democrats still helm some of these committees. >> and of course we're also awaiting the release of the january 6th committee's report set for later this month. unclear exactly what that will look like. we know the report will come out, whether there will be hearings. that still to be determined. "the washington post," camila, thank you for joining us this morning, and thank you to all of you for getting up "way too early." have a great weekend, everybody, "morning joe" starts right now. this is video from just moments ago in san antonio where basketball star brittney griner has touched down now on u.s. soil after her release from a russian penal colony. she was freed yesterday as part of a prisoner swap after ten months behind bars. there she is, stepping off the plane, just moments ago in san antonio. good morning, welcome to "morning joe," it is friday, december 9th. along with joe and me, we have

the host of "way too early," white house bureau chief at "politico." jonathan lemire, katty kay, and former cia officer, marc polymeropoulos. an nbc news security and intelligence analyst. >> look at them, willie, if you look at them lined up, can we have the three shot so we can explain what everybody is going to be talking about. we've got katty. she's going to be talking about the harry and meghan special and the response, quite a story in the "times," marc is going to be talking about his problems with the griner/viktor bout swap, and jonathan lemire is going to talk about just how horrible it is being a red sox fan and how our heart breaks just a little bit every morning. we have lined it up. and of course i'm going to talk

to you about baker mayfield, did you hear about baker last night? >> a big comeback, a couple of days after he signed with the new team. >> it's pretty crazy. >> here's baker mayfield. just kind of took that one over. not on roids this morning, i promise. did baker mayfield get cut by the panthers right? >> he got cut on monday. he comes in last night. learns the basic ins and outs of the playbook, meets these guys, came in after the first series. they said let's take a shot with baker. they were down 16-3 in the fourth quarter, leads him on one drive, then goes 98 yards with no time-outs, throws that touchdown pass to jefferson to win the game at the end. so he's had a brutal career. he was the number one overall pick a few years ago, having won the heisman trophy. struggled with the browns,

struggled in carolina, waved by carolina on monday, and maybe finding a home in los angeles until stafford comes back. >> it's a great story. but it's not as important as the brittney griner story, so go ahead, willie, i'm sorry to interrupt you. >> i agree. i was just going with you on that one. let's go back to brittney griner. she is back on american soil this morning. the plane carrying the wnba star touched down about 30 minutes ago in san antonio, following her release from russia yesterday. russian state media posted video of griner being told for the first time that she was heading home. >> happy. >> well, are you ready for flight? >> yes. >> do you know where you're heading to? >> no. >> you're flying back home. >> to the u.s.

>> okay. >> everything will be fine. >> everything will be fine. that, again, is video from russian state media. this from russian state tv. video of the prisoner exchange itself which took place, as we told you yesterday at an airport in the arab emirates. paul whelan is in russia, he has been in prison on charges of espionage. the biden administration, and whelan himself have disputed the charges. antony blinken said yesterday, the administration continues to negotiate with russia to secure whelan's release. >> this was not a choice of which american to bring home. the choice was one or none.

i wholeheartedly wish we could have brought paul home, just as at the time, i wish we could have brought britney and paul home when we secured the release of trevor reid back in april. we will stay at it. we have made every possible offer available to us thus far to secure paul's release. but in this moment, there was no way to bring him home along with brittney. >> the emotions yesterday were exceptionally intense obviously for the griner family, for the millions of americans who celebrated her release. it had to be heartbreaking and crushing for paul whelan, what about this guy who has been there for four years. how is he doing. his family has had extraordinary grace. these things don't happen by accident. a lot of that probably has to do

with the fact that the biden administration has stayed in constant communication with them. talked to them about the brittney griner release. letting them know they're working hard to release paul whelan. all of that being said, still an extraordinary statement from that family, just showing the lot of grace and a lot of class, unfortunately a lot of people on the sidelines yesterday wanted to use this for political purposes, could not show the same grace. >> we'll get into the criticism. the whelan family, the notorious criminal, the merchant of death, this would be the moment, this would be the exchange they could get paul whelan back home. it didn't happen. they put out a gracious statement, this was the right decision, and they hold out hope, and president biden himself said we are still working.

he guaranteed the family at that press conference, i guarantee the family we're still working on this. we are going to get him home. and marc polymeropoulos, i'm curious about your take here as we said yesterday, there are never any perfect deals in these moments. they said the state department and the white house said russia said it's this deal or no deal. what do you make of the exchange? >> i think as we look at something like this, you know, we have to look at this soberly. i don't see this as kind of a diplomatic triumph, i see it as president biden making a very difficult decision, and going through and this is what the u.s. government does, risk versus gain calculus. we're going to see incredible emotions when brittney griner eventually does an interview. the risks of this are real as well. we left an american behind in terms of paul whelan. we lost leverage over this because viktor bout was released and we did reward hostage

taking. it's okay to look at this soberly, to question this deal while at the same time noting that there is going to be joy in the griner household. i think that over the last several, maybe the last 24 hours, you know, my circle, former intelligence community officials, some with decades of experience on russia, everyone kind of was not agasp, but they did have raised eyebrows, this is an asymmetric deal. as they sat in the oval, they knew there would be draw backs to this. >> you know, it's very interesting, though, katty kay. a lot of the trumpers that are out there the same people who defends a president who sits down with nazis, forgetting that donald trump released 5,000 taliban terrorist, didn't get anybody in exchange and was actually working really hard to

have a september 11th summit with the taliban obviously at camp david. again, getting nothing in return. and this is, again, once again, just the hypocrisy is overwhelming. >> you can look at those cries of outrage coming from the trump wing o. republican -- of the republican party and dismiss them outright. they sound knee jerkingly political, they are frankly not worth considering. i think marc's got a nuanced and appropriate reaction, which is true things can be true at once. everyone can be delighted that brittney griner is coming home, with some real reservations about the asymmetry. you think of the cold war, swapped spy for spy, businessman

for businessman. it was a direct and fairly equal exchange that was usually made. here you had an unequal exchange that was made in terms of the severity of the crime of the people that were being swapped, and watching brittney griner pass viktor bout was chilling to see that he was being released, the fears that other countries around the world as tony blinken referred to will now think, okay, it's fine. americans are free gain. look what we can get in return for it. russia seems to have held a kind of weak hand here, and as we've seen russia do recently, played it with enormous force. they are ferocious negotiators. perhaps they weren't negotiating. russia got an awful lot out of this without holding very much, and that's a kind of alarming sign of what russia is able to

do. they're playing the same game in ukraine. a game of fear. they're doing it with brittney griner to their own advantage and the huge detriment of other people. it's understandable that people are concerned about the swap and what it says about america and the future and russia's role at the moment. >> reverend al, at the end of the day, though, somebody talked yesterday about the fact that if you're iran, if you are russia, if you are isis, if you're a terrorist organization or a terrorist state as these states are now, you can you don't value human life, so you can gauge in asymmetric warfare, we understand that. we're americans. we actually value human life. we actually value americans getting home. and sometimes, yes, sometimes we do things that don't line up

squarely on the page. we do it because we're americans and because we want to bring everybody home. >> it's really a question of values, and i think you're correct to say our values are different. certainly president biden knew all of the downside when he did it, but our values told him that the life of brittney griner and for that matter, paul whelan that they are continuing to negotiate for overrules the global political setup that you might say who's winning on this one, who's winning on that one. i do think, however, that putin risks a lot of people now that are coming to russia, helping as brittney griner did, their sports teams saying well, maybe i shouldn't go to russia. i mean, this could be something that russian people could understand that they would suffer from because if this was

the way brittney was going to be treated, i don't know if i would want to go to russia and play on their sports team as she did, and treated as a pawn like this. thank god she's home. thank good for those who stood by, cherelle her wife. the whelans who had more skin in the game took the high road, and let's continue to pray for paul. >> how fascinating that right wingers were talking about how she may have kneeled in protest at times during the national anthem, not showing proper respect to the flag. a lot of these same people never once criticized the thugs, the insurrectionists, the terrorists, that used the american flag that our men and

women fought for, used it to bludgeon police officers and set up an american flag as a weapon of death. so, again, the hypocrisy is just overwhelming. >> i never heard brittney say she wanted to undermine the u.s. institution either. >> or hang out with fascists, exactly. it's interesting these days, i'm finding more and more, rev, these days, the things that trumpy supporters, the things they have to do to try to find something to criticize others for, it all pales in comparison with them still supporting a fascist who sits down and has dinners with fascists, who won't criticize fascists who won't apologize for sitting down and having dinner with fascists. and who says they want to quote terminate the united states constitution.

game over. you can't criticize somebody for jay walking if you actually are supporting the guy who wants to terminate the united states constitution. game over. so willie, it's always interesting, isn't it, in the mind of kyrsten sinema, we don't know what's going on in the mind of kyrsten sinema, sometimes we can look at her and ask ourselves, what's she thinking? what's going on in that mind of hers? it's moved in quite a unique direction over the past few minutes and you have breaking news. >> it's just into us from "politico," jonathan lemire's colleague, arizona senator kyrsten sinema has announced she will be leaving the democratic party and will register as an independent. the senator said quote, i know some people might be a little bit surprised by this but actually i think it makes a lot of sense. the senator did not say whether

she would caucus with democrat s or republicans. i'm reading through the story, your colleague posted it to "politico." senator sinema says she's leaving the democratic party. democrats won the senate, to get to 51 votes. what does this mean for the balance in the senate? >> an absolute bomb shell this morning. and certainly democrats relieved that they won the georgia runoff. kyrsten sinema, quote, i never fit neatly into any party box and doesn't want to. she's registering as an independent. now, she is saying, though, that she attends to keep her committee assignments, which is a signal, she doesn't plan to upend how the senate is organized, therefore senate majority schumer, with the democrats having 51 controls the committee assignments. she's not committing to caucus with the democrats, she's

telegraphing she will. claiming this won't change anything. we should note there are two other independents, bernie sanders of vermont, and angus king of maine who ka kus with the -- caucus with the democrats as well. it certainly seems to be a signal from sinema they shouldn't count on her support. we know she was frustrating, to say the least, to many democrats. she didn't support initiatives. and democrats were so pleased with getting the 51st vote for georgia, they would be a little less reliant on those two. that seems a little more in doubt right now. we should note in this interview, sinema does not commit to running for reelection, but there's a safe bet, growing talk among democrats that she would be primaried should she stand for reelection. that's a safe bet this morning.

