i wrote in the bulwark, we did focus groups, viewers who might strategically vote on haley because they don't like trump, and good on you. that's what i would do, too. if she does well on the backs of the undeclared voters, then what? there aren't a lot of those folks in south carolina on super tuesday. i think it's a really tough road ahead. >> yeah. trump up then in new hampshire, but polls in subsequent states, including south carolina, up 20, up 30, up 40. >> yeah. >> there's no real race here at all. tim miller, great to talk to you. come back soon. we really appreciate it. thanks to tim and thanks to all of you for getting up "way too early" with us on this monday morning. "morning joe" starts right now. with obama, we won an election that everyone said couldn't be won. obama dropped missiles, and they ended up hitting a kindergarten. if that's the case, he'll end up being indicted when he leaves office. obama wants to -- he doesn't want to talk about it. he doesn't want to -- he doesn't even mention them in a statement.

it is all coming through iran. >> you mean president biden? >> they were interviewing him two weeks ago, and they said, "what would you advise president obama? the whole world seems to be exploding." >> they never report the crowd on january 6th. nikki haley, nikki haley, nikki haley, nikki haley is in charge of security. we offered her 10,000 people, soldiers, national guard, whatever they want. they turned it down. >> he was confused. he was confused, the zacharias moussoui -- confused, the zachas moussoui - the same way he said joe biden would start world war ii 2. >> we would be in world war ii very quickly if we are going to be relying on this man. >> clearly, donald trump is not the same man from 2016. >> when i came, everyone thought bush was going to win. supposedly, he was a military person, great. he got us into the middle east. we came up with a new word for -- a new couple words for "corn." viktor orban, hungary, very powerful. he fronts on both russia and

ukraine. >> they were funding hezbollah and hamas. >> when he gets off the teleprompter, there's a lot of mistakes, stream of consciousness stuff. >> we're going to play strong protections to stop banks and regulators from trying to de-bank you from your, you know, your political beliefs. what they do, they want to de-bank you, and we're going to de-bank. think of this. very big place we've done well, sioux falls. oh, is that right? so sioux city, let me ask you, how many people come -- how many people come from sioux city? >> oh, good morning. welcome to "morning joe." it is monday, january 22nd. good to have you all here with us this morning. with us, we have -- >> yeah. >> yeah? >> i was going to say, you know, the nikki haley thing.

>> that one. >> it was disturbing. we talked about this on friday, about how obama and -- there was a poor guy who said, "oh, they're making things up now to distract from joe biden." no, i'm not trying to distract from joe biden. joe biden is doing just fine. we're talking about the fact that, time and time and time again, donald trump, who obviously, as ron desantis said, lost more than a step, and, as nikki haley says, is really confused up there and says, "our kids deserve better than somebody who doesn't know where they are or what they're doing." but he goes through a speech, starts to say obama and then cuts himself off. his mind is going, wait, is obama really president still? >> what decade am i in? >> then he continues and goes ahead and says obama's name

because he can't remember biden's name. we had the same thing the other night. it was nikki, nikki, nikki, and he says it three times, and then he moves on, thinking, wait, that doesn't sound quite right, but maybe it's right. he comes back and accuses nikki haley of being nancy pelosi on january 6th. we gave her -- think about this, donald trump is saying, "we offered the former u.n. ambassador 10,000 troops," and she wasn't even there. she wasn't even government. the confusion just continues. you know, i spent a lot of time with joe biden. i can tell you, joe biden knows where he is. he knows what decade he's in. he sure as hell knows who he is running against. there's just really no comparison here. yeah, you want to talk about who is addled, this is an easy one. let's talk about who is addled. who is addled is a guy who can't

even remember that barack obama hasn't been president of the united states in eight years. >> yeah, and you have to think, is this age? it could be. but it also could just be the mountain of legal action against this man, just crushing him and making him so stressed that he's literally confused. >> well -- >> because no one person could handle all the cases that he has against him, all the lawyers he has to deal with, all the lawyers he can't get. i mean, some of these cases put him away in prison for the rest of his life. >> except for the fact he is in 2016 most of the time. even in 2016, he forgets who he ran against. he talks about the landslide victory against barack obama. jonathanlemire, let me bring you in here because i know you've been seeing this. talks about the landslide against obama. he talks about obama so much as president of the united states, that on the radio show, brian

kilmeade has to interrupt him and correct him. oh, trump is lying. no, he's not. his mind is scrambled eggs when he gets up there and gets tired. he really thinks that he is running against barack obama. just like he thought nikki haley was speaker of the house on january 6th. >> yeah, of course, he launched his political career on the back of the racist lie of birtherism which, of course, involved barack obama. much of his 2015/2016 campaign was against the obama/hillary clinton, you know, access to the democratic party. i think a couple things are at play here. first of all, anyone who spends time with trump, close advisers to donald trump, he's almost fossilized with 2016, the bug preserved in amber, if you will, because 2016 was the definitive race for him. even in 2020, he would go repeat word for word stories on the campaign trail he told four years before. he's never moved past 2016.

he thought that was going to be his whole political career because he didn't expect to win. it was all about the campaign, so he has been sort of still in that moment ever since. we're also seeing, clearly, increased signs of confusion, age, pressure, as mika said, probably playing a role, as well. these slip-ups are happening more and more. let's be clear, trump has been doing this for a long time, but because he gives us a firehose of not just falsehoods and lies but mistakes, they blow past everybody. what's happened here, some of them have been so profound and noteworthy, people are focusing on them. that's what happened these last couple of days, joe and mika. his mixing up nikki haley for nancy pelosi. >> hard to miss. >> too little, too late perhaps for a campaign, but she seized on that. the biden white house did, as well, even saying that president biden tweeting that he and nikki haley don't agree on much, but they both can agree on one thing, that she's not nancy pelosi. >> right. okay, so here it is again. on friday, this is when trump confused nikki haley for house

speaker emerita nancy pelosi. trump began mocking haley for crowd sizes at her rallies. think about that. then he pivoted to discussing the january 6th insurrection and claimed haley, not pelosi, was in charge of the capitol security that day. >> you know, when she comes here, she gets, like, nine people, and the press never reports the crowds, you know. by the way, they never report the crowd on january 6th. nikki haley, nikki haley, nikki haley, you know, did you know they destroyed all of the information, the evidence, everything? destroyed all of it, all of it, because of lots of things. like nikki haley is in charge of security. we offered her 10,000 people, soldiers, national guard, whatever they want. they turned it down. they don't want to talk about that. >> if you look recently, there have been multiple things. i mean, he claimed that joe biden was going to get us into world war ii.

i'm assuming he meant world war iii. he said he ran against president obama. he never ran against president obama. he says that i'm the one that kept security from the capitol on january 6th. i was nowhere near the capitol on january 6th. but, margaret, you don't be surprised if you have someone that's 80 in office, their mental stability is going to continue to decline. that's just human nature. i don't know if he was confused. i don't know what happened, but it should be enough to send us a warning sign. >> okay. as lemire pointed out, president biden's campaign drew attention to trump's mistake, writing on x, twitter, "i don't agree with nikki haley on everything, but we agree on this much: she is not nancy pelosi." and posting this video montage. >> last night, trump is at a rally. >> you know, nikki haley, nikki haley, nikki haley -- >> and he's going on and on, mentioning me multiple times as to why i didn't handle january

6th better. >> nikki haley is in charge of security. we offered her 10,000 people. they don't want to talk about that. >> i wasn't in office then. they're saying he got confused. >> you have voter id to buy a loaf of bread. you have id to buy a loaf of bread. what? what is? i'm driving over a road where it's almost all paper. and, you know, you can see paper. i know paper. i know cans. but all the time now, we see whales washing up on shore because of the wind. our veterans don't have cell phones, do they? >> he got confused. he got confused and said he was running against obama. he never ran against obama. >> and we did with obama. we won an election that everyone said couldn't be won. obama doesn't want to talk about it. >> you mean president biden? >> don't put our country at risk like this. >> i'm joe biden, and i approve this message. >> i bet you do approve that message. >> oh, my god.

>> jonathan lemire, first of all -- >> trump has stolen the "he's too old" concern from biden. >> he's completely, it's gone. >> if that's what you want as your president. >> if they want to bring it up, that joe biden has a stutter that he's had since, like, he was 14 years old, they can bring that up. >> yeah. >> biden campaign hopes they bring it up. but there's so much here. by the way, voter id to buy a loaf of bread, repeats it three times. says he is driving over paper, a road that's almost paper. nobody knows what he is talking about because he doesn't know what he is talking about. his mind sometimes becomes mush. i have to say, jonathan lemire, again, that's just brutal. he looked lost. he looked confused. he just -- again, the super extreme maga voters, they'll stay with him. they've stayed with him through praising every communist chinese

and communist north korean dictator on the planet. they'll stay with him through an episode of, i don't know if it is early onset of dementia or exactly what it is, but they'll stay with him. swing voters, again, as we've said, as the biden team said, as jv lass said with the bulwark, the more they see this guy, the more they're going to say, like they said in 2020, "ah, no, thanks." >> there are a few things that are idealogically consistent about donald trump, but his crazy hatred of windmills and what he thinks they cause, we've had that all along. he talks about that in nonsensible fashion all the time. this is, to your point, joe, the biden campaign has looked at this race consistently throughout. they understand that donald trump, by far, more than any other republican, poses, in their estimation, the greatest threat to america. the stakes couldn't be higher with trump on the ballot. that said, it's also the race they want. because they feel like, first of

all, trump's age, what we're seeing here, the increased confusion, negates what could have been a pretty powerful republican attack line against president biden, who has shown no signs of confusion like that, but is someone who is over 80 years old. can't change his birth certificate. they also think, though, that, to your point of a moment ago, some aides told me this mid last year, that they just feel like trump had become background noise for so many americans. yeah, he's in the headlines for this legal case or that, he gave this speech there, but outside of the die-hard maga base and fox news viewers, no one has been listening to trump. he's been in the ether. now, as the election year ramps up and, frankly, in 48 hours, donald trump might be the republican nominee because the primary could be over, they're going to have to choice but to pay attention. when they see trump and hear trump and see not just how he has perhaps lost a few steps but also how his rhetoric has gotten angrier and more dangerous, they think it'll turn off the independent swing voters who

maybe backed him in '16, broke from him in '20, and sure wouldn't back him again in '24. >> that's what is interesting here. i know a lot of people want to see nikki haley. before, wanted to see anybody challenge donald trump. >> right. >> the white house is not in that group. the white house wants donald trump to nail this nomination process down as quickly as possible and wake up young voters, wake up black voters, wake up hispanic voters who have gone away from him, because they will say in focus groups, there's no way democrats are going to be facing trump. again, the disengaged voter is like, no, no, no, that guy is never going to be here again. that's not going to be our choice. so the white house has been waiting for this moment to arrive. if new hampshire is a landslide for trump and he nails it down, then the white house gets what they want. they get that matchup with the one guy that joe biden's team

knows he can beat. >> well, because he's done it before, so there's proof. >> yeah. >> but, yeah, if those who haven't been that into it, they tune in now and see trump, he's very different. >> yeah. >> much more -- even physically seems different. >> yeah. >> let's bring in u.s. special correspondent for bbc news, katty kay. founder of the conservative website, the bulwark, charlie sykes. in new hampshire, nbc news national affairs analyst john heilemann is with us this morning. good to have you all with us. >> john, set it up for us. a lot going on in new hampshire over the past 24 hours. tell us, where are we? >> what is it looking like? >> is this going to be another big donald trump victory? >> well, first of all, i think you guys have been really hard on donald trump. joe, you know, i get you confused with joe strummer all the time. you know, a guy named joe with the last name with "s," probably need to give him a new form of the cognitive test he talks

about all the time. person, woman, camera, tv, nikki haley, nancy pelosi, whatever. next time the doctor does the cognitive test, put that at the end and see if he can pass it. joe, i'll say this, this primary feels -- unlike the perception, there's a lot going on up here, there's always a lot in some sense going on at the new hampshire primary, but compared to any primary you and mika have been to in the past, there's not much going on here. we almost never see a situation where you're down to a two-person race. nikki haley on the night of the iowa caucuses said we're down to two people in this field, and people laughed and said, "you came in third. how can you be part of a two-person race?" she knew that ron desantis didn't have a path forward. now, officially, it is a two-person race. what we've seen here for the last weekend, often one of the most electrifying periods in all of american polities, what we've seen is donald trump showing up here once a day to do a rally.

concord on friday. manchester on saturday night. last night, out in rochester. basically not campaigning in the state at all. then you have nikki haley who, after iowa last week, was not campaigning all that actively here, was doing a few events a day but was not running the way a normal challenger runs in new hampshire. suddenly, on saturday, some people say at the urging of the governor, chris sununu, suddenly started to run a real new hampshire campaign. a full schedule all day on saturday, all day on sunday, taking questions from reporters on both days. and, as you guys noted, finally deciding to go after donald trump on an issue of genuine vulnerability, the question of his age and his mental acuity, something that she has been loathe to do in the past. we do not see, at least so far, a lot of signs of the gap between the two of them narrowing in the polling, but as you guys know, new hampshire is very, especially in the last few days, can be very tough to

capture late movement. there's definitely energy at her events. people are turning out for her. the governor, chris sununu, talks about the momentum he sees. he's obviously one of the most enthusