political action committee imprinted on a congressional map and a 2011 mass shooting in tucson. willie. >> again, the standard for libel and malice that you have to prove is very high here. meanwhile, trudeau is invoking rare emergency powers. facebook now says fake accounts are adding fuel to misinformation around those protests. nbc news national correspondent gabe gutierrez has more. >> freedom! >> reporter: so-called freedom convoys protesting covid restrictions have been bubbling for weeks, but now police in western canada have arrested 11 people and seized guns, body armor and a large quantity of ammunition at a border blockade. canadian prime minister justin trudeau invoked rarely used emergency powers. >> these blockades are illegal,

and if you are still participating the time to go home is now. >> reporter: over the weekend the ambassador bridge connecting detroit and windsor reopened after protesters had blocked it, clogging the supply chain for u.s. automakers. but similar demonstrations started popping up around the world from new zealand to france to israel. in the u.s. they're being embraced by some conservative politicians. >> i hope the truckers do come to america. i hope they clog up city. >> reporter: but disinformation is flourishing. facebook officials tell nbc news some of the groups that have promoted american trucker convoys are run by fake accounts tied to e-mails in vietnam, bangladesh and romania. researchers are warning many anti-vaccine and conspiracy communities in the u.s. are pivoting to promote disruptive convoys. >> these groups are using these trucker convoys to push their anti-vaccine messages. it sort of worked in canada and

they will see if it can work in the united states. >> so we saw rand paul there saying he hoped these truckers would come and shut down american cities, too? >> yeah. >> this is -- again, kevin williamson, i just keep going back to his column. this is the american right's hippie moment. all of the things that we were opposed to, all of the things i'm still opposed to like, you know, you would see those images out of portland where these white woke kids would be standing in the street going, oh, we're here to help the repressed black people in portland and there would be a black woman trying to get to her house, can you guys get out of the way, my kids, i need to get home. no, we are here -- yeah, but you need to get out of my way, i need to get home, need to get to work. who in the world -- what conservative cheers for a movement that, first of all,

stops citizens from living their daily lives, stops small businesses from being able to get work? i mean it is crazy. they want that chaos in america, and i cannot tell you how many times we conservatives have said through the years, oh, we don't do all of these marches because we actually work. like that's always been the thing. oh, we don't go and march. like conservatives have been saying that for 50 years. we don't shut down city streets because our parents raised us better than that. now they're carrying the flag of chaos. >> they were saying last summer when there were protests in the streets of the united states, forget canada, we have to get out of the streets and do it peacefully. here they are, michael steele, calling -- rand paul is not alone, we should point out, calling for the george washington bridge to be shut down so people can't get into new york city. but let's be clear, that bridge, the ambassador bridge is to pipeline between canada and the united states to get goods in for auto parts companies and

everybody else who works in the midwest there. what is it going on here? is it just a political wedge because obviously it is getting huge coverage. maybe they have some significant gripes but probably not the way to go about it. >> yeah. i mean, the idea that you're going to shut down, you know, economic flow and the economies, you know, in canada and in the united states over mask mandates kind of strikes a little bit hollow when you consider how much yelping there was because of, you know, at the real crunch time of covid we had to dial back a lot of our economic activity and people fet felt that pain. if rand paul is asking for the truckers to come, y'all park that right in front of his house, right. the reality is the rest of us have to go to work. >> yeah. >> the rest of us are trying to recover. so to have these so-called conservatives out here calling for this level of disruption,

calling for an economic breakdown, if you will, here in the united states is the height of irresponsibility. it is all driven, willie, by the politics. it is all driven by trying to either own the libs, score points, appease donald trump or, more importantly, to get the grift on. to be able to translate this into donations and into voters who you get all jacked up to go out and vote and then, what, you have left the economy in shambles. you have people in the community fighting with each other. to what end? so the leadership we have now right now on the republican side is wholly irresponsible when it comes to how to govern in a time of difficulty, particularly given they're the one stoking a lot of difficult bhooe.

>> you shut down the george washington bridge, who are you hurting? you're not hurting people around this table. we will figure out how to get over the river. you are hurting working class americans. you are hurting working class people in jersey. you are hurting working class people in new york. you are hurting working class people across the tri-state area. you can do it in any city. the people who this hurts are working class people. families that own restaurants, small business owners, the very people we've been saying for months are getting hurt when you shut down businesses too long because of covid. now they're saying after two years talking about commerce being slowed down, oh, no, please come to the united states. this is great but they're stopping working class people from being able to go to work. this is great that they're stopping small businesses from being able to get products over the border. this is great that family restaurants and family hardware stores are dying on the vine in

canada because we're making a point. >> yes. >> that 10 percent of truckers in canada who aren't vaccinated are the great oppressed so let's shut the whole dam country down. >> let me make a slightly different point, though not an unrelated one because i want to talk about your point about republicans, what republicans used to be for. you have rand paul, you have ted cruz and who is the guy with the tiny hands? >> the bird structure, very little hands. >> yeah. so those guys, this group of truckers in canada which is a g7 country, a trillion dollars in trade across the border. their stated objective, however implausible, is to overthrow the government. they're insurrectionists. when in the past have republican politicians in the united states senate stood up and declared their allegiance to an outfront declared insurrectionist group

trying to throw the duly elected government of an american ally. when has it happened -- i guess it is not still your party. >> the republican party, not your party. >> i point it out not because the guys are going to overthrow the government of canada, but the sympathy with insurrectionists is a thing in the republican party. >> what did kevin williamson say? the right is having its hippie moment. they are attacking institutions, they are supporting insurrections against the governments, they're saying that the united states military -- they hate the military. they're saying the military is taking helicopters from afghanistan and they're coming to america to kill trump supporters. they're saying that the fbi -- that the fbi is scurrilous and they're going to kick down doors and they're going to arrest people and drag them off for being trump voters. they're saying all of this stuff. they are saying that nobody at any university can be trusted.

i mean why don't they just take over the president's office at columbia university. this is a carbon copy cutout of what we conservatives reacted against in the '60s. this is what created ronald reagan and now we've gone a full circle, and now they have become what they hated. i do have to ask one question though about the liberal prime minister in canada. seriously. >> what? >> i'm sorry. i'm sorry. if i'm a mayor, i'm a prime minister and your trucks get in my city street, they're not going to stay there a week. >> yeah. >> no, no, no. no. >> okay. >> there's going to be somebody with a stick and is going to be banging on the window and saying you got one of two options, you can move this thing or we're going to cuff you and take you to jail and we're going to impound this and fine your company. >> move it. >> move it or lose it. how about in new york city. how do we think it would work on

fifth avenue, willie? why again did justin trudeau wait so long? >> i think eric adams would handle that pretty quickly. >> i think so. >> with the new york city police department. the biden administration did suggest publicly last week, hey, trudeau, hey, canadian government, it is time to do something about this, stop sitting back. it may be part of the reason the prime minister finally stepped out. >> they were very clear. not just, okay, yeah, free expression, that's fine, give it a day or so but time to move it on. this is a major artery between canada and the united states, the bridge in detroit, the ambassador bridge there. billions of dollars were being lost because of the delays and like it is time for this to move eye long. finally yesterday we had trudeau invoking the rarely used millennial powers to try to bring it to an end and we heard reports of police going there and finally moving trucks out. >> again, what true conservative is for this. >> the guy with little hands. >> i know, but he's not

conservative. >> wow. >> if you are supporting insurrection against the government and purposely trying to stop middle class people from getting to their jobs, purposely trying to hurt family businesses, trying to hurt small business owners from getting supplies to and from, there's nothing conservative about you. this is not conservative. >> it is convenient. >> they haven't been for a long time, so i guess why am i surprised by this. >> we shouldn't be shocked. >> again, this is exactly, this is exactly what we were supposed to be against. >> you are the one who says don't be shocked. the shock opera must stop. here is the story. >> but those hands are so small, and delicate. >> i wish i had them. i have very big hands. >> he is now selling mugs, campaign raising hands with that image, the fist raised going into the capital. he is fundraising off that. >> like if he were a hand model he would be a hand model for women. >> that's what i'm saying.

>> you remember kristen wiig when she sang in that -- >> lawrence welk. >> lawrence welk with the little hands, that's what it looks like. we need to get that clip because that's what it looks like. >> you guys, this has deinvolved. >> he is selling mugs because he is so proud with that image on them. >> come on, with the little hands. >> this is what i want you to know about me, this is what i want you to remember about me, i cheered on the attempted coup. >> moments before the insurrection. >> when it turn around to the other side does it have american flags bashing in cop's brains in? >> yeah. he's proud of that. >> oh, my god. >> he is proud of that. >> that is so -- >> proud of that day when cops -- >> there it is. >> -- got their brains bashed in by american flags. many thought they were going to die and two committed suicide after because of -- of -- >> the trauma of it all. >> the trauma and horror of that

day. >> what a tough guy. >> okay. here is the story where the right and left are actually working together. >> oh, let's sit up for this. atlanta's deputy police chief is calling it a game changer. a new camera system that will solve the way investigators solve crimes and possibly deter some people from committing them in the first place. the atlanta journal constitution reported this in late january. connect atlanta, a network of more than 4500 surveillance cameras from across the city will allow officers to pull up footage on their cellphones and lap tosses from inside their squad cars before they get to the scene. now a new bipartisan law called the law enforcement strategic support act or less, is set to improve police work even more on the statewide level.

georgia's lieutenant governor writes in "newsweek" the law allows people to make contributions to departments of their choice, to refund the police in need of more equipment training. lieutenant governor duncan joins us now along with democratic state senator sonia halpern who represents georgia's 39th district including parts of atlanta. she now fully supports the new legislation. so, geoff duncan, i will start with you and ask you about about all right. e.s.s.. >> with regards to the less crime act we have not seen any push back in our state, in support of the effort. crime is a bipartisan problem and this is a bipartisan

solution. >> now, this is exciting. senator halpern, just two years ago it seems americans were divided over the issue of policing. here georgia is leading the way. there are a lot of mayors trying to figure out how they can make their towns and cities safer. there are a lot of state legislators debating back and forth, coming from two different sides. i guess my question is how did georgia come together with the bipartisan bill? >> well, i think that, you know, again, crime is definitely not something that is partisan. so where we've been seeing increases in crime in cities throughout and towns throughout our state, everybody wants to do something to address it. so the question really is what do you do and how do you come up with an innovative solution, and this l-e-s-s crime act is an

innovative solution. when i first read the bill i thought about it from the framework that i have two teenage sons and i have a young daughter. i thought about my family. i thought about families across my district who are concerned about crime and how this could actually be a solution, and knowing that the folks that elect us are looking for us to come up with solutions to solve the problems that they're facing. >> lieutenant governor duncan, part of the reason we were highlighting this this morning is because it is an example of you and senator halpern getting together and getting something done, a republican and democrat that helps voters. you are not virtue signaling or tweeting about it but trying to get something done. what did challenges did you have from the republican side about the bill and how did you end up in the middle? j when i started to draft this a few months ago it was port to try to eliminate the partisan angles to it. i felt like there's enough meat

here for us to find solutions. empowering communities to be a part of fixing their crime problems is a great place to start. it allows democrats and republicans equally to participate in trying to fix this. i think the unique part of this is it can be spent five ways, hiring more officers, paying them more, training them better, equipping them better or integrating a co-responder model for mental health and behavior to co-respond with officers. at the end of the day there's a lot of solutions out there that if we eliminate the partisanship we can get real solutions across the finish line. not only here in georgia but across the country. i hope it is a model for other states and also at the federal level to work together to try to find solutions. >> senator halpern, what about from your side of the equation? i'm sure you got pressure from fellow congress people,

constituents, about working on a crime bill. how did you navigate that? >> ultimately, there's two pieces of this. one is public safety and one is policing. the reality is those two things cannot be mutually exclusive and we cannot consider it as such. so when we talk about public safety and when we talk about kind of moving towards more modern policing efforts post-george floyd policing, it is really going to take more investments. so as i talked with people on my side of the aisle about that, i think we all started to realize that, yeah, if we want to have our officers have more training, well, here is an opportunity to provide those dollars for more training in deescalation or anti-bias or whatever that local police department or law enforcement agency thinks is right. if we want to have our officers, you know, take care of mental health crises situations in a different way, if we understand that's not the role of our officers, that we need

co-responders, this bill provides for that. so this bill actually in the way that it ended up getting shaped really addresses many of the concerns. again, it is limited to kind of those five areas where those expenditures can happen, that i think we all agree are those areas that should be the first priority. >> state senator, good morning. i wanted to ask you to drill down further on something you just mentioned, the idea of the mental health aspect of this and having mental health professionals be part of the movement. here in new york city we're reeling from a brutal crime, a brutal murder committed in chinatown by someone with mental issues. this has come to the forefront in law enforcement, feeling like it is beyond their capacity to be able to deal with people with such obvious challenges. talk to us about what is happening in your legislation. >> this piece of legislation, because it indicates where the funds can be spent at a local agency, it does provide for

either the maintenance of kind of these co-responder programs or the establishment of a co-responder program. i think more and more, even just police departments themselves are realizing that officers are not -- they're not properly trained to be able to handle some of the mental health breaks that they're seeing, and certainly those mental health breaks are more and more in the news so we're understanding that that is happening more just for us as kind of civilians. so this is an opportunity for us to make sure that we are not just throwing into jail people who really shouldn't be in jail and that we really are allowing the professionals who are trained in mental health to be able to figure out what's happening in a particular situation and then decide if that -- where that person needs to go, with the officer being more of the support role in that case rather than the front. >> all right. state senator sonya halpern and

georgia lieutenant governor geoff duncan, thank you for being on and sharing with us. >> thank you. still ahead on "morning joe," our next guest has the key to finding happiness, particularly later in life. now as we go to break, kristen wiig perhaps channelling a certain missouri senator ♪ like with my boyfriend ♪ ♪ with my husband ♪ ♪ with my fiance ♪ ♪with my by myself ♪ ♪ ♪ we enjoy different things ♪ ♪ i like waterfalls ♪ ♪ i like butterflies ♪ ♪ i like spring ♪ ♪ i like chasing cars ♪ ♪ i like chasing cars ♪ that help rebuild your skin. dove men+care.

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go to now4gmg.com and talk to your neurologist. daddy and i are making some changes so that we can be happier and healthier, and we're

starting with this meal that i prepared. >> i think it looks great. >> doesn't it look good? >> what is that, grilled cheese. >> it is baked tofu. >> oh. >> and the lettuce is so fresh and tasty you forget how great it tastes on its own without dressing. >> dressing always gets in the way of the natural taste of the lettuce. you need to get outside. do some playing outside. >> yeah, you can build things, you can build a fort outside. >> what? >> yeah, build a fort. play with your friends and have -- >> make a fort outside! and do what? do what in the fort? >> life comes at you fast when you hit 40, and that is the focus of our next segment. arthur brooks is exploring what happens when hard-charging professionals start to feel a sense of decline, something he says happens most sooner than most of us think. the drop-off may be inevitable,

but a loss of purpose doesn't have to be. so what's the best way to address it besides eating lettuce and going outside? maybe some meditating. joining us now, arthur brooks. he is a contributing" for "the atlantic." the author of the new book "from strength to strength: finding success, happiness and deep purpose in the second half of life." you say, arthur, that second half starts at 40? >> well, it starts at different times for different people. the truth of the matter is the second half of your adult life probably starts around 55. if you live to 90 and 20 is when you start your adult life, 55 is the midpoint. the problem is that a lot of people think that their happiness is going to take care of itself. >> right. >> and it doesn't. you know, i teach this subject at harvard university, and i have been doing the research on how people can actually and remarkably change the odds of getting happier as the years go

by. there's seven secrets in this book on what the happiest people do as they get older. >> you know, arthur, we -- mika and i over the past several years for a lot of different reasons have had family members that have used dvt. we have actually focused some, tried to do mindfulness, tried to look at the world differently, tried to look at -- >> do things differently. >> -- our emotions differently. >> sure. >> it is really remarkable. >> acceptance. >> when you adjust your thinking, when you take on board things like radical acceptance and the fact that two things can be true at the same time, and focus more on your mindfulness. i know it is a big thing when my kids are going, dad, what's happened to you over the past couple of years? you are like really -- >> much more chill. >> mellow in the house. >> yeah, my kids, too. the truth is this book is the fruit of eight years of research for me as a social scientist because i mean this is me search, not research.

the first big thing to keep in mind is your real success curve is in the second half if you know how to jump on it. the things that make you good in the first half is not what make you good in the second half. we need to go from the innovator mindset to the instructor mindset. you two are doing it right. every morning you are teaching people about interesting things around the world. getting to the second part is what i talk about in the book. >> you say beat the success addiction is something you talk about. at what point can you say, i think i'm happy where i am, not that i have plateaued but i can stop being obsessed with success? >> that's a huge battle people have to fight over the course of their lives. what makes them good at what they do, they want more and more. we are like monkeys on cocaine when it comes to success in any

part of our life. you want to hit the lever over and over again. here is one of the key habits that happiest people have when they get older. they stop adding and start subtracting. instead of using your life as a canvas you are painting on, you start seeing your life as a sculpture you are chipping away to find the true parts of yourself. take away the extraneous attachments, possessions, relationships to find the beautiful piece of art that's within you. that's a key thing you need to do to jump on the second curve. the success addiction gets in the way of that. the success addiction is all of this junk that's on your canvas that makes it impossible to see yourself. >> simplify, simplify, simplify. michael steel. >> arthur, it is good to see you, man. >> yeah, yeah. >> i'm great, bro. i get the piece about success, the job, career and all of that. but in pulling out that better half of your life going forward

you got other people around you. it kind of goes to what joe was saying. you know, while joe and mika and myself and you and others are at this point where we want to do that, you have people like whirling dervishes around you. how do you account for others who might be a drag to help you get to that space when you're just like, i'm doing me, boo? >> that's the key thing. all happy people who are older realize that you can have tons of people around, you can have lots of friends but there's a difference between deal friends and real friends. this is what you figure out in the second part of your life. in the first part of your life it is more deal friends. you need real friends. if you get to age 55 or 60 and all you have are deal friends, i don't care how many people you have around you, you will be lonely. the happiest people concentrate to their real friendships, not just on their deal friendships.

it is a key skill to getting older. >> that's a good one. >> let's go to john heilemann. you said monkeys on cocaine and his ears picked up. that was the name of his favorite band in high school. >> i want to be clear, arthur. monkeys on cocaine is not the way to happiness, is that what you are saying? >> yeah, no. >> if that's not the way, then i'm screwed. >> well, look, your results may vary, but, still, look. the bigger force of the data says, look, make your roots system around real people, calm down, simplify, get on your teacher curve, get into your dalai lama curve as opposed to your elon musk curve. there are seven things in the book that show how the happiest people do it step by step by step. here is the thing. i am eating my own cooking. i am taking my own advice and getting happier by the year. i wrote this thing over eight years. i didn't want to publish it. my wife said, "you got to share

this thing" and sure enough it actually works. it is like taking out my own appendix as a surgeon. >> we don't want you to do that. >> arthur, it is so interesting. many years ago i had back problems, i had back surgery in my early 30s and was going to have another surgery. a guy that ran a hospital, a very conservative -- i don't know if i would call him a monkey on cocaine, but he was -- like he was really intense and then he just stopped for a second. it is like something came over him and he said, joe, we haven't gotten there yet, but east is going to meet west soon. i'm telling you, every time somebody cuts into your body, it is like -- i don't know, he made some analogy with rivers and parting the waters. basically he was saying be still and just wait and you will probably do much better. i have to say it was some of the best advice i got. >> it is life advice.

>> it was life advice, but what you are talking about here, again, for conservative guys like me, it is interesting. again, east meets west with a lot of this philosophy when you are talking about mindfulness, when you are talking about the sort of things that you are talking about that we need to move beyond what we used to look at the world in the '60s and the '70s and the '80s. >> oh, yeah. absolutely. it is interesting because i had a long-standing relationship with his holiness the dalai lama. i'm a conservative guy like you, joe. we have the same politics, we agree on everything. but my relationship with the dalai lama changed my life. he told me, the secret to lasting satisfaction as you age is not learning to get everything that you want, it is learning to want the things that you have. the book is full of things from ancient eastern wisdom, western wisdom, neuroscience and it all

comes together in a strategic plan. we all deserve to get happier as we get older but we have to know how to do it. wishing is not enough. >> arthur buried the lead. the real path to happiness, a direct line to the dalai lama. >> there it is. >> who has a better word than the dalai lama. >> arthur, seriously. >> i love this. >> sitting here on "morning joe" and we are transformed to listening to bill murray on "the caddie shack." you know the dalai lama. you should have told us that up front. >> from now i will call you his holiness joe scarborough , we can all be like dalai lama. >> the dalai lama is kind of like a monkey on cocaine. >> i wonder if there's difference between men and women

and happiness. >> we have slightly different dynamics in the course of our lives, but the truth is we can all take away. we can subtract to find ourselves and for our second curve. for every single person, happiness is love. full stop. >> i love it. >> end of story."from strength to freng: finding success, happiness and deep purpose in the second half of life." arthur brooks, thank you so much, appreciate it, really do. >> thank you, mika. coming up, marco rubio is once again defending former president trump, the republican senator says the boxes of white house documents at mar-a-lago shouldn't be compared to the outrage over hillary clinton's emails. no, it's actually much worse. ae

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i think we're done writing this declaration. >> is that the latest copy? >> john, i asked you to keep track of the newest. where is it? >> i swear it was just here. >> oh, john, you had one job. >> it seems to have vanished before my very eyes. >> oh, my god. >> it's why nobody invites you to parties. >> has your forehead gotten larger? >> i shall -- >> fellas, fellas, relax. i created a click up task. >> oh. >> tommy, always saving john's derriere. >> laugh now, but i will be president. >> he will be president and i will have my face carved in the side of a mountain. >> no. no. no. you just click. >> oh. >> click on it. >> yay.

that was the super bowl ad for click up, a company that makes collaborative workplace software for businesses running it's first year ad during the big game this year. that's not the part i'm interested in. the man playing thomas jefferson, he is so good, that is "morning joe" producer jeff aires. >> the moral of this story is if you put our team members on your super bowl ad you will get more air time on "morning joe." >> exactly. >> what's the back story? is he an actor? >> he is an amazing actor and always making crazy videos with scutro and he's like developing a career. look, he is so good. guys, he is so good. >> he is a founding father. >> i knew it. >> he is a founder father. >> yea, jeff. >> six and one half dozen to the other. >> an excellent ad. did you talk yet about the larry david? >> no. >> it was the best one. that's what made me think of it. when they bring him the wheel.

eh, i don't see it. the light bulb. >> click. >> let me be honest with you, i don't see it. i don't see it. then what was next? oh, i loved it when he was at nasa. >> oh, yeah. >> go to the moon. >> the moon. >> it's too far away. it's too far away, we can't ever go. >> i love him. >> oh, the hair. >> terrible. >> usually a celebrity is plugged into an ad and he does whatever. you know larry just scripted that from moment one to the end. >> congratulations, jeff aires. >> sony corporation -- oh, music, portable music, that's never going to work. >> all right. i think that's exciting for jeff and i love that commercial. so funny. i watched it four times and i was laughing hysterically. >> by the way, what was a greater leap forward speaking of portable music, the iphone or the walkman? >> no, that little thing in between. >> it was so revolutionary. >> the ipod. >> the idea of being able to carry when the ipod first

started before the iphone being able to carry your entire music collection in your pocket was a pretty radical leap forward. portability, people have boom boxes, they used to carry their music around, i think the ipod is a bigger deal. >> the walkman. >> no, the ipod. >> the notion of having a device where you could put all of your music library in it and that opened the door to being able to have all the music in the world in your pocket was a big deal. >> i agree. >> our kids are growing up in a world where you can have any song you want at any moment of any day and we had to wait for it to come on the radio. i'd keep a blank tape and you would dive and hit play. >> was that a cassette or 8 track? >> a cassette tape. you are not that old. >> but the thing is, too, again, i sound like an old man but it's the truth, that was really exciting. >> it was thrilling. >> you would sit and wait. did i ever tell you my "bohemian rhapsody" story. >> no. >> really quickly. >> it's not a quick story.

>> i listened to top 40 all the time, casey kay sim every weekend. i was obsessed. "bohemian rhapsody" debuts at 38, i already liked queen, killer queen, went out and bought the single. >> you said it was going to be quick. >> it's not going to be quick. >> so i hear "bohemian rhapsody" casey says it comes in a 38, i'm going, what the heck is this? >> yeah. >> right? it was so bizarre. and i would call up in upstate new york monday night the guy -- the deejay at welm, i think it was. >> and say what is that? >> and i said, will you play "bohemian rhapsody" and he said, kid, we don't play that type of music here and hung up on me. >> and? is there a happy ending to this story? >> the next week it jumped to number 8. >> that's the happy ending.

everybody was playing it nonstop. but it was -- it was really just a song. but that's just one of those things, oh, "bohemian rhapsody" is on, you go and record it, you get the last six minutes but you miss the intro. >> even as we sit here today there was never a song like "bohemian rhapsody" before and there's never been one since. >> okay. >> and the fact that it was like -- i think it's the best selling song in british history. it was like number one for nine weeks or something like that. >> got it. >> isn't that crazy? >> epic. >> gave birth to "wayne's world." >> the next iteration is youtube, being able to watch anything you want at any time. we used to watch ralph mcdaniels on video music box, it was a one-hour show of hip hop, you would get home with your dr. pepper and pray that you would see the video you want. >> think about yo mt wraps.

>> that exposed you to a lot of music. >> you couldn't constantly hit your own play list, you had to explore. >> it's like my parents finally would let me finally become a member and it was a horrible mistake on their part -- >> mika, do you have a story like the "bohemian rhapsody" story? >> i've got the larry david commercial, do you want to see it? >> no, i want to hear this. >> my parents made a horrible mistake, they made the horrible mistake of letting me join the columbia record -- >> oh, no. >> you guys know what happened next, right? i never turned back. i would get everything and it would just be coming -- >> piling in. >> do you know what you did? if you got -- whether you got asia by steely dan, i was too young to enjoy it. >> but now. >> now i listen to it. i said, okay, this band, this steely dan band, then you would get like songs in the key of

life. >> right. >> by stevie. >> yeah. >> and i would get -- i was totally exposed to stevie wonder and just fell in love with just the genius of stevie wonder because i was too dumb to return those cards and say -- and they know that. >> you couldn't get out of it. >> the first 20 albums for like a nickel and after that they're sending you one every month for like $43 apiece. how do you pay for that addiction, joe? >> how did i? >> yeah, back in the day. >> my parents actually let me -- let me do it and -- but it was -- that's another crazy thing, too, like our kids, they hear music all the time. my parents would let me get an album maybe once a month, once every two months. >> wear it out. >> and you would just wear it out, right? >> i got one album in my whole life. >> what was it? >> andy gibb, "shadow dancing." >> you only got one record. >> it was like a record. >> you had a crush on andy gibb

at the time? >> i thought it was kind of yucky, the cover, he had like -- he was laying like this, you know? remember that cover? >> she still has it, it's actually above our bed. >> i thought we finished with the monkeys on cocaine. >> come on. >> okay. i don't really want to hear about that. let's go back to -- you know who else was a member of the columbia record club, trent reznor. he said you would sit there and trent in pennsylvania like me in big flats, new york, we weren't turning the cards in, he said i would get 52nd street. he said i'm not going to buy a billy joel record, but you're stuck with it for a month and he said he would sit there and listen and listen and it really helped him grow as a songwriter because you're being exposed to music you wouldn't normally be exposed to. >> basically the columbia record club is the roots of nine inch nails. >> that's a grace legacy.

>> one of the reasons, though, he became as great a songwriter as he did in a lot of different genres. >> then you could eventually go to tower records and buy the casingle which was the one song for $1.99. >> all right. i have to take over here. >> what degree of normalcy post covid do we need to get you guys back out at the knitting factory? >> we have to do it soon. >> okay. >> do you know how many people want to hear that? absolutely nobody, but i love doing it. >> i love it. >> do you really? >> yes. by the way, thomas jefferson just walked in. >> let's watch the david commercial. >> we have the larry david commercial. when we come back we are going to have a completely new set. it's going to be magic. we are on tv right now. >> i thought we were in break. >> jeff, you did a great job. yay. great job on your commercial. that was awesome. okay. >> here is larry david. >> here is the larry david one. we have to change everything around.

>> why? >> go to it. >> fork. >> i have ten forks right here, baby. am i right? huh? >> my lord. >> what is it? >> a toilet, my lord. >> a toilet? you expect this court to do its business inside? we are not animals, we go outside like humans. >> it's coffee. it's new. >> it's awful. >> you don't like it? >> i'm all jittery and i feel like i've got a big job coming on. >> hancock, you sign first. >> your king, did you take a leave of your senses. >> the people will have a right to vote. >> even the stupid ones? >> yes. >> stupid people vote? >> yes.

>> edison, can i be honest with you? it stinks. does your wife know what's going on here? >> she knows i go to work. >> you're wasting your time. man, it's sad. >> you might as well put the dishes in the shower. >> hey, captain, what's cook sng. >> we're putting a man on the moon. >> are you out of your mind? i can't even get tuna without celery. nobody is going to the moon ever. >> why not. >> it's too far. it's far. it's really far. it's far. [ speaking foreign language ] >> like i was saying, it's ftx, it's a safe and easy way to get into crypto. >> eh, i don't think so. and i'm never wrong about this stuff.

never. >> hey, i left my cane in there. what? what do you mean? hey, that was an expensive cane. >> i cannot love him enough. >> just a treasure. >> one of the best commercials. >> one of the best ever i would submit. >> and all of a sudden look who is here. >> truly national treasure, larry david. >> okay. we got it together. >> did we get thomas jefferson? come here, thomas jefferson. >> where is thomas jefferson? this is jeff aires. he was in a super bowl commercial and i'm obsessed with it. >> seriously, mika, we're coming into from the airport she watches it like 20 times. >> i did, on repeat. >> thank you for the views. >> it was so funny. >> thank you. >> congratulations, thomas. >> you did a great job. congratulations. and alex is happy, too, because he sees that you're getting some work done. >> o, please. >> okay. >> jeff ayers.

>> all right. it is 8 minutes past the top of the hour. joining the discussion we have david ignatius. >> david. >> there's david. >> do you know what, seriously, they had a 50% chance. >> the council on foreign relations richard haass, this happened at the super bowl, you know, and democratic congresswoman mikey cheryl of new jersey, a u.s. navy veteran, member of armed services committee. michael steele and jonathan lemire are still with us as well. >> richard, giants didn't make the super bowl this year, maybe next year. >> several of their former players made the super bowl. >> but let's talk ukraine. >> do we want to talk ukraine? >> yeah, what's going on. >> as opposed to eli apple. >> let's talk about ukraine. the russians say they're bringing some troops off, lavrov and putin in the mile long meeting at the table, mile long table. what's your take on it?

>> it doesn't change their ability to invade if they want to invade. >> are we overselling this? they keep saying we're overselling it, ukrainians say we're overselling t are we overselling the threat of the invasion? >> the capabilities are there. we don't know their intentions. the capabilities are what they are. ukraine, zelensky, the president, doesn't want to talk about that much because it contributes to the russian goal of destabilizing ukraine. they want to weaken ukraine politically and economically. think about it, the russian goal is not to invade, that's a means to an end. the end is to weaken ukraine internally and weaken its ties to the european union and to nato. >> congresswoman, hasn't vladimir putin actually hurt himself through this whole exercise? nato is actually unified. >> unifying. >> unlike during the trump administration it is unified, the germans took a little while to figure out exactly how aggressive they were going to be, but now the germans are actually on board.

nato is shoulder to shoulder, we have troops in poland, 82nd airborne is in poland, we have -- nato has weapons on the russian border. this is not something vladimir putin would prefer. do you think he saw this coming? >> well, i don't think he saw this coming, joe, as you know, i was in ukraine just a couple weeks ago and talking to our nato allies, talking to our eu allies really did bring about this sense of unity. the transatlantic relationship had been a little frayed under the trump administration, certainly this has reignited it in a way i'm sure putin didn't envision, but when you ask has he gotten what he wanted or is this good for him, you know, i was a russian policy officer for the navy in the late '90s and when i was dealing with the russians, we were always looking at it as a way to bring them into the fold, to help bring them together with the rest of europe after the cold war. they were always looking at it as a potential opportunity to

gain security information about the united states. so our interactions were coming from very different places and putin is looking at this as how to become a major power player on the world scene. he doesn't have the economic might of the united states and china, he has the military, and he is looking to reinvigorate his sphere of influence, looking to again have a seat at the cable. >> president zelensky has said again and again that the west, including president biden, needs to tone down the rhetoric, that they don't believe an invasion is imminent. what's your sense from the ground having just been in ukraine about how they're viewing this threat? obviously they have to take it seriously on their border, it's happened before, but this time around what is the president, the diplomats there, what's their real assessment of what may happen? >> i think as you heard they're very concerned about the economy, they've sent millions to bolster their currency, they're concerned about the bond markets and so russia without firing a shot has damaged the economy, however, i do -- and

you can't not realize the threat they have over 100,000 troops massed at the border so that's certainly a concern of theirs, but as they say again and again, we've been at war with russia since 2014. this is not new. >> david ignatius, what is new is obviously -- are the number of threats, sanctions that would be crippling and swallowing the porcupine whole. i find it hard to believe that a man whose life was shaped not only by the events of what happened in 1989, but also what happened in '79 and '80 in afghanistan and '81, is going to go into ukraine when he knows it will be economically devastating for his country, for a lot of people around him personally, and it's not going to be a cake walk. it could end up like afghanistan did for the russians and for us. >> joe, i've increasingly had the feeling that putin himself

doesn't know which of the options he's got he's going to select even today, right now. he's pulling back some troops, he's still got some troops there. he seems to love to drag out this tension. he's like donald trump, he loves to be the center of attention, the whole world is talking about him, but i suspect he hasn't made a final decision. he does have a deep passion about trying to bring ukraine back under russian control, the sae he wrote is full of this bitterness and almost mystical feeling that ukrainian and russian people are one. i think that's real, i think it's real that he thinks the west is out to get him. this is a person -- remember, i wrote the other day, putin's mother during the siege of lennon grad was left for dead in a pile of corps and she survived only because she moaned and somebody heard her. that's the legacy that putin brings when he thinks about the west. >> very follow up on that? that's such an important point. we americans do -- i talked to

you about this last time you were on. i can tell you if my mother endured that, if 27 million of my fellow citizens had been killed in an invasion from the west, it would alter the way i looked at the world. never again? yeah, those would -- those words would be emblazoned in my head every single day. so we in the west sit there going, wait a second, why are they thinking the way they are? why are they so paranoid? they are so paranoid because 27 million of their fellow citizens and family members died in world war ii. >> i understand, but this is still self-destructive what they're doing. >> it may be, i'm just explaining a lot of things we did after 9/11 people considered to be self-destructive, because 3,000 people died on 9/11 we said never again. i'm not comparing anything to anything. i'm just saying we should study

russian history a little more than we do to understand the extraordinary scar that world war ii remains on the psyche of every single russian. >> so, joe, i share that feeling that we need to begin by understanding putin, not by granting his demands, which are just unacceptable. it's strike to go me that the most successful policies the u.s. had after -- after the end of world war ii were framed by george kennan the author of "our containment strategy." he understood russia better than anyone around him, he founded that policy, the understanding of russia, how it was, how it would behave and we need to be just that smart hopefully coming out of the ukraine crisis. it's hard to tell whether we've seen a blink or a wink and it

will continue, i don't know, blink or wink. coming out of this over time we do need to think more clearly about how russians see the world and a stable europe is going to have that idea embedded in it, as you say. >> congresswoman, i want to get your take on the blink or wink that david just laid out there. in the last 24 hours we have had putin talk about giving some voice to the idea of diplomacy and negotiations should continue. we have had some troops pulled back today but only some, the white house aides i have talked to suggest there is still plenty more to go to an invasion if that's what he wanted. what do you think things stand right now where 72 hours it looked like an invasion could happen any moment, do we have more hope for a diplomatic solution? >> i have always had hope for a diplomatic solution, at times it seemed like putin was on this intense plan to invade ukraine with no off-ramps, however, he's got to be taking a look at the ruble right now, how the economic impact of his slight withdraw and how that has really bolstered his currency. he has to be thinking about the

economic sanctions that senator menendez is working on right now and how that's going to impact him. he also has to be understanding a little bit about what i understood as i was on the ground in ukraine, this isn't 2014. he's not succeeded in dividing the west, he is also facing a newly united ukraine with a sovereign identity as against russia because of 2014. i was there in what looked like to me sort of a vietnam wall with pictures of the dead in ukraine from the russian war. you know, this is something very present and very important because we have to understand, i think, as we've heard russian history, but i also think here in america we have to be supportive and thoughtful about this -- this nascent democracy we have in ukraine and why that's so important as well. >> meanwhile, the uk is saying it will support ukraine's stance on nato, regardless of what it

decides. britain's armed forces minister said yesterday if ukraine decides it won't become a nato member we will support that and if the country decides to reverse its position, the uk will support that, too. the comments came after a ukrainian diplomate appeared to offer the possibility of not joining nato, one of moscow's key security demands but later backtracked and britain's minister for the armed forces joins us now. sir, if i could follow up on that. in a way shouldn't this decision whether or not ukraine wants to be a part of nato or not, not at all be connected with russia's pressure? >> well, i would agree with that, absolutely. i think that if ukraine as a sovereign nation chooses to offer that it might not pursue nato membership as part of its

bilateral arrangements with russia that's find, that's ukraine's business and the uk as well as the other allies would support that. but at the same token if ukraine wants to maintain an interest in joining nato we should be ready to stand up for their right to do that, too. >> sir, this is richard haass. just because ukraine wants to become a member of nato doesn't mean that nato necessarily needs to bring in ukraine. the real question for the uk nd and the other 29 members of nato is whether ukraine meets the continues that are laid out in the nato treaty, and given that do you think ukraine meets those conditions? if ukraine were tomorrow to ask for membership, do you believe the uk should give it a green light? >> well, no, richard, it's clear that ukraine doesn't meet the conditions for membership right now. they know that in kyiv and i think we know that across all of the capitals of nato, but what's at stake here is the sovereign right of ukraine to pursue that

membership interest in they wish to, or not, and i think we as a group of nations who support freedom, democracy and the rights -- the rights of sovereign nations to choose which alliances they want to seek membership of should be willing to make sure that that avenue remains open to ukraine if that's what they want to do. right now very clearly ukraine membership is not on the cards. >> mr. heappey, good morning, it's jonathan lemire. i want to get your assessment of where things stand in europe right now. white house officials i talked to had frustration with germany in recent weeks saying they were not perhaps as on board with what the rest of the west wanted to here in terms of a unified front against moscow, some encouraging signals in recent days that they are more so now. give us your assessment, has europe and the united states been able to stand together on this? >> well, yes, and i think europe and the united states must stand together and united states leadership is still very welcome

here in europe. we have to recognize that the burden of sanctions falls unequally across the western alliance and i think that what matters very much is world leaders are in the final stages of calibrating what the sanction package might be, we have to make sure that it's something that will hold because i think president putin has two main aims, his first is that he may have a territorial aim for ukraine, we'll see what happens on that front over the next few days, but he also has the same of fracturing the western alliance and i have to think -- and i think, therefore, it's very important we calibrate in our sanctions package and every other way that we respond to make sure that it's something that all nato countries sign up to and that they can stand by no matter how long or how painful the implications of those measures appear to then be. >> all right. britain's armed forces minister james heappey, thank you so much

for being on the show this morning. and now to a diplomatic breakthrough in the middle east which moves forward today when israeli prime minister neftly bennett meets with the king of bahrain. it is a historic moment as bennett is the first israeli leader to make an official visit to the persian gulf state. the trip is seen as another important step in strengthening ties between israel and some arab governments. back in december bennett made the first ever israeli state visit to the uae. the meetings in bahrain are also seen as significant because the country is believed to be a proxy for saudi arabia, a nation with which israel does not have diplomatic relations. >> david ignatius, obviously big deal, bahrain, this meeting in bahrain, also earlier the uae and here we have more success

from the abraham accords and i can't help but think that if the abraham accords were authored by any president other than donald trump there would already be books lining our book shelves talk being what an extraordinary diplomatic breakthrough it is and how much it is isolating the palestinians even across the middle east. >> there is a book coming from one jared kushner who was the principal architect of the abraham accords, it will be worth reading, but i think there's no question that this move toward normalization in the middle east in which israelis traveled to bahrain, the uae, other places in which bahrain is truly acting as a kind of proxy for saudi arabia and that's the next big step in this process, israeli/audi normalization, it's an enormous step forward. it's something that israelis have dreamed of, but i think arabs have dreamed of a more normal life as well. the people left out are the

palestinians, the palestinians need -- suffering need to be addressed by the united states, by israel, by their own leaders, first of all, but you can't help but be hopeful in a world where there is a lot of bad news to see this process of israelis and arabs finally beginning to have something like a normal life across borders. >> yeah, and let's hope the normalization of relations across the arab world leads to a definitive solution for the palestinians. congresswoman, you served in bahrain, right? >> i did. >> how big of a deal is this? >> this is a really big deal, especially for our security, with our major allies not aligned throughout the middle east it's been difficult to conduct what the national security efforts that we need to do, but also just -- i also studied in egypt and it is remarkable that in order -- if you want to travel from many middle eastern nations to israel, you then can't use your

passport anywhere else in the middle east because of the lack of diplomatic relationships. so this is really a big deal not just militarily to the u.s. but economically to the states in the region. >> richard, what's the significance of those images we just showed? >> it's extraordinary in and of itself. when you saw -- you heard the israeli national anthem being played the other day in the uae, that was something i never thought i would ever hear. one other country significant, not just -- this is a proxy for saudi arabia, isolation of iran. what this shows is that the enemy of your enemy is your friend a little bit and you see the israelis and the arab states increasingly focused on the threat posed by iran, not just its nuclear program, but it's missiles, proxies, hezbollah and all these other groups. the two big losers here are the palestinians and iran, but this is an interesting new dynamic in the middle east and it's also good for us because we want to reduce our role in the middle east so we can focus on europe and china. the idea that you're beginning to see some fabric beginning to

come together in the middle east is a very good sign for the united states. >> michael steele, speaking of books, you can fill books with columns talking about how jared kushner failed miserably in his efforts for middle east peace, but jared kushner was saying from the beginning, 2017, that instead of having the big meeting between the israelis and palestinians he was going to go country by country by country by country and try to strike different deals between israel and those separate countries. that looks like that's happened. so does this require a reassessment of what jared kushner did over the past four years on the middle east? >> i think a lot of that will come into clearer focus for folks and i think there is some good opportunities there to sort of look -- go back and look at some of those strategies that were employed, as you just described, and how that's now coming to fruition. you're right as you set up this conversation that, you know, if

this had not been in, quote, the trump administration folks would be approaching what we're seeing now with very different, you know, set of lenses, but you have to put the correct lenses on and look at exactly what's happening here and i think when you go back and you see this idea of developing a much more direct personal relationship between israel and the arab nations, i think was a very smart move and it's now beginning to bear some fruit and we'll see what comes, whether there's a book or not from jared, i think what we're seeing happening on the ground right now portends some really good opportunities longer term, certainly for the middle east and to the point that was made about the u.s. role in the middle east, going forward. >> congresswoman, before we let you go, i just have to ask you, talk about your constituents. how are they holding up? covid restrictions being lifted, the economy in many areas doing much, much better, a growth

economy, but we're grappling with inflation, especially, you know, at the pump, in the grocery store. how are they balancing everything? >> well, you know, i think it's been tough, joe. a lot of us had hoped by the fourth of july we would be on the upswing and now i think there's a sense of fool me once, shame on you, but i'm not going to fall for this again. there is, i think, cautious optimism. our kids have been in school for a while, as a fore of four that's the number one thing for me but we're also facing a lot of mental health challenges. we have just been delivering valentines for our health care workers, we had more than 2,000 valentines come into our office to appreciate health care workers. we're hearing optimism there, too. the omicron cases are going down, facing warmer weather in jersey, we hope, so that hopefully will keep the covid numbers low and open up our economy. >> congresswoman mikey cheryl, thank you so much for coming on this morning. richard haass and dachd

ignatius, thank you both as well. we will be talking to you both in the coming days as we watch the crisis in ukraine unfold. up next, we will have the latest on the roll back of mask mandates in states run by democrats. it's good for businesses but what about students? plus, former president trump gets dumped by his long-time accounting firm. the company says it can no longer vouch for financial statements from the trump organization for like a decade. what it means for two major investigations into trump's business practices. also ahead, the unique challenges facing young boys. we will discuss a gender gap that doesn't get much attention. you're watching "morning joe." we will be right back. watching" we will be right back.

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former president trump's long-time accounting firm masars usa is cutting ties with him and the trump organization saying it can no longer stand behind a decades worth of financial statements from the trump's family business. according to a letter released by new york's attorney general, the accounting firm says documents from 2011 to 2020 should no longer be relied upon, and advised the trump organization to inform anyone who had received the statements not to use them when assessing the financial health of the company or the former president. the statements are at the center of two high-profile investigations, a criminal probe by the manhattan district attorney and a civil investigation by new york attorney general letitia james. just last month james said investigators had uncovered

evidence that the former president and his company used fraudulent or misleading valuations of its golf clubs, skyscrapers and other properties to get loans and tax benefits. the trump organization responded in a statement yesterday, saying it was disappointed that they had chosen to part ways but also noted the firm hadn't found material discrepancies in trump's financial statements. >> tom, talk about this move. people that i called yesterday trying to figure out exactly what this meant said bad news for the trump organization, accounting firms hardly ever do this let alone discount what's happened over the past ten years. said this was pretty extraordinary move. >> sure. so if mazars was digging through the files of trump tower on fifth avenue and found $100 million worth of cash in the basement i don't think they would be typing up letters

saying we have to restate your financial statements for the last ten years. this is not a good development. every single expert we have spoken with has said this is not something that is normal, this is highly unusual that they would send a letter like this and that -- >> so what were they doing? why did they send this letter? >> first off, paid attention to what mika referenced which is the attorney general's filings back in january and some of the revelations that the attorney general says that they've come up with in the course of their civil investigation. on top of that they said they had their own internal investigation and they received information from both inside the company and outside the company that led to them making this decision and they said that they have a nonwaiveable conflict of interest now with the trump organization which could be potentially a problem, saying, look, theres no way the trumps can waive this here, they can't say, no, you can stay on, this really isn't a conflict of interest. conflict of interest mazars says is on their side of things. they came out and made this statement. the letter was sent on february 9th, it was provided to the

attorney general and that's why we're able to see it today. >> they say they can no longer stand by decades worth of these documents. does that mean that they free paired fraudulent documents and they are acknowledging that now that they've inflated or deflated the prices of properties, inflated the square footage at trump tower or does it mean someone doctored these numbers and changed the numbers. >> it's probably too soon to say. an accountant and accountants will tell you are only as good as the information they are provided. if they were provided with the wrong types of information, they were not provided with the right underlying documentation where somebody instructed hem to make material changes to it, those are all the types of things we will have to see what comes out in the course of these various investigations that you referenced. >> john, what's your take on it? >> well, the document that they released last night, if i read that document right, suggests that the accounting firm has already provided over 500,000 pieces of documentation. >> right. there's a bates number. >> there's a bates number, which

means 525,000 at minimum pieces of information, which is a very large number. and the second thing s i will ask you, tom, i saw some speculation from other legal experts last night that the conflict of interest could suggest that the accounting firm is now flipped basically and is working -- cooperating actively with the investigations, that's why they realized they were in trouble, they don't want to go to jail for donald trump or face huge civil penalties and they are all in on the civil and da's criminal procedures? >> it's certainly possible. it also could signal that, hey, our attorneys have looked at this and we might have an issue here where at some point we will have to say something that's adversarial to you our now former client. it may not have gone that far just yet, we don't have any indication of that from the filings, nobody has told me that that is the case. does the possibility exist? the possibility exists. >> everyone is saying this is

quite big, this has a lot of significance. to explain how that means, there a precedent, is there an example of this happening before that would give us an insight as to where this is leading? >> typically we see it in public companies. when private companies have this happen to them it's usually not something involving a former president of the united states and it's not something that garners this type of attention. if it's something that happens with a public company, if the trump organization was publicly traded we would be looking at a stock down 50, 60, 80% this morning. this is normally very concerning to investors. that's not the particular skas here. the bigger impact might for donald trump's wallet and the trump organization's future in that if there were material misrepresentations here there could be covenants in the loans that the president has with various financial institutions where they could say, hey, look, we have a reason to call this loan in, or we have a reason to perhaps adjust the interest rate that you're saying. this raises all sorts of issues according to financial experts that we've spoken with and my colleague gretchen morgansen has

spoken with, where does this go for the future of the are trump organization and their outstanding loans. >> very hard for a company if you are trying to service debt to have an accounting firm turn on you to ever hope to get financing again in the future. i think short of an indictment and it's so rare, joe, as you point out, can't ants doing this kind of thing, short of getting indicted is one of the worst things that can happen. i think where it will go, who knows, but it's bad news. coming up, the debate over masks, who should wear them, when, where. right now there is a patchwork of policies across the country park sparking more confusion for a pandemic-wary public. the latest on that next on "morning joe." pandemic-wary pubc the latest on that next on

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the cdc says it's too early for all americans to take off their masks in indoor public spaces, but that could soon change. nbc's tom costello reports. >> reporter: with covid cases dropping across the country, this morning mask requirements for millions of americans are also starting to roll back. in washington, d.c. starting march 1st masks will no longer be required in restaurants, entertainment venues, gyms or grocery stores. and starting today businesses in the nation's capital will no longer be required to check a vaccination status. >> these are the slow steps that are needed and signs that show the progress that is before us. >> reporter: governors in california, illinois and new york have all announced plans to drop indoor mask mandates, but like d.c., are keeping mask requirements in schools with kids under 5 still not eligible for a vaccine. >> schools are unlike most other environments, six to eight

hours, five days a week, week after week after week. that's very different than someone going to a bar even for two hours or going to a ball game. >> reporter: fights over mask requirements have erupted at school board meetings across the country for months. cases among children continue to fall substantially from their january peak but they still remain extremely high. last week nearly 300,000 additional child covid-19 cases were reported nationwide. >> we could be reaching a low point in the epidemic where we can have kids hopefully get through a couple of months of the school year without having to wear masks. >> reporter: and from the classroom to the boardroom, the mask debate has spilled over into corporate america. jennifer saye an executive at levi's clothing company says she was forced out of her role for speaking out against covid-19 policies in cool. lee vice did not comment on her allegation saying only that she resigned from the company. the attention on masks on display during sunday's super bowl showdown.

attendees at the star studded event were required to wear masks at the indoor stadium in l.a. though most fans and many celebrities did not appear to follow the rules. >> that was nbc's tom costello reporting. coming up, why the boys are not all right. there is a troubling trend playing out right now on everything from mental health to drug abuse to problems at school. a deep dive into the crisis affecting young men nationwide. we will be right back. s affecting young men nationwide we will be right back.

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51 past the hour. there is a gender gap widening in america, and it could lead to serious societal issues. but it's not one you hear much about, not what you expect here. data shows young boys in the united states are being left behind when it comes to schooling. former presidential candidate

andrew yang highlights the issues of america's boys in his latest opinion piece for the "washington post," "the data are clear: the boys are not all right." he writes boys are more than twice as likely as girls to be diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder according to the centers for disease control and prevention, are five times as likely to spend time in juvenile detention, are less likely to finish high school. the gap between young men and women may go further. national student clearing house data shows nearly 60% of college students are women. i've been watching this. i'm not surprised. >> this has been happening, but it's moving so rapidly. >> yeah. and there is a focus for many reasons on young girls. but there are several factors that could contribute to this starting with what happens in primary school classrooms. the national center for education statistics said in

2018 only 24% of teachers were male and boys are struggling in traditional school models. one study found that elementary schoolboys had much greater exposure to negative school environments compared with girls. so what can we do? joining us now, child psychologist dr. emily king and brown university professor emily oster, the author of the book, "the family firm: a data-driven guide to better decision making in the early school years." >> dr. king, we've been focusing on young girls and women, the challenges of instagram, the challenges that they're facing, the online bullying and, you know, one study after another. it's heartbreaking. i'll be the first to admit we've overlooked young boys. we see the data. it is not positive. >> right. i'm a mom of two boys myself, and i see in my psychology practice we have to start way

earlier than we are looking. in my work as a school psychologist, we have to go back to preschool and be things about how we are letting boys play or how we are requiring boys to stay in seats and follow rules and have restrictions sometimes earlier than their nervous systems are read to control their impulses. so we really need to think hard about our expectations in preschool and allowing for more open play and social development because that's where all of the problem solving and the learning socially starts to happen. >> so, emily, how did we get to this point when you look at that college data, extraordinary. you look at fewer boys graduating from high school than ever, that's extraordinary as well. what got us to this place? >> so, this has been growing over time, and i don't think there's a single answer to that question. but i think i would echo what dr. king said, which is that there's an increasing expectation that school, which starts in kindergarten, will involve sitting quietly and

doing work in a desk. and for many boys in particular, that expectation is not realistic, you know, where their nervous systems are at that time. so we see boys who enter school at younger ages will be more likely to be diagnosed with adh d or a.d.d. and it follows them into elementary school and high school. i think a focus on these younger ages and thinking about what do boys need and is that different than what girls need and how we can differentiate is likely to bear some fruit. >> michael steele. >> emily, i want to follow up on what you said. i have two boys as well in their early 30s. but here's the rub. when my sons were in pre-k and kindergarten through fifth grade, a very good friend of mine who's a teacher here in washington, d.c., at the time,

said -- pointed out a lot of the things that we're now talking about 25, 30 years ago, about how, you know, my sons were being processed through educational system and to look out for certain opportunities that could actually wind up being deficiencies for them. how does this translate since this has been around for a while, how does it translate between how kids are raised in an urban community versus a suburban community, white kids versus black kids? because my sense is that now we're kind of focused on this because now all of a sudden young white boys are having problems that young black males had 30 years ago. >> yeah. it's an interesting point. i think it's certainly the case that particularly around these sort of overbehavioral diagnoses, we see that much more in communities of color and how much of that is because of school systems and how much of that is because of the way with black and brown kids is hard to

susz out. but i think some of what's happened is this has gotten more and more over the last 25 years. our expectations about what happens in kindergarten and when kids learn to read and how much can they focus, they've gotten more and more significant over time. and that's meant that some of the things that were identified early on have become true for a much larger share. i think you're absolutely right, as soon as it starts affecting, you know, students in higher socioeconomic groups, more white boys, it rises to the surface and that isn't how it should be but that's where we find ourselves. >> i have two older boys and 25, 30 years ago, the doctor sees them and two seconds in they're trying to throw ritalin out. they had problems sitting in class. yeah. i did too. do they have problems? yeah. and they're like you need ritalin. i swear to god. i said, listen, i'm going to leave this office until you give my kids a couple of years to see how things play out or a couple

months. some kids need it. no doubt about it. you can see it in the children that do. but that i found early on was always the instinct, throw ritalin at the boys, keep them seated in their chairs because, again, they're more active than young girls naturally. >> and there's more thoughtfulness now hopefully. >> i hope so. >> not just medication. dr. king, i have two boys ages 7 and 10. some of the stats are despairing. more men in the u.s. between 18 and 34 live with their parents and romantic partners. surges in depths of despair, those caused by suicide, overdose, alcohol nism the last 20 years. young men don't have the opportunity. what can we do as parents to prevent them from going down that path? >> right. we need to think about how we are modeling, and when i say "we," collectively as a culture and society but especially the male role models in their life, how are the men and boys' lives

modeling being overwhelmed by emotions, processing those emotions, naming those emotions, and doing something healthy to comb with those emotions. previous generations were stuck in a let's not talk about it or i'm going to deal with my emotions behind the scenes, and we haven't shown our children how to problem solve these emotions. women tend to be better at it. girls tend or the nurtured and openly share their emotions. we want boys to see a role model feeling emotion, name it, say i'm frustrated but i'm going to walk outside, take a run, i'm going to do something about it without hurting anyone else and without breaking the trust in the relationships around me so we can model these things and normalize processing emotions. >> wow. that is brilliant. >> so important because if a girl has suicidal ideationings or struggling with depression or anxiety, everyone seems to get

around and talk about it. we don't do that with our young boys enough. we don't do that with our young men enough. >> right. >> we have to do it. >> we're out of time, but we have to have you two back and have an extended conversation. >> i love it. dr. emily king and professor emily oster, thank you both very much for being on this morning. just scratched the surface here. that does it for us this morning. chris jansing picks up the coverage right now. >> i'm chris jansing. it is tuesday, february 15th, and we have got a lot to get to. this morning the trump organization's accounting firm cutting ties after it said a decade's worth of financial statements are not reliable. what it means for the former president trump and the multiple investigations into his company. and the latest fallout