the bomb shell, kyrsten sinema leaving the democratic party just days after democrats secured the 51st vote in the senate. >> you look at poll numbers until the state of arizona. politically it makes pretty good sense. she does well with independents. she does okay with republicans. not quite as well with democrats. her approval ratings over the past few years, while she has been criticizing in washington, d.c. have been fairly strong in arizona and typically a little bit stronger than mark kelly's. but it's so interesting, katty kay, democrats were so frustrated by joe manchin because joe was out front, but there were so many times when they would be close to a deal on reversing trump's tax cuts, the worst parts of trump's tax cuts, if you consider give aways to billionaires and multinational corporations a bad thing. and kyrsten sinema would be the 50th vote getting in the way. the same thing with big pharma. there are many times when

manchin was lined up with the rest of the democratic party to move aggressively to reform some parts of the big pharma market. and kyrsten sinema was the person standing in the way. so, yes, i think democrats are going to be frustrated, but at the same time, she was going to be facing a tough primary challenge in a state where she's not belove by democrats. >> yeah, and she was often the stumbling block, particularly when it came to issues involving her financial backers or her friends in the financial industry or pharmaceutical industry. she would keep her views to herself on the other issue. when it came to the infrastructure bill, and the build back better bill didn't go through in the end, it was kyrsten sinema we couldn't get a response out of. it was not very easy to find out

what she believed, and that could be more frustrating for the administration. i don't think this will come as a surprise to anybody. if she carries on caucusing with the democrats. if she's suggesting she's inclined to, if she wants to keep her committee assignments, what is the senate going to do, it's not going to be big pieces of financial legislations or big pieces of legislation that might upset her own supporters or people she considers her base until the finance business community so it would be on administration appointments or court appointments, judges, and i wonder whether she would be inclined to caucus with republicans on issues like that. perhaps it won't change very much over the next two years. >> and willie, we saw again, lisa murkowski doing what many people can't do. she said no to donald trump this time. she got reelected, the tea party came after her, i believe in

2020. she got defeated in a primary, ran where you had to spell the name murkowski right. she won there as well. in certain states, being an independent works well. works great for angus king, and bernie sanders. it's got a very popular republican governor. arizona swing state, may end up back firing, if you just look at arizona, you look at the number of independents, you look at the fact that it is really the swing state along with georgia. this actually seems like a smart political move for her. and there were a lot of democrats saying this morning, good riddance. >> and we will see, as john pointed out rightly, independents, angus king, independent bernie sanders, both

caucused by and large, almost exclusively with the democrats. we'll see if kyrsten sinema is the same kind of independent. she said to "politico," nothing will change about my values about my behavior, suggesting she will continue to vote with democrats. we will see. still ahead on "morning joe." we'll be joined by white house national security council spokesperson john kirby on the heels of brittney griner's release from russia. she is back home this morning on u.s. soil. plus the justice department is asking a federal judge to hold former president trump's legal team in contempt of court. we'll bring in one of the reporters who broke that story. the house passes landmark legislation protecting same-sex marriage. we'll break down yesterday's bipartisan vote, and look at this, joe, before we go to break. look who's here, meteorologist bill karins. with a friday cameo. >> he's back. >> willie, this is like brady returning, right, you never thought it was going to happen.

>> broadway bill makes his triumphant return to 30 rock. how are you doing, man? >> this is my first time in the studio with you guys, since precovid time. that's like a long time ago. great to be back. and your weekend forecast, depends where you are if it's going to be great or not. a mini snowstorm going on. some people don't mind the snow. the kids wouldn't mind a snow day. teachers too. you're going to get that today. it's snowing hard in southern wisconsin, in northern portions of iowa. you have had significant snow overnight. chicago, it's an umbrella day for you. it's the worst. it's a cold rain. additional snow, 2 to 4 inches in lower portions of wisconsin. over the weekend, the storm system will weaken. another system behind it that could bring snow to the northeast for the first time. sunday night, monday morning, keep that in the back of your plans.

very cloudy and wet lately. that continues today. then we get a decently sunny day for the east coast on saturday. a huge storm into the west. 3 to 5 feet of snow in the sierra. 95 miles per hour winds on the coastline of oregon. you'll see pictures of that this weekend. ski resorts, snow up to here, 3 to 5 feet. sunday, this is when the storm will come through new england, snow during the day, central new york, sunday night heading into the hudson valley, and even by monday morning, we're going to have accumulating snow. we haven't had a lot of snow this winter yet. hartford could get accumulating snow. providence to boston, a tiny bit, enough to cover the grass. new york city, too warm, it looks like a rain event for you. once you get north of new york, that's when we get into the some of the snow. maybe enough to shovel and plow. not a huge event. 2 to 3 inches in a lot of area. still, it's the first snow of the season in many areas. we're a little bit behind schedule in christmas, two weeks

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so every day, you can say... ♪ youuu did it! ♪ with centrum silver. you don't have none of us under control. and you will never have us under control again. >> it felt like a victory but you knew you won a case, not changed a system. i've been in the movement, i knew the difference between moments and movements that won. it was a good momentary victory

r. but i knew there was no structural change in the criminal justice system. >> absolutely fascinating a clip from the new documentary titled "loud mouth" which was screened today, chronicling the decades long career of reverend al sharpton. i have so many things, rev, i want to talk about here but i want to start with that scene. you're pumping up the crowd, you know they need to be inspired. you've got a long fight ahead. you're that loud mouth, you're pushing it and i fast forward 40 years or so to arbery, ahmaud arbery, you go out, country divided and you sit there with the family, and it's a message

of reconciliation. now, i know a lot of that has to do with your age a lot to do with what mrs. king and others have said to you, but also, different times, different places and a different leader, and we get to see that evolution throughout this extraordinary documentary. don't we? >> that's exactly right. i think that the documentary shows me and the country growing into different phases and i believe that it is important that people see the different faces the country has gone through and i as the center part in it. you know, i really believe when you look at the documentary, and you see the marches we did in the '80s and '90s. people threw water melons at us

and said the n-word. this is from the director josh alexander getting footage from tv stations and documentarians at the time. you would think this is mississippi and georgia. this documentary explains that racism and bigotry was not a southern thing. it was all over the country. this is where donald trump grew up in queens, and how we responded to it, but i grew to learn how to make my response as mrs. king admonished me, be toward trying to heal and get things accomplished, not to match the drama with drama without an end goal of trying to make something real happen. so speaking of the king family, as i'm looking at this documentary, and i'm looking at how you've just seen, it opens up a tribeca, it actually sold out, there's this massive buzz, it's now going to open up

tonight. it's going to be opening up in 120 theaters, and, willie, there's just this momentum, but first of all, the first thing that hit me was that no civil rights leader has lived to see the documentary, the movie about his life, and that reminds me of what dr. king said the night before he was assassinated where he said, you know, i would like to live a long life, longevity has its place. you have been blessed with longevity, even though people tried to kill you. you have been blessed with longevity. it must be pretty extraordinary getting to see everything that's happened over the past 40, 50 years. >> no, it has been extraordinary, i think about

when i was a teenager, i worked for shirley chism's presidential campaign. i get to see the first woman black vice president, and barack obama, worked closely with becoming president of the united states. people i grew up admiring never lived to see. in fact, as you pointed out, that generation, the generation that minted me, the generation of jesse jackson and mark lewis, they never saw their heroes live to 40. you have to remember, dr. king, malcolm x, med ger evers were killed at 39 years old. they had to learn how to get older and i had to watch them get older and learn that. i'm blessed that i'm in a generation that i can actually bring my grandson to the movie today to see his grandfather. he's going to be 4 years old. dr. king never saw his children get old enough to go to college. we have made at least where we can live, now the question is how we can make life better for

everyone and at the same time, improve ourselves, admit our faults. it's not all glory in the picture. i talk about my mistakes, but it also, in the movie shows us we can make progress, and if we believe in what we're doing, we can make this country better even though in many ways it has not changed. in other ways, it has. >> we have been blessed to get to know you. i have been blessed to get to know you and consider you the closest of friends, and mika feels the same way, willie, we all do. congratulations, and i want to read quickly, willie, before we move on. a review from the "new york times." it says the documentary is quote equal parts time capsule, media critique, and authorized biography. each of those examinations has its own flaws but also offers insights into the man, the

moment, the current one but more pointedly, new york city of the 1980s and '90s. one of the most salient cautions is members of the news media were and remain unwilling to cop to their biases. sharpton has spent a lifetime calling the story tellers out for their slant and schooling us to do the same. as straightforward as it appears, loud mouth invites an engaged but necessary judicious scrutiny. and "loudmouth" releases today in 120 theaters and will stream on amazon and apple tv starting january the 13th. that is, willie, absolutely fascinating. >> it's really good. we have had a chance to see it. people who feel like they know rev, and followed his journey, are going to be surprised by some of what they have seen and learned. congratulations, rev, i can't wait to see this get out into the world today.

>> thank you. federal appeals court has overturned a judge's decision to appoint a special master to review thousands of documents seized by the fbi from mar-a-lago in florida. all as part of its criminal investigation. the ruling came after trump declined to appeal a court order ending his lawsuit that challenged the fbi's seizure of documents from mar-a-lago. the move now paves the way for federal investigators finally to get ahold of the bulk of documents collected in the search that took place in august. meanwhile, the department of justice reportedly has asked a federal judge to hold former president trump's legal team in contempt of court for failing to comply with a subpoena that requires him to turn over all documents in his possession marked classified. "the washington post" cites two people familiar with the matter who say a hearing is scheduled for today on the issue. let's bring in one of the authors of the piece, congressional investigations reporter for "the washington post," jackie alemany, good to

see you this morning. >> good morning. >> more bad news for president donald trump. what does it all add up to here? >> well, not bad news just yet, the court has yet to decide whether or not she is going to hold trump's legal team in contempt, which would most likely look like some sort of daily fine, if they ultimately don't agree with the terms that the justice department has demanded. one of the issues, the primary issue at play is the attestations that show that the trump team is in compliance with the may grand jury subpoena that required any and all, the attestations that have been

communicated do not list a document of custodians, showing that the trump lawyers are potentially not acting in good faith. they can't trust these assurances and they want barrel howell to force the lawyers to go further in making sure the court has complete confidence that they have done their best to search for any and all outstanding documents. >> it does seem that every day carries another bad headline for former president donald trump. let's say this happened and trump's office and/or trump himself is held in contempt of court. what does that actually mean? >> it's not as dramatic as the contempt proceedings we saw with the committee, when the house voted to hold various members, people like mark meadows, dan scavino in contempt, which was referred to the department of justice. we saw steve bannon was ultimately held in contempt.

he's facing potential actual prison time. in this scenario, it would most likely be a fine. that's actually what happened in the new york case as it relates to trump's legal issues in new york city, but in this case, it would be most likely a daily fine until the lawyers come forth and comply with the terms that the court would like them to see, which is, again, providing a full-throated attestation that they have searched every nook and cranny diligently, and that there is a specific name on it, that there is a lawyer that's carrying water here for the trump team who is now the custodian of these documents. marc, it does seem that most of the documents we assume after trump's own lawyers have searched what they can have been recovered, and are in the hands of the fbi. you and i had a conversation about what the real national

security issues were with this, beyond the legal implications, what are the national security implications of the documents being taken away and not particularly secure kept by donald trump. months into this, what are you now thinking about that, what does this look like from a cia intelligence point of view. >> sure. we still don't know in terms of the damage assessment of what occurred. the documents, some of which were marked top secret, which had to do with compartmented programs. is there any kind of spill of information that would hurt, or, you know, damage sources and methods. these are agents of ours. individuals who are spying for the united states, perhaps overseas, and perhaps even resettled now. were there communications capabilities that have been compromised. we still don't know in terms of the damage assessment. the second thing is what about our allies. we share a tremendous amount of information and we receive a tremendous amount of information

from things such as the british, canadians and australians, new zealand, are they going to be reticent to do this. i was on last week when joe and mika had come back from the state dinner with the french president. remember, there are reports out there that trump, for whatever reason, had actually kept a document, perhaps a personality profile of french president macron, is that important? well, it might be. what does that document say? does that document have things such as, you know, perhaps, intelligence collection methodology that we used to make an assessment on the french president, so i think in terms of our bilateral liaison relationships, it's quite important to see what happens, and of course just the ongoing kind of saga, if anything, of sources and methods that were compromised about it. it hasn't gotten a lot of play. it remains to be seen what happens.

i think there can be some real consternation until the intelligence community with what's going to come out in the near future. former cia officer, marc polymeropoulos, before i let you go, we have covered trivial matters like prisoner swaps, let's get to the serious stuff, xander bogaerts is a san diego padre. your thoughts. >> i have talked offline with lemire, my christmas is ruined, and i'll kind of leave it at that. >> i want to jump in here. what's the plan, lemire. let's bring lemire up too. the thing is, i'm a patient man. if there's a theory of the case. but if you're a -- and i'm dead serious, they win the world series in 2018, they trade away their reliever, so our bull pen

blows up. starting lineup blows up. the 2018 world series, none of the players are there. are you rebuilding? are you telling boston fans that we're going to be in last place for a couple of years. there's something three years down the road. okay, if that's the case, if that's the sacrifice required, tell us the theory of the case. jonathan lemire, there is no theory of the case. trade dead like comes, trade deadline goes. we do crappy trades. you look at the super stars we have let go and lousy players we have gotten in return. it's been one bad trade after another, and the worst part of it is, again, there's no theory of the case. tell me what you're doing. there's going to be two years of pain here, but three years in, we're going to start being competitive again, but they don't do that. it seems like they literally are playing like they're a small, small, small market team that has no money.

>> major league baseball is a wash with cash right now, and the trend is teams are locking up young stars to long-term deals. they're keeping them in house, and the boston red sox, one of the richest teams in the sport with the exception to that rule, and the theory of the case as flawed as it was, when they traded mookie betts, the last young superstar we gave away, we're going to trade mookie, and use the financial flexibility, and here we are two years later, we have let another star go. it feels like the ownership group, which is perhaps lost interest, you know, they own liverpool, the pittsburgh penguins now, there's talk they want to be involved in the nba's expansion team to las vegas in a couple of years. there's a ton of frustration as to what they're doing. as important as the red sox are to new england, fans are angry. they are angry at this team, and this is not going to be a pretty season if they don't make a lot of moves and fast, and starting

with keeping rafael demers. >> we have always been the little team that could, the little engine that could, i think i can, but looks like you guys in the bronx are going to crush us. then again, you can say that about four other teams in the american league east team too. we're going to end up buying the baltimore orioles again most likely. >> we're still accepting applications for fans in the bronx if you want to hop over to the dark side. we take care of our franchise players. aaron judge is easy to root for. >> no. >> think about it. >> no. >> the celtics are great this year. marc polymeropoulos, sorry about your christmas, sir. try to soldier through these holidays. we appreciate you being on this morning. coming up next, florida governor ron desantis holds a significant advantage over donald trump now, over florida republicans. we're going to show you new numbers. plus a look inside the turbulent

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ten minutes before the top of the hour. just days now after herschel walker's senate runoff loss in georgia, we're learning more about the inner workings of his failed campaign, a text message sent to walker's adult son christian, pleading for his help. in this text from over the summer, shared to nbc news a campaign staffer asked the son to help guide his father in his messaging. we know how that ended. joining us now, senior national

political reporter marc caputo. reading your piece, it seems it was just as messy on the inside. >> the problem that the campaign had, and this is according to multiple interviews with staffers over a long period of time, herschel walker didn't tell them the truth. he inhibited them from learning the truth. one of the things you want to do as a campaign is vet your candidate and understand his or her or their weaknesses. usually you do an opposition research book on your own candidate so you can say, okay, this is going to be a hit on us, and here's how we're going to deal with it. that was done twice with herschel walker, once before he ran. apparently this 500 page book landed with a thud on his desk, and they're like, look, you got a lot of problems. we discovered 500 pages of bad stuff on you in two weeks. he decided to press ahead anyway. then in the winter, he announced in august of 2021, the campaign realized, you know, we need to control our candidate a little

better. at 4:00 a.m., he kept posting these weird stream of consciousness twitter videos where he was giving these meditations, and they reached out to christian walker, can you get him to stop this, and christian walker did. fast forward to june of 2022, and by then, there are reports, and reporters sniffing around about secret love children and possible abortions that he paid for or asked people to have. herschel walker being an antiabortion candidate, and the candidate was having trouble getting through to herschel walker, getting him to stay on message. a staffer reached out to christian walker, can you help us with your dad. what do you mean? they said, look tell him to stop being a moron on television. that's a direct quote, read the playbook, et cetera. it's an insight into a campaign who had trouble managing a celebrity candidate who had no face what they were going to face, and didn't care about their professional opinions when it came to managing him.

>> this is a team of professional political hands who knew how bad walker was right from the out set. they come back in two weeks with 500 pages of stuff on herschel walker. >> right. usually that's a red flag. then by the winter of 2021 into 2022, when they realized that the candidate, herschel walker had not been straight with them. they did another opposition research book on their own candidate and found more stuff. in the end, they still didn't find that story of a former girlfriend, the mother of one of his four kids, who claimed that at one point, he pressured her and paid for her abortion. but that was one of those things that might not have been able to be discovered unless you did a deeper dive. the problem, according to the campaign staff is walker didn't allow them to talk to the women who were the mothers of his children. he had four children by four

different women, and for candidates, having former girlfriends, former wives, people you used to live with, that could be a vulnerability, and the campaign needs to know who they are, find out if they're on board. since they were unable to reach these people, and unable to talk to them, guess what happened, he kind of got ambushed. >> so, marc, you're looking at a new poll out of florida. there's been a lot of talk of donald trump's absolutely disastrous campaign launch, and it may be having an impact in the state of florida. tell us about it. >> if you look at those polls by wagner research, which is a republican polling firm, 500 republicans polled, ron desantis is off the charts at least among republicans in his approval rating. 79%, nearly eight in ten people have a very favorable impression of him in the republican party.

donald trump's numbers, 44%. the top line number for ron desantis is also far higher than the top line number for president trump or former president trump. so at least in florida, the home state of both desantis and trump, republican voters are increasingly and very clear about whom they prefer in the party, and it's ron desantis. it's not donald trump. now, desantis, is he going to run for president, is he not, that's a good question. we're going to find out in a number of months. >> marc, it's jonathan, a lot of republicans have a lot invested in governor ron desantis right now. some acknowledge, he's kind of a blank canvas. they can project what they want on him. the country doesn't know him yet. outside of his stunt with the migrants with martha's vineyard, which made him a national figure. what's the latest for people around him? i'm sure a declaration of a campaign is a ways off. is there more of an effort to

give him a national profile to let voters learn who he is. >> they're not sharing that with us. if we reverse or rewind, how he became a national figure ot -- of the republican party. the first high profile governor to fling his state open, and depending on who you talk to, he was more right than his critics. that sort of made him this big figure in the gop. then you move to the last legislative session. there was the parents' rights bill which has been dubbed the don't say gay bill. that gave him a national platform. his antiwoke act, which is his phrase or stop woke, that also did. so he's repeatedly been able to use stories and legislation in florida to kind of propel himself forward, and then that ultimate stunt with the migrants in venezuela. we have an upcoming legislative session about property insurance, i imagine he's going to decimate the trial lawyers.

the regular session is going to be in march. enough legislation there to possibly use to capture national attention. he's got a book coming out in feb. february. if you add those things up, what else can he do. this coming sunday, he has national donors coming into miami for allegedly a thank you dinner. while people aren't being asked to contribute, he's still interested in possibly running for president. i could imagine seeing him travel to an early state just as sort of a hello, showing a little bit of leg, but i don't think we're going to know anything very clearly about his intentions until after the legislative session sometime after the summer, you know, maybe memorial day, labor day, stuff like that. but unlike a lot of the also possible republican candidates for president, ron desantis has two luxuries, he's got time and money.

he's got about $64 million in the bank he can convert to a super pac. that goes a long way. >> it really does. i'm sorry, willie, go ahead. >> i was going to say, mark, did he have, at this point, did he watch donald trump with all of these self-inflicted wounds to get weaker by the day. does ron desantis have the guts to run against donald trump. remember, he ran those ads with little kids with maga onesies using their building blocks to build a wall. it was all linked to donald trump. is he really going to step out and cross donald trump and run for president? >> i have always held that ron desantis is not going to run against president trump unless the polling changes. well, the polling has changed. one of the things that you notice if you observe desantis. he's calculating, he's cautious. he's data driven, and he's disciplined. and so if the trend continues

and if there's really a space for him to take on trump and win, yeah, i think he'll probably do it. those are two big ifs, and there's got to be a lot more time to elapse. a lot more polling and to your point, your original point asking the question, there's this time, this period of time for him to make himself more of a national figure, how does ron desantis do that. how does he make his case without up running for president to position himself to run for president. we're going to have to see. >> we will have to see. nbc's marc caputo, thank you very much. and you know, katty, you have ron desantis in a pretty good position. donald trump, every three or four days, it seems, does something that completely undermines his ability to be a successful candidate in a general election campaign. his legal woes continue to mount, and it seems that ron desantis is sitting back and living by the old proverb, never interfere with your enemy when he's destroying himself, it appears to be the governor is

doing, and it's working for him well. >> trump has had the weirdest period, unlike trump, he's not been out there, doing rallies, apart from posts on truth social, and lawyers over the latest legal problems which he gets himself into almost every day, he has a run-in or loss with the justice department. desantis is enjoying the policy. the only caveat i hear is that people who know desantis aren't clear what it will look like when he does go head to head with trump, which presumably he will have to do unless trump pulls out of his pulling into the race. and they wonder whether desantis is brittle, thin skinned, and point to the fact when trump takes on his opponents, it's like a truck driving through you, and people close to trump

think that would be the same with desantis, and he wouldn't have the character to withstand the trump onslaught that happens in a primary campaign situation. i don't know if that's the case. it's one question mark over how desantis would handle donald trump when he gets the full force of trump's attacks on him. we are just past the top of the hour, just after 7:00 here on the east coast with the news that brittney griner is back on american soil. the plane carrying the wnba star touched down early this morning in san antonio following her release from a russian penal colony. russian state media posted video of griner being told for the first time she was, in fact, heading home to the united states. >> what's your mood? >> happy. >> well, are you ready for flight? >> yes. >> do you know where you are heading to? >> no, i don't know where. >> you're flying back home.

>> to the u.s.? >> to the u.s. >> everything will be fine. >> russian state media also released video of the prisoner exchange which took place at an airport in the united arab emirates. the video appears to show griner crossing paths with viktor bout, the notorious russian arms dealer the united states traded for griner's release. former u.s. marine paul whelan remains in russia, where he has been since 2018, on espionage charges. secretary of state antony blinken said yesterday the administration continues to engage with russia to secure whelan's release. >> this was not a choice of which american to bring home, the choice was one or none. i wholeheartedly wish we could have brought paul home today on the same plane as brittney, just

as at the same time, i wish we could have brought brittney and paul home when we secured the release of reid back in april. we will stay at it. in this moment, there was no way to bring him home along with brittney. >> that's a sentiment echoed by the president yesterday that the white house, the administration will continue to work to secure the release of paul whelan. some republicans meanwhile used griner's release yesterday as chance to criticize president biden and in some cases, brittney griner herself. >> a wnba star picked up for marijuana, he left a marine behind. it's not an equal exchange. >> we traded a basketball player for a known terrorist, a criminal. i hope brittney realizes she

lives in the greatest country in the world. the price of freedom isn't free, and i sure hope she'll stand for the national anthem now. >> our president is so weak, he couldn't get these two guys for these one terrorist, really. it's shameful. >> on cable news and on social media throughout the day, a number of republicans sounded off on the prisoner swap, one georgia congresswoman called for impeaching president biden over the exchange. you won't be surprised who that was. pennsylvania congressman scot perry referred to griner as quote an american who smuggles drugs. again, she was arrested with vape cartridges at the airport in moscow. former president trump posted on his social media site that griner hates america. called her release a stupid and unpatriotic embarrassment for the country. joe. >> again, the hypocrisy is just absolutely insane. i mean, the same republicans that were criticizing joe biden

for not bringing paul whelan home failed to place blame on the man who was actually in the white house when whelan was arrested illegally, jailed ill -- illegally. why didn't donald trump do anything in 2018 to get paul whelan home. why didn't he do anything in 2019 to get paul whelan home. why didn't donald trump do anything in 2020 to get paul whelan home. he was praising vladimir putin the entire time, why not actually call his buddy and ask him to release an american, i guess because he just didn't give a damn. despite celebrating the releases of other americans imprisoned while he was in office, donald trump didn't publicly utter whelan's name even once as president. this is according to a review of public remarks and tweets,

carried out by the independent. trump clearly had the power to negotiate a prisoner swap deal. however never was this war evident in 2020, when he negotiated with, get this, not with his friend putin to get paul whelan home. he didn't give a damn that putin arrested whelan and let him rot in jail. instead, no, he was negotiating with the taliban, and he freed up 5,000 taliban terrorists. what did he get in exchange? nothing. he got nothing in exchange and he wanted to actually invite the taliban, the people who actually allowed the 9/11 attacks to happen to be launched from their country. he invited them on september 11th to camp david. let's bring in staff writer sam

nichols, pulitzer prize winner, eugene robinson. when these idiot, and they are total idiots, when these idiots going around talking about joe biden being a bad negotiator, they are literally talking in defense of with donald trump the biggest loser, the worst negotiator we have ever had. he falls in love with dictators in north korea. he completely kowtows to vladimir putin in helsinki, and he doesn't even give a damn about paul whelan, lets him rot in jail for three years while biden and blinken and this administration are working their tails off to try to get him home. >> and charge about patriotism especially rings hollow. this is one more american not in a russian labor camp or penal

colony. that alone is a good thing. it doesn't matter if it's brittney griner or anybody else, if you're an american, and seeing an american who got an unjust sentence and the president of the united states can get that person out of a russian penal colony, look, that's a good day. that's a good day for the united states. the republican answer to everything, and it's a word i have used about trump many times, it's child like. there's a child like inability to simply be mature, to be patriotic, and to say, i have my disagreements with the president, but this is a good day for americans that another one of us, another one of our fellow citizens has come home. now, let's get to work on making sure that they all come home. of course they're always performing and cavorting for that audience of one down in florida. >> always gesturing, and it's so

fascinating, they kept talking about with contempt this basketball player. you know what they call him, gene? you know what they call her. an american. and this is why republicans lose elections, they keep trying to help my former republican friends. this is why you all keep losing elections because you're so small and petulant and petty, and you don't realize when somebody comes home, there's a celebrations. when americans return home, there's a celebration. i'm not comparing brittney griner to the prodigal son. i bring up the bible verse, even the prodigal son comes home, what happens, the father and the family celebrates, and yet this contempt, gene, and by the way, hiding behind the american flag, oh, she kneeled and she

protested injustices she sought, and so we should negotiate her return home. these same people, gene, i haven't heard most of them criticize insurgents, terrorists, mobsters, thugs that use the american flag as a weapon to bludgeon the men in blue, the men and women in blue. >> yeah, they say that was legitimate political discourse. you know, it's like they're getting smaller and smaller, joe. really. because this is a moment, i think, when just any -- all compassionate, patriotic, right thinking americans should celebrate, and should say this is a great day. she was facing nine years in a grim russian penal colony, and now she's going to get to come

home. and, you know, among the happiest people are the relatives of paul whelan who unfortunately didn't get to come home. they know what brittney griner's friends and family have gone through. they have some idea what she was going through, and they're very happy this deal was made. i wrote a column yesterday about why this is a great deal and a great day, and of course got reaction from the small minded, the small minded knee jerk republicans all just sort of parroting the line, bad deal, bad deal. and without any thought and without any thought to what it looked like, how it came across, you're right, that's why they keep losing elections and they're going to keep doing it. >> and, willie, you look at kevin mccarthy, it's one thing

if they're back benchers saying stupid things, i was a back bencher once, i said stupid things. it's another thing if you have a guy who's going to be the next speaker of the house probably if he can get 218 votes on the floor, just looking small and petulant and childish. sometimes ronald reagan taught us this, bill clinton taught us this, sometimes you just celebrate when something happens because you're an american. can you imagine -- i can't imagine being in that position or any position where i'm a leader and i'm that angry about an american coming home. especially when i'm sitting back defending a president who never tried to get paul whelan home next. >> and this fits neatly for them into their sort of wedge issues for republicans. brittney griner, a wnba star who refused to stand for the

national anthem in the wake of george floyd's murder, they look at that detail, there it is, here's our wedge on this issue. i guess, reverend sharpton, we shouldn't be surprised at all. we have seen this all before. there are of course frustrations, disappointment, devastation in the whelan family, and for a lot of americans that he was not part of the deal. brittney griner is home, and that is objectively good news as the administration has said it will continue to work to get paul whelan back to the united states. >> no, i think it's great news, and i think the administration will continue to work to get the freedom of paul whelan. i have been in many meetings this year with the president, and each time he mentioned, and talking about brittney and paul whelan, we have been raising the issue and working with brittney's wife. let us remember, we're talking about putin here, to suggest or infer that we would let an

american stay with putin because they protested something in america, which makes america america the right to protest shows not only how small they are but how confused they are about the values that this country supposedly stands for. i guess if you cannot say anything about someone you supported for president having dinner with a person that admires hitler and the same person that was president wants to redo the constitution to his own liking, i guess you could see having legitimate protests which is part of america's values as something that would warrant you remaining a prisoner of vladimir putin. >> and by the way, americans get it, americans are smart enough to get it. there are people protesting during george floyd, there are a lot of americans that didn't really get black athletes, and white athletes kneeling during the national anthem, they didn't

like it, they didn't understand. but they understood, i'm white, i don't understand why they're doing this, but this is america. this is part of america, you don't put somebody in a russian labor camp and keep them there because they're protesting on a protest that you may not understand. this is a bigger point. even americans who didn't understand kneeling during the national anthem, again, there is a patience and an understanding. you remember the nfl when it happened, we heard time and again, never going to watch the nfl again, nfl ratings are down, all the right wingers going oh, this is the end for the nfl. i heard people saying i will never never watch an nfl game again. here we are two, three years later, nfl ratings have never been higher. the league has never been hotter. what does that mean? that means americans are pragmatic, they get it, that

happened, we may not understand everything about the protests. we may not get why -- but it's because we haven't lived that experience. just like we haven't lived brittney griner's experience. we weren't a black woman, we weren't a gay woman in waco, texas. we'll never understand, right? why do i say all of this? i say all of this to say that americans are pragmatic. americans understand for the most part. and these harsh republicans that keep using these same stupid tactics, what am i going to say, they keep losing. this doesn't work politically. americans don't want leaders who hate. they don't want leaders who divide, and republicans under

donald trump using this strategy, they just keep losing, jonathan, and they're going to keep losing and if they can't celebrate an american coming home and being freed from a russian penal colony, they will never understand the goodness of americans. >> what should be more of a bipartisan moment to celebrate than an american citizen coming home after spending ten months in a russian jail, and yet we're not seeing that here, we're seeing this be turned into yet another wedge issue. and president biden made clear that he wants it bring both home. administration officials have said to me and others that was never really an option. it was one or none, as it was put yesterday. it was griner or no one. and as an aide put it to me, could you imagine the backlash they would have received if they had turned down an opportunity to get griner home. that was unthinkable, they wanted to get her back to the united states. but, tom, this is also really

about vladimir putin. griner was snatched on the eve of the war as a political pawn. and he's hanging on to whelan because he views him as a high value asset, accusing him of espionage, the u.s. has said that's not the case, and their demands to get him out were a spy that the u.s. says we don't even have, we don't know who you're talking about, as well as someone held in german custody. let's look forward. the administration, they're going to try to get whelan home. what cards do they have left to play? that's a crude metaphor about a human being. vladimir putin is thinking about this as a geopolitical gain. how do we make it happen? >> that's actually a good point about the geopolitical gain. a lot of republicans are asking as if they have never seen a prisoner swap in russian and american relations, and during the cold war. people who had no idea who viktor bout was until a week ago are suddenly very incensed about

his release. i don't know where we go from here, and putin's demands -- putin is not exactly the most reasonable guy. he's not exactly tethered to reality these days. and he may just be making outlandish demands so that then when he finally gets the things he wants, we sigh with relief, that trade we can make. that guy we have. that would be kind of his style to do that. it also could be that he genuinely thinks we're capable of springing people, you know, in -- from other countries and putin has a very cold war mentality. he thinks that the united states, russia, are in charge f the world and we can pretty much both do whatever we want to do. the fact that whelan was charged with espionage makes it hard for the russians to climb down.

griner was the easy case, and again, a warning to americans that if you go to russia, you are potentially a target. but griner was the easy case to make to say, fine, we'll let out this petty criminal, you know, who has brought marijuana into our country, and in exchange for somebody that putin feels very strongly about for one of his pals. with whelan, having already gone down this road and kept him for as long as they have, they have painted themselves into a corner where they're going to need somebody that they can justify to the russian public to say this guy that we've built up, you know, into this spy case is somebody we can let go. it's not just putin. it's the whole environment where the russians have created a kind of conundrum. they have to find somebody worth the candle given how they have

built up whelan into being this, you know, spy or espionage, this person who's guilty of espionage. >> tom, the fact that you have all of these republicans claiming joe biden was a terrible negotiator, and what donald trump did with the taliban, releasing after 5,000 taliban terrorists, getting nothing in exchange. it's more of the same with donald trump, cozying up to north korea dictators, to vladimir putin, to autocrats. one bad deal after another. >> the north korean example, i think, is the best one. the north koreans got everything they ever wanted in terms of legitimacy and recognition, and a free hand to act. while the president of the united states literally talked about falling in love with one of the worst dictators on the planet right now. but it goes back to the problem that the republicans simply are

not -- simply don't care about policy. this is all about notching wins on a scored board that don't make any sense. >> your point earlier about why republicans lose. what an opportunity for republicans to say, listen, we are the opposition. we don't agree with the president, but like the good patriots we are, like the people that care about this country that we are, like the people who could be responsible stewards of foreign policy one day, if we ever get the chance again, we welcome this fellow citizen home. you know, we don't care about whether she protested, we don't care about her personal life. we care about the fact that an american citizen was held in a russian jail. they simply can't do it in part because of their base and in part because of this incredibly juvenile petty inability to

celebrate anything that might actually rebound on to joe biden as even remotely positive, and i think that's why they're not going to talk about donald trump. it's easy to play that whataboutism game with trump. he was incompetent. he didn't know what he was doing. he did a lot of damage to american foreign policy but republicans who keep saying we want to move past trump should do that, move past trump, and to say, look, when dictators take our people, we want them back. and anybody who can get them back is doing a good thing for the country. they are not capable of this. they are simply constitutionally incapable of such positions at this point in the republican party. >> willie, just basic patriotism. incapable of basic patriotism.

condemning a fascist who says he wants to terminate the constitution of the united states, condemning a fascist who sits down and has dinner with other fascists who say publicly i like hitler. they are incapable of just basic patriotism. >> a reasonable person might say, great news, brittney griner is coming home, and we got to get paul whelan home, let's keep working on this, and that is exactly what president biden has said, underlining something you said a minute ago, we should remind our viewers paul whelan was arrested and sent to prison in 2018. donald trump was president in 2018, 2019, 2020, did not secure his release either. the atlantic's tom nichols, thank you for being with us this morning, we appreciate it. national security spokesperson john kirby is standing by. we'll talk to him about what comes next with russia following

the prisoner swap. plus, ukraine voicing new concern about russian rocket launchers being placed near europe's largest nuclear power plant. the ongoing reporting from nbc news that a number of cold and flu medicines becoming very difficult to find across the country. maybe you have noticed that as cases of the flu continue to rise. what pharmacies and health experts are recommending now as potential other options. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. options. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. izes your home insurance, here's one that'll really take you back. wow! what'd you get, ryan? it's customized home insurance from liberty mutual!!! what does it do, bud? it customizes our home insurance so we only pay for what we need! and what did you get, mike? i got a bike. ♪ only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪

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we are just coming up on the bottom of the hour, 7:29 in the morning. looks like a beautiful morning on a friday in december at the white house. joining us now, national security council coordinator for a strategic communications at the white house, retired rear admiral john kirby. thank you so much for your time this morning. we appreciate it. we have been showing video this

morning of brittney griner touching down in san antonio, officially back on u.s. soil. we know she'll be headed to brook army medical center to get looked over. she did look good just from sort of a superficial view on the plane from that russian state video that we got. what more can you tell us about her condition this morning? >> we've talked to our team on the ground who met her there as well as the team that traveled overseas with her on that airplane. they say she's in very good spirits, appears to be in good health. certainly she's a very happy woman today as is her family. you're right, she's now going to go to the treatment for a minute. she's going to get looked after by docs and nurses there just to make sure everything is okay, and that she's all set and ready to go back home. they'll take as much time as they need to do that. we're glad to have her back, and everything that we have seen tells us that she's in pretty good health and very good spirits. >> this was great news when it crossed yesterday morning, admiral, and then we started getting more over the last 24

hours, details about how this deal came to be, going back several months. i know you all have been working on getting her home. what was the pivot point? at what point did you say, okay, looks like we're going to have a deal, we're going to have her home. >> it all came together, willie, last week, about a week or so ago, is when we realized we were actually getting to some sort of closure here on this particular deal. now, again, we tried four months to get both paul and britney home together. that was the goal, to get them both. but it became very apparent, certainly late last week that the only deal possible was brittney griner for viktor bout and the president made the decision to going and execute the deal. then the last 96 hours or so, last four or five days have been spent on working out the logistics of the actual exchange. location, timing, that kind of thing. >> in terms of their crimes or

brittney griner's case, alleged crimes, no comparison, she was arrested for having vape cartridges. viktor bout is the merchant of death, one of the worst people currently walking the face of the earth. so how did you measure this? you all have come under criticism for this being an unequal deal in terms of what we gave up to get brittney griner home. how do you exercise that criticism. >> nobody is doing back flips about the fact that mr. bout is a free man. he would have been six years from now. we are going to watch this closely, protect our national security with him back on the street, but again, it just became apparent, will legal, that the only way to secure even one of the two, and in this case, it was brittney, was to release mr. bout, and the president made the very tough decision that we need to get at least one of these two americans home. and he was willing to make that

trade. it was not a decision he took lightly, nor would we ever. we're going to make sure no that he's a free man, we're looking after our national security interests and we're as vigilant as we can be. >> viktor bout returns to russia radically different than the one that he left. it is a country that is getting pushed around on the battlefield by ukraine. it's a country that is economically in the most dire straits it has been in in decades. it's a country that's actually getting hit within russia, by artillery from ukraine. i'm curious, how do you see this war going over the next three, four, five, six months? >> so, joe, i think winter is coming. and it's a tough physical environment in ukraine, so i think we don't have any expectation that the fighting is

going to stop just because of winter. but it will be harder for both armies to conduct ground operations and even air operations as the weather turns bad over the next couple of months. the ground will harden in february and march, and that will make it easier for ground operations to resume in a larger scale. i suspect that the russians will want to take some time over the course of the next couple of months to try to replenish themselves. what we're going to do, including in coming days, we're going to continue to make sure that we are getting ukraine the weapons and the systems that they need so that they can continue the fight, that they can continue to defend themselves. whether it's over the course of a very cold long winter or well into the spring, whatever that takes, we're going to make sure they've got the tools they need. >> and what are the concerns inside the white house with the attacks inside of russia itself? >> well, again, the ukrainians haven't talked about those

attacks specifically, joe, so i'm not going to speak from military operations on their part. i would just tell you that our focus is making sure they can defend themselves and their territory, and we have, from the beginning, and joe, you and i have talked about this, we have from the very beginning been mindful of escalation concerns here, and i recognize that russia has escalated this conflict. i know they have made it more violent on the ukrainian people. we have always been concerned about not letting this war escalate beyond that, making it what putin claims it is, a war against the west versus russia. that's not good for the ukrainian people to have the war escalate to that nature. we have been mindful of that concern. >> admiral, good morning, it's jonathan lemire. one of the remarkable things about this prisoner swap is it did come against the backdrop of war where there was really no communication on many levels between the west and moscow. this channel was open. this channel was open to talk

about a prisoner swap. there's obviously been a lot of debate in the last 24 hours about the fate of paul whelan. i know you said the white house tried to get him home too. is that channel still open? where do you go from here? what moves could be made to bring him home as well? are you still talking to the russians? >> yes, the channel is still open, and yes, we are actively working to try to get paul home. they treated him very differently. based on the sham espionage charges they leveed against him, they put him in a special category that just made it impossible at this moment for us to get both of them home in exchange for mr. bout. we're going to keep that conversation going, and we expect we're going to continue to work on this. nothing changes about the effort to get paul home. we're going to keep at this. it was based on the fact that they have put him in a different categories on the charges that made this particular trade impossible. >> admiral, did the russians

propose a one for one swap where you could choose either brittney griner or paul whelan or was it brittney griner or nothing? >> in this case, the deal was bout for brittney, that was as far as it was going to go. so we were left with, do we bring brittney home and execute this swap, get an american citizen home to her family where she belongs or get none of them. it wasn't going to work getting both of them. we are still working them. we're going to be careful what we put out in the public space in terms of ongoing negotiations. we know now, and we know better what the russians are looking for with respect to mr. whelan. >> the russians never posed a bout for whelan swap, one for one? >> they put paul in a different category. and so the only person that they

were willing to trade bout for was brittney griner. >> and do you feel like, admiral, that the united states that has the bargaining chips? is there another viktor bout toiling in a prison somewhere to offer russia to get paul whelan home. >> we're working on these negotiations. i think you can understand why i'm not going to talk about what options we might or might not have at this moment. we're working this hard. and i think it's better that we do this not in the public eye. >> fair enough. katty kay. >> john, obviously the russians will sell this as a win because it was in some senses an asymmetric swap, are you concerned the message around the world, russia managed to get the arms dealer out in exchange for somebody who was a basketball player with a much less severe

crime. and how concerned you are that this also sends a message to authoritarian countries, if you pick up an american and hold them captive, you will get something in exchange for that, that america is now open for business in the negotiating? >> well, so we have made it harder. the president has put into place visa restrictions, sanctions, other accountability members to make it harder for hostage takers to succeed at this, and so we don't think that's a valid message that anybody should be taking away from this, but it's not a new tactic for mr. putin, katty, you know that. this is not something new he discovered with brittney griner, the idea of taking foreigners, particularly americans and trying to trade for something as a concession. that's why the state department has a designation for countries around the world, including russia about the detention risk , if you're going to travel overseas, we want you to go to the state department and look at what that risk is, so you can

travel fully informed. we're going to make sure we limit the ability, restrain the ability for hostage takers to be successful about this. that said, if you do everything right, and you get taken and it's a wrongful detention, under sham legal purposes like it was for brittney and for paul, you need to know as an american here at home, this president and this administration is going to bring you home. this was not an easy decision that the president is willing to do that. we made an assessment here about mr. bout before this exchange, a national security assessment, that was done. we are going to continue to make sure we can protect our national security interests going forward, whether it's guest a guy like mr. bout or anybody else. >> and brittney griner is home in the united states this morning, and the work continues to get paul whelan home, national security coordinator for strategic communications at the white house, retired rear admiral john kirby.

admiral kirby, thank you for time this morning, we appreciate it. >> yes, sir. still ahead, nearly a month after the mysterious murders of four college students in idaho, police finally may have a lead. we'll have the latest on what investigators are looking at this morning when we come right back. when we come right back (burke) every year you're with us, you get fifty dollars toward your home deductible. it's a policy perk for being a farmers customer. (customer) do i have to do anything? (burke) nothing. (customer) nothing? (burke) nothing. (customer) nothing? (burke) nothing. (customer) hmm, that is really something. (burke) you get a whole lot of something with farmers policy perks. see ya. (kid) may i have a balloon, too? (burke) sure. your parents have maintained a farmers home policy for twelve consecutive months, right? ♪ we are farmers. bum-pa-dum, bum-bum-bum-bum ♪

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♪♪ beautiful live picture of the united states capitol at 7:45 on a friday morning. arizona senator kyrsten sinema has announced just this morning she will leave the democratic party and register as an independent. the senator saying quote i know some people might be a little surprised by this, but actually i think it makes a lot of sense. in an interview with "politico," the now independent senator said she would not caucus with republicans and she intends to vote the same way she always has, meaning by and large with democrats. gene robinson, what's going on

here. a lot of people have viewed senator sinema as an independent in spirit anyway, and had to wait and see. three days after democrats finally said, yes, we've got a 51-49 clear majority now in the united states senate, she defects. does this really change the balance of power in the senate, though? >> right, willie. this just in, kyrsten sinema is not a reliable vote for chuck schumer. right? we've seen this movie before. i think in practice it sounds as if this is not going to change all that much at all. assuming she caucuses with the democrats or at least votes the way she's been voting, and if she wants to keep her committee assignments and she says she does, i think that means she's going to caucus with the democrats, and since they're still going to run the joint. look, she was a very reliable vote for all of joe biden's

judicial nominees. she was not a reliable vote for what the democrats wanted to do with the trump tax cuts and all sorts of fiscal matters. she wasn't going to be a reliable vote on that stuff anyhow, and the democrats now have 50 votes, minus sinema's, so if they can keep manchin on board, they can do things in the fiscal realm in reconciliation, the same way they were able to do it last term. so it may not change a whole lot. we'll have to see. unless she has other surprises up her sleeve. >> and this may well be more about politics back home in arizona. she's up for reelection in 2024 and was facing a potential primary from democrats, now she runs as an independent and doesn't have to face that. stay tuned. "axios" is reporting this morning that some democrats are trying to stop outside groups from running a third party

ticket in 2024 fearing that would hurt president biden's chances of reelection if he chooses to run again, which he has hinted and suggests he will. for more on this, political reporter for "axios," alexi mccammond, good to see you this morning. are there already efforts to form third party tickets? was this a real threat for 2024? >> yeah, and thanks for having me. there are outside groups, including one notable one called no labels set out to spend $70 million to recruit and fund a third party alternative presidential ticket in 2024. when i talked to them, they didn't rule out putting forward a ticket, if president biden officially decides to run for reelection. but they said that they're committed to putting forward an alternative if voters want that. and they say this because they're looking at polls that show that increasingly voters are unhappy with both parties, and they're looking at this unique political moment thinking it might be ripe for this time for a candidate to take off.

but democrats are looking at history. they're looking at data, and they're looking at the reality that a third party candidate in 2024, would, they say, simply be a spoiler that could hand the presidency to donald trump. >> so it's jonathan, two parter for you, why would a third party be more of a threat to democrats, and if that is indeed the case, what are democrats doing about it? >> yeah, well, look, independent voters, and those third party minded voters tend to lean democratic. that means they're usually more open to looking for an alternative than that hard core conservative base that trump is so good at keeping. trump's voters are more loyal to him than biden voters are to him. third party candidates are not usually ultra conservatives, a third party candidate who is anything, but staunchly conservative would hurt democrats again, because as you know well, folks supported biden to be sure, but a lot of people who supported him supported him

because they don't like donald trump. so if there's some sort of alternative between biden and donald trump those democratic voters might consider someone else and instead ultimately help trump or another nominee because they're siphoning voters away from the democratic nominee and we saw it with jill stine and hillary clinton. >> you are doing work with the primary campaign and there's been so much talk about the democratic party about which state should go first. the proposed order should go south carolina first and then new hampshire and nevada on the same day, then georgia, michigan and notably absent is iowa. are we going to see these changes in time for 2024. >> there are so many hurdles facing president biden and democrats prefer the 2020 calendar. georgia officials including the secretary of state who has to approve this move in helping

democrats make the change and they insist that they must have their primaries in the same day. republicans can't host their primary before march 1st and it throws a wrench in the democrats' plans and the democrats involved in the process say they're not giving up. we won't know the final decision until the first week of february, but democrats want to make a nod to voters of color, and they want to reward a state that has rewarded them in the past two cycles alone. when i talked to them they say, look, we have changed rules every four years now. so if georgia doesn't somehow make it in the window for 2024, i would expect to see democrats continue this push to try to get it in the early window for 2028. >> south carolina, of course, the state in 2020 that changed everything for joe biden and perhaps changed american history. alex mcammond. good to see you. eric adams announced an

aggressive new plan to care for the growing number of people suffering for untreated mental illness across the city. we'll speak to a new york city paramedic who, quote, has never witnessed a mental health crisis like this one. that conversation is next on "morning joe." is next on "morning joe." then own it support your immune system with a potent blend of nutrients and emerge your best every day with emergen-c you've put your dreams on hold. remember this? but i spoke to our advisor, and our vanguard investments are on track. “we got this, babe.” so go do what you love. thanks for being our superhero. only at vanguard, you're more than just an investor—you're an owner. giving you flexibility to follow your dreams. that's the value of ownership.

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it is just before the top of the hour with the view south of manhattan from the top of our building at rockefeller center. this morning there is new reaction to a controversial move by new york city's mayor to help to deal with the current mental health crisis in the city. last week mayor eric adams announced authorities in new york would more aggressively intervene to get people into treatment giving first responders the discretion to hospitalize gone they deem a danger to themselves, but our next guest says the mayor's new policy is not the answer. new york city paramedic anthony

almager writes, for one thing the mayor is shifting more responsibility for a systemic crisis to an overworked medical corps burned out from low pay and the strain of the pandemic. many ems workers are suffering from depression and lack professional support much like the patients we treat. several member of the fire department's emergency medical services have died by suicide since the pandemic began and hundreds have quit or retired and many of us are stretched to the breaking point. i fell in despair myself. the spring of 2020 left me so exhausted and sleepless that i thought about suicide, too. our ambulances are simply the entrance to a broken pipeline. we have broke down the house of mental health in the city and the people you see in the street are the survivors who staggered from the ashes and anthony joins us now. he is a lieutenant paramedic with the new york city fire department bureau of emergency medical services and author of

the book "riding the lightning," a year in the life of a new york city paramedic. thank you very much for being with us and thank you as a new yorker for what you do every day and there are no slow days in new york, and we are so grateful to you especially in the last couple of years. in terms of this new policy, how do you read into this, your new job, what do you expect it to do, as you understand it? >> one of the things i wanted to bring up. it's not a new policy in that ems has always decided if you should go to the hospital or not. the new thing to this policy is that eric adams, the mayor is putting police in a position to override ems. so the medical professional comes on scene and is trying to make a determination whether you might be a danger to yourself or others and then what used to happen is we'd bring cops in to help us mitigate a potentially dangerous situation, but they're

not doing that. now police may override ems which sets up conflict between two first responder agencies and the other agency is we're bringing people into hospitals that don't have adequate beds, don't have adequate care and don't have the ability for a linear process to put together the puzzle. >> it has grown exponentially in recent years. talk to us about the system that is now being put in place to treat those. someone who you were a police officer and you've underlined the fact that there could be conflict in that decision. if that person was then able to go to a hospital, what happens next? is there enough beds to care for them or is this housing afterwards? is this going to help at all? >> no, there's no housing that i'm aware of. there aren't enough beds and not enough staff and right now we're bringing patients in the

hospital and two days later they're on the street and we know them, their birth dates because they're frequent flyers. maybe the nurse or a doctor comes down for a 20-minute consult and the health care system is broken and severely understaffed. if you're going to put someone together mentally, you need to have them go to the hospital and ems takes them in and then linear care all of the way through. you need to provide housing if they're homeless. you need to have social workers and mental health people guide them along the way so they could be productive members back into society and we don't have that and what that does is when you put them back on the streets it burns us out, and we had several members commit suicide and other ems members are leaving in droves. you have the component of what am i doing here? i'm picking up people and they're not getting the care. it feels like i'm spinning my tires in the mud.

>> anthony, all of it, as willie said, we are extremely grateful for all that you've done not only throughout your career, but especially the past three years. i cannot imagine the hell that you and other first responders and mental health practitioners and nurses and doctors have been through. so what's the solution? obviously, there's always been this pushback to leave people in the street. it's inhumane. most mayors understand there's nothing humane about having someone with mental health challenges lying on grates in the middle of winter. so you've laid out the problems. you've talked about what we need for solutions. what does that look like? how much does that cost? how do we get from where we are now to where you think we need

to be? >> you're absolutely right, joe. there's nothing humane about being homeless. i was homeless for two years myself, so i know intimately what it's like to feel hopeless while being homeless. the issue is, you're right, there has to be investment. the cost in that i don't know. i know what it would cost to properly invest in ems so that you have front line providers to bring people in, the emts and medics who work so hard to begin with. we are constantly understaffed. so you need to have people go into the hospital. you need social services for them. it has to be an infrastructure built from the ground up. i agree with the mayor. people should be brought in from the streets, but then what? and i think it's a splashy headline, and makes for good cover. it also makes people think that there's an action being done, but it's a reaction. when we need is real action on this policy and this problem so

that people can have definitive health care going forward who are mentally broken, and i think what happens with the public is he'll do this, and it won't happen to me. it's not going to be me. i never thought i would be homeless. i never thought i would attempt suicide. you're one paycheck, you're one family crisis away from this happening and like i mentioned us and ems, several members have committed suicide since 2020, so you think this won't happen to you. the public needs to be brought onboard to invest in this because it sets up a safety net for them when they go down that path and so many of us will. there's a lot of the patients that we're picking up who were recently homeless, who were recently members of society who fell through the cracks in the system and that's what the pandemic exposed. the monetary number, i don't know. i imagine it would be great in the beginning, but a short term big investment for a long term gain. you get these people back into

society and they become productive and it makes them a better overall place to live in. >> anthony, you would agree as i think you stated that we are facing a crisis in terms of people that are homeless and mental health conditions and there are some that question whether police and ems workers and the conflict there and deciding on who should be taken off the streets and some of us saying whether the police should have the answer, but you shouldn't have the final decision or the final answer, but you did agree that mayor adams should have to do something. i mean, there is a real problem here. the question is, short term, big investment, how do we get there. it will have to take more than mayor adams to do that, and i don't know if there's governor affairs and there's got to be a real input of resources, but adams and people have to start that conversation, and i think this is what he's trying to do

by doing this is to at least say we've got to look at this because it is really an obvious problem that has grown in the city. >> 100%. he has to start that conversation, but the start of the conversation has to have a full, thought-out plan. >> right. then what happens is he has to reach out to the governor and the federal help to say hey, this plan needs these resources. we need investment in ems and we need to stabilize the workforce because they'll be in the front lines on this, and we need more training for them and we need to define the role of police and mental health. there's a push to have cops less engaged and there's something called the be heard program which sends a social workers and an emt to go evaluate people who are not critical mental health crisis, but that's underfunded and that's not fully thought out. there's not enough people to work that. mayor adams should start this process and go and petition to

get help for this. it's national and not just new york city. new york city is acute. the headlines are there, but it really needs to be a whole, national program to get people back on their feet. >> thank you for speaking up. it is so important to hear from you on the front lines and not just politicians on this. lieutenant paramedic with the new york fire department bureau of medical services, anthony almojera, thank you again and thank you for your service to our city. we're grateful. >> thank you for having me on. >> we have crossed the top of the hour here and we can report that wnba basketball star brittney griner has landed in san antonio, texas, this morning to be checked out by doctors before she heads home to arizona. she is back on american soil. she returned from russian imprisonment alone as the swap did not included retired united states marine paul whelan who has been held in russia for years. paul's brother released a statement yesterday expressing an understanding of the situation writing in part, the

biden administration made the right decision to bring ms. griner home and to make the deal that was possible rather than waiting for one that wasn't going to happen. of course, going on to express his disappointment and hope that the administration will continue to bring paul whelan home which it has vowed to do. joining us now live from san antonio, marisa parra. what's the latest there? >> good morning. so griner has been back on the ground on u.s. soil for roughly three hours. we are out here to brooke army medical center and this really is a place that specializes in this sort of thing. you look at the history here. 2014, bo bergdahl was brought here and trevor reed and these were people imprisoned overseas and you can see stepping on to u.s. soil after the ten-month ordeal. the difference with trevor reed is we knew in advance before he touched down that he had significant health issues that needed addressing.

by all accounts we're not hearing that from the griner camp. >> we understand that she was brought here for routine medical evaluation, but in terms of what happens next. that's going to be a conversation, right? they're going to look at how she's doing physically and then the state department says that largely they'll talk about together, what her needs are. since we learned about this in the last 24 hours, just like anything else in the united states it has been so polarizing. you have critics saying what happened to paul whelan? you just mentioned his family is heart broken over this. they're happy for the griner family and this should have been a package deal and it was one or none and by one, they meant griner alone. there have been a lot of critics over there saying this was not a deal that should have been made given the fact that viktor bout, this russian arms dealer known as the merchant of death, a sinister name, someone putin has been wanting for quite some time. they say maybe we should have

negotiated differently and there are supporters out there, and griner's family that are so happy to have her back and they say let's just celebrate that we have our own back on u.s. soil and even her agent that didn't mention whelan and griner's own wife cherelle saying once they have a chance to settle down, their next step is trying to advocate for other americans wrongly imprisoned overseas. the first steps are to settle down and for griner to reacclimate to be back on u.s. soil for the first time in a long time and admiral kirby told us just a few moments on "morning joe" that it does appear that brittney griner is not only in good spirits, but good health. they'll check her out closely, but good news there opinion marisa parra from san antonio, thank you so much. joining us is chris coons, a

member of the foreign relations committee. thank you for being with us this morning. your reaction to the news of brittney griner arriving this morning on american soil and this complicated deal who kirby said we're not doing back flips in the white house, and we wanted paul whelan home and we will continue to ask for his release. >> any time an american returns home is a great day. all americans should celebrate the return of brittney griner to the united states today. it's clear from what secretary blinken and others have said what president biden said that vladimir putin was offering a one for one swap and was not willing to give up paul whelan and despite how hard the secretary of state and many others tried thanks just not a deal that was on the table. let's not forget what's really going on here is that vladimir putin is unjustly arresting and imprisoning americans. there is a lot of finger-pointing in our nation's

capitol today. i just wish folks can find it in their hearts to be happy for brittney griner's family and for this american to have returned home. president biden is determined to get paul whelan out. he's been imprisoned since the previous president and it is very difficult to get americans released from foreign prisons. i've met with a number of families who have family members who are in prison in iran or in north korea, in this case, in russia, and i think the president and the secretary of state and many others have done great work to get brittney griner return to the united states today. >> senator coons, obviously, the whelan family has been extremely gracious about brittney griner coming home without paul. what more, specifically, does the u.s. have in its tool box to get paul whelan home? are there allies and there's been speculation that perhaps germany could be involved with releasing someone that the russians wanted and that doesn't seem to have happened, but

realistically, is washington now at the end of the road in terms of what it can offer moscow? what else do you think could be done to get paul whelan home? >> look, let's first recognize that in the middle of russia's brutal invasion and occupation of ukraine, it's remarkable that there was any exchange that happened here. i don't think we're out of options for pursuing the release of paul whelan, a marine who has been unjustly imprisoned for a number of years now in russia. as you mentioned, katty, we could turn to our ally, germany and the details of what is being potentially negotiated. there were no offer on the table here. there have been some statements made that he has pressed for the release of someone we don't have. that always complicates some sort of a prisoner exchange.

presidents of both parties, republican and democrats for decades have exchanged prisoners being held in the united states for prisoners being held in other countries. let's not miss the point that what's happening here is that vladimir putin scooped up two different americans, brittney griner and paul whelan on trumped-up charges and used them as a brutal chips in his ongoing rules-based order. >> good morning. it's jonathan lemire. we want to switch to politics here at home. one of your colleagues, arizona senator kyrsten sinema announced she is leaving the democratic party and she is moving to independent. this after the democrats thought they had a 51st vote in georgia. can i get your reaction to senator sinema's bombshell news this morning? >> i first read her editorial

and she explains her views on why she's made this surprising announcement. what i am relying on is her quote is i'll get up and go back to work and nothing much will change. i look forward to continuing to work with her. she has been an incredibly effective legislator who was at the very core of getting two of the bipartisan wins this last year. i'll remind you, president biden was just in arizona celebrating the investment of $40 billion in a new state-of-the-art semiconductor chip plant and senator sinema was critical to the infrastructure bill, one of the biggest and most important legislative successes of the last two years and contributed to the chips and science act which is going to bring advanced manufacturing and in particular semiconductor chips back to the united states and back to arizona. i'm a member of the judiciary committee. we just won a 51st seat with senator warnock's re-election. that makes a big difference on

how the judiciary committee will operate, and i want to look forward to senator sinema continuing to be a regular and strong and reliable vote for judicial nominees in this coming congress. frankly, i don't think this will change very much. >> all right. senator chris coons of delaware. as always, thank you so much for being with us. i hope you have a great weekend. all right, let's bring in presidential historian, doris kerns goodwin, her book "leadership in turbulent times." let's talk about leadership, doris. a very interesting thing has happened with joe biden. he's a guy that's been underestimated his entire life, a lot like ronald reagan. i remember growing up my parents kept talking about, my mom especially, they came from -- they were, you know, blue dog

democrats from the deep south. talked about how ike wasn't really that smart and he just played golf all day and kind of dodded around and worked to ike and reagan's advantage and now you have newt gingrich saying we've underestimated joe biden. this guy keeps sneaking up on us and keeps winning. can you talk right now about how biden was mocked and ridiculed by democrats in the primary, he beat them all. mocked and ridiculed by republicans over the past two years, and he keeps surpassing expectation. >> you know, sometimes we make a mistake when we look at leaders. we talk about what they do, but it is also who they are as people. when biden first had the hundred days people understood that he was a man who was maybe the right man for the moment. he had been through adversity. he had a certain humility. he was acknowledging errors and learning from his mistakes and there was a sense that he would

speak with candor and honesty to the people. i've been thinking about this so much lately because i think that was the great thing that zelenskyy was able to become the "time" person of the year because it's the power of example that he set. he was a man who showed resilience, and he's a man that showed courage and i don't want to exit right now. i want ammo in help he had the contagious confidence and it's the spirit of the ukrainian people that won that award, as well. it's made me think so much about president trump. we talk so much about what he does because he's always doing these extraordinary, amazing, terrible things in many ways, but it's really who he is, that's the power of example that we want a lead tore set. i think what trump has done is you've got a person who doesn't accept losses. he'll change the rules of the game rather than accept the loss even if it means term nighting the constitution. he's a man that doesn't acknowledge errors and blames

his mistakes and lies and doubles down on that. is this what we want for our children? someone who says the deal is a good deal if he wins and the other side loses and no compromise at all and he hasn't shown humility and empathy. what we need to think about in our leaders is about who they are and my guy, lincoln, it wasn't just saving the union and ending slavery. it was who he was, character above all is who he matters as leaders and that's what historians and biographers do right now. >> you look at lincoln. his first year in the illinois legislature he took an unpopular vote about slavery in d.c. it was one of six or one of serve and -- and it would be lincoln who would keep pushing that through his entire career. with joe biden, i think another thing that's fascinating is

we've had one politician after another, george w. bush talking about how he was going to bring both sides together. of course, had barack obama talking about there's not a blue america or red america, there's a united states of america and joe biden said i can get both sides working together and of course, he was mocked not just by republican, but by a lot of progressives on his own side that said don't deal with the republicans. you're wasting your time, old man. you're out of your depth. it's not 1974 anymore, but you look at the accomplishments. you look at the bipartisan infrastructure deal. you look at the bipartisan chips act and in a bipartisan way they codified marriage equality. you can go down the list. the pact act. you can go down the list one after another what he's done in ukraine working with mitch

mcconnell and republicans. this is an extraordinary list of bipartisan achievements. >> you know, you're right, joe. people mocked him for belonging back to a time in 1970s when the two sides did get along and maybe you needed that experience and that knowledge that it happened before, that they did have bipartisanship when he first came into the senate, that they were friendly and used to stay in washington and they didn't run home to raise the extraordinary funds and he came from that tradition and maybe knowing that allows you to say we did it before and we can do it again and it's almost like you've been at war so long and he didn't know what peace was like and the same people are here and we have different polarization, but there are things we can do together, and i know what that is like and it's worked and the amount of legislation that he's gotten through in a much more difficult time is quite extraordinary. he should be feeling pretty good

right now. doris, for better or worse, we've been marching through extraordinary times over the past six years. i'm wondering what your thoughts are with donald trump starting to lose a step or two even in the republican party, the extremists, the election deniers getting absolutely rouded. it's remarkable, the american people rose up from arizona to wisconsin to pennsylvania all across america to georgia, they rose up and -- and just thumped election deniers, and i'm just wondering, our good friend john meacham had said that we seemed to be in the 1850s leading up to the mid-term election. i'm wondering, has that clock gone back a little bit now for you? are you feeling a little bit better about where we are? >> i definitely am. i think when you think about it

this was the first time in the midterms that the american people had a chance to speak since january 6th. so it was an accumulation of things that happened, the hearings, i think, really made an educational impact on the american people and they saw what happened on january 6th and what the president's role was and then still the idea that the big lie was still out there and that there were people that were not accepting that loss and that was the whole reason for january 6th and then you had the combination of what the extremism was and you had roe v. wade and all of the things that pulled into it and then they finally had a chance to vote and they came out and you're right. election deniers all across the board undone and they have to think about what kind of people they want to be as a nation and i'm optimistic anyway, but at least this gave me a real chance to express that optimism. >> i -- i share your optimism, and i will say even in the darkest of times i would read

history. listen, listen to speeches of churchill. i'd read your book. >> exactly. >> history was always so comforting. thank you for being here. thank you for your words and your work and "leadership in turbulent times" is always a go-to for me and i appreciate you being here. >> thank you, joe. so glad to be with you guys. >> have a great weekend and let's hope the red sox actually pick up somebody. >> coming up next on "morning joe," former u.s. ambassador to russia michael mcfaul and he'll talk about brittney griner's release and the idea to do something that donald trump never talked about in three years when paul whelan was seized while donald trump was president in 2018. how do we get paul whelan home, as well. plus the justice department

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you don't have none of us under control! [ cheers and applause ] and you will never have us under control again. [ cheers and applause ] >> that was our week. it felt like a victory, but you knew that you won a case, not changed the system. i'd been in the movement since '12, and i knew the difference between moments and movements that won. so it was a good momentary victory. ♪♪

but i knew there was no structural change in the criminal justice system. >> that's just absolutely fascinating and a clip from the new documentary titled "loudmouth" which was screened today in nearly 120 theaters nationwide. the film chronicles the decades-long career of reverend al sharpton. i have so many things, rev, i want to talk about here, but i want to start with that saying and there, you're pumping up the crowd. you know -- you know they need to be inspired. you've got a long fight ahead. you're obviously, as you say, you're the loud mouth, you're pushing it and i fast forward 40 years or so to arbery where ahmad arbery and you go out in georgia and you go out, country divided and you actually sit there with the family, and it's

a message of reconciliation. now i know a lot of that has to do with your age and it has a lot to do with what mrs. king and others have said to you, but also different times, different places and a different leader and we get to see that evolution throughout this extraordinary documentary, don't we? that's exactly right. i think that the documentary shows me and the country growing into different phases, and i believe that it is important that people see the different phases the country has gone through and not gone through, and i as a center part in it. you know, i really believe when you look at the documentary and you see the marches we did in the '80s and '90s where people threw watermelons at us and used the "n" word and they showed the

actual, raw footage. none of this is acting and this is the director alexander getting footage from tv stations and documentarians at the time and you would think this is mississippi or georgia. this documentary explains that racism and bigotry was not a southern thing. it was all over the country. this is where donald trump grew up in queens and how we responded to it, but i grew to learn how to make my response as mrs. king admonished me, be toward trying to heal and get things accomplished and not to match the drama with just drama without an end goal of trying to make something real happen. >> so speaking of the king family, i'm looking at this documentary, and i'm looking at how you're just saying, it opens up in tribeca, it actually sold out. there's this massive buzz and it

is now going to open up tonight -- it just keeps growing. it will actually be opening up in 120 theaters, and -- and really, it -- there's just this momentum, but the first thing that hit me was that no civil rights leader has lived to see the documentary, the movie about his life and that reminds me of what dr. king said the night before he was assassinated or he said, you know, i would -- i would like to live a long life. longevity has its place. you've been blessed with longevity even though people tried to kill you. you've been blessed with longevity. it must be pretty extraordinary getting to see everything that's happened over the past 40, 50 years. >> no, it has been extraordinary. i think about when i was a teenager, i worked with shirley

chisholm's presidential campaign and now i get to go see the first black woman vice president. i get to see a barack obama i worked with closely and became president of the united states as a black -- things and people that i grew up with never lived to see. the generation of jesse jackson and john lewis, they never saw their heroes live to 40. you have to remember, dr. king, malcolm x all were killed at 39 years old. they had to learn how to get older and i had to watch them get older and learn that, so i'm blessed that i'm in a generation that i can actually bring my grandson to the movie today to see his grandfather. he's going to be 4 years old. dr. king never saw his children get old enough to go to college. so we made at least where we can live not a question of how can

we make life better for everyone and at the same time improve ourselves and admit our faults. i talk about my mistakes and in the movie it shows us we can make progress, and if we believe in what we're doing we can make this country better even though in many ways, it has not changed. it other ways it has. >> coming up, federal investigators are poised finally to get a hold of most of the documents seized from donald trump's beach club. this as the former president's legal team may soon be held in contempt of court. the latest on both of those headlines straight ahead on "morning joe." in dreams... you can hold your entire world in the palm of your hand. and turn time inside out... again and again. and you can do it all with your eyes wide open.

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♪♪ ♪♪ ♪ ♪ >> it's always interesting, isn't it, in the mind of kyrsten sinema. we don't actually know what's going on in the mind of kyrsten sinema and sometimes we can look at her and ask ourselves, what's

she thinking? what's going on in that mind of hers? well, it's moved in quite a unique direction over the past few minutes, and you have breaking news. >> it's just in to us from politico, jonathan lemire's colleague there. arizona senator kyrsten sinema has announced she will be leaving the democratic party and will register as an independent. the senator said, quote, i know some people might be a little bit surprised by this, but actually, i think it makes a lot of sense. i'm just reading through burgess', where kyrsten sinema announced she's leaving the democratic party which raises the question, democrats just won the senate and probably got to 51 votes, what does that mean for the balance now in the senate? >> an absolute bombshell this morning, willie, and certainly democrats are very releefred that they won the georgia

runoff. kyrsten sinema said i never fit neatly into any party box and doesn't want to. she is registering as an independent. she is saying, though, that she intends to keep her committee assignments which is a signal that she doesn't plan to up end how the senate is organized, therefore, the senate majority leader schumer with the democrats having 51 control the committee assignment. though she's not committing to caucus with the democrats, she's telegraphing that she will, that she will be who she always is. there are two other independents, bernie sanders of vermont and angus king of maine who caucus with the democrats and perhaps sinema is doing that, as well. we don't know yet how much this will change. democrats have 51 votes in the senate, but it certainly seems to be a signal from sinema that she is frustrating to say the least.

she didn't support their initiatives along with joe manchin of west virginia and democrats were so pleased by getting the 51st vote with georgia because they would be less reliant with those two. that seems to be a little more in doubt right now. we should note that sinema does not commit to running for re-election and there was talk among democrats that she would be primaried were she to stand for re-election that she'll face far more opposition and that's the safe bet this morning. the bombshell, kyrsten sinema leaving the democratic party just days after the democrats secured the 51st senate. >> politically, it makes sense. she does well with independents and she does okay with republicans and not quite as well with democrats. so her approval ratings over the past few years, while she's been criticized in washington, d.c., have been fairly strong in arizona and typically stronger

than mark kelly's. it is so interesting, katty kay, that democrats were so frustrated with joe manchin because joe was out front, but there were so many times when they were close to a deal on reversing the tax cuts and the trump tax cuts if you consider giveaways to billionaires a bad thing and the same thing with big pharma. there were many times when manchin was lined up with the rest of the democratic party to move aggressively to reform some -- some parts of -- of the big pharma market, and kyrsten sinema was the person standing in the way. so, yes, i think democrats are going to be frustrated, but she will be facing a challenge in a state where she's not beloved by democrats. >> yes.

she was often the stumbling block and her friends in the financial industry and her friends in the pharmaceutical industry and she would keep her views to herself on other issues and when it took to the infrastructure and the build back better bill didn't go through in the end and it was kyrsten sinema that we couldn't get a response of, and sinema kept her cards close to her chest and it was not very easy to find out what she actually believed and that could be actually more frustrating for the administration. so i don't think this will come as a surprise to anybody if she carries on caucusing with the democrats. she's suggesting she is inclined to if she wants to keep her committee assignments and then it won't change very much. you look over the next two years, what's the senate going to be doing? it's not going to be big pieces of financial legislation that might upset her own supporters or people she considers her base in the finance or business

community. so it would be on administration appointments or court appointments, judges, and i wonder whether she'd be inclined to caucus with the republicans on the issues like that. so perhaps it won't change very much over the next two years. >> and willie, we just saw again, lisa murkowski doing what many people across the country can't do. she said no to donald trump this time. she got re-elected. the tea party came in, i believe, after 2010 and she got defeated in her primary. she ran as a write-in candidate as an independent where she had to spell the name murkowski right. in certain states being an independent it works great for angus king and it certainly worked for bernie sanders in quite some time and in a state that, yes, it's got a very popular republican governor. arizona is a swing state and actually this seems to make a lot of political sense for

kyrsten sinema and may end up backfiring, but if you just look at arizona, you look at a number of independents and you look at the fact that it's really, it's the swing state along with georgia right now, this actually seems like a pretty smart political move for her and there are a lot of democrats who will be saying this morning, good riddance. >> yeah, and we will see, as john pointed out rightly, independents angus king and independent bernie sanders, both caucus by and large almost exclusively with the democrats. we'll see if that kyrsten sinema said nothing will change about my values and nothing will change about my behavior and we will see. coming up with the welcome release of brittney griner, one of our next guests is drawing attention to another american held in russia. former u.s. ambassador to russia michael mcfaul joins us next to

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let's turn back to some more news here. federal appeals court has overturned a judge's decision to appoint a special master to review thousands of documents seized by the fbi from former president trump's mar-a-lago home in florida all a part of the investigation. the ruling came after trump declined to appeal a court order ending his lawsuit to challenge the fbi's seizure of documents from mar-a-lago. the move now paves the wait for

federal investigators finally to get a hold of the bulk of documents collected in the search that took place in august. meanwhile, the department of justice reportedly has asked a federal judge to hold former president trump's legal team in contempt of court for failing to comply with the subpoena for failing to turn over documents marked classified. "the washington post" cites two people a hearing is scheduled today. >> congressional investigations reporter for "the washington post," jackie alemany. >> good morning. >> more bad news for president donald trump. what does it all add up to here? not the court has yet to decide. that hearing is today about whether or not she is going to ultimately hold trump's legal team in contempt which would most likely look like some sort of daily fine if they ultimately don't agree with the terms that

the justice department has demanded. one of the issues really the primary issue at play here is that the attestations that trump's legal team has provided that showed the trump team is in compliance with the may grand jury subpoena had required any and all documents with classified markings to be returned to the federal government should have an explicit custodian of those documents. the attestations as they are now and have been communicated to the judge do not list a document of custodians. that's one of the central issues here that the department of justice is arguing show that the trump lawyers are potentially not acting in good faith, they can't trust these assurances, and that they want the judge to force the lawyers to go further in making sure that the court has complete confidence that they have all done their best to search for any and all

outstand ing documents. >> every day carries another bad headline for president donald trump. say this happened and trump's office and/or trump himself is held in contempt of court. what does that actually mean? >> yeah. so it's actually not as dramatic as i would say the contempt proceedings we saw with the congressional committee when the house voted to hold various members of the former president's white house people like mark meadows, dan scavino, in contempt, which was then referred to the department of justice. steve bannon was held in contempt. he's facing potential actual prison time, but in this scenario it would most likely be a fine. that's what happened in the new york case as it relates to trump's legal issues in new york city, but in this case, it would be most likely a daily fine until the lawyers come forth and

comply with the terms that the court would like them to see, which is, again, providing a full-throated attestation that they have searched every nook and cranny diligently and that there is a specific name on it, if there is a lawyer that's carrying the water here for the trump team who is now the custodian of these documents. >> most of the documents we assume after this -- after trump's lawyers have searched what they can have been recovered and are in the hands of the fbi. you and i had a conversation when the story first broke about what the real national security implications were for this. beyond the legal implications for donald trump himself, what are the national security implications of these documents having been taken away and put into a place that was not particularly secure and kept by donald trump at mar-a-lago? months into this, what does this look like from a cia intelligence point of view? >> sure. we still don't know in terms of, you know, the damage assessment of what occurred.

again, the documents, some of which were marked top secret, which had to do with compartmented programs, you know, was there any kind of spill of information that would hurt or damage sources and mept thods. these are agents of ours, individuals spying for united states perhaps overseas or perhaps even resettled now. were there are communications capabilities that were compromised. we don't know in terms of the department of justice assessment. the second part, what about our allies? i think it's not talked about enough is we share a tremendous amount of information and we receive a tremendous amount of information from the british, canadians, australians, new zealand. are they going to be more reticent to do so if it turns out some of their information was leaked? final point, and i was on last week when joe and mika had come back from the state dinner with the french president. remember, there are reports out there that trump, for whatever reason, had kept the document,

perhaps a personality profile of french president macron. is that important? well, it might be because what does that document say? does that document have things such as, you know, perhaps intelligence collection methodology we used to make an assessment on the french president? in terms of our bilateral liaison relationships, it's quite important to see what happens and of course the ongoing kind of saga if sources and methods were compromised. there's a lot to find out about this. this story, it remains to be seen what happens. i think there will be real consternation in the intelligent community with what comes out in the future. the city of arkansas has elected an 18-year-old to be the next mayor. we'll talk with jaylen smith.

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welcome back to "morning joe" as we creep up on the top of the hour, just about 9:00 in the morning at the united states capitol, 6:00 a.m. as you wake up out west on this friday, december 9th. let's get right to the new development in the homecoming of brittney griner. the wnba star is back in the united states this morning after spending months in russian custody. nbc news chief foreign affairs correspondent andrea mitchell has the latest. >> reporter: this morning brittney griner is back home on american soil, freed after ten months of detention in russia. the beginning of her journey broadcast on russian state media. >> happy. >> do you know where you are headed to? >> no. i don't know where. >> you're flying back home. >> she's on her way home after months being unjustly detained in russia. >> reporter: president biden with brittney's wife cherelle after they talked to her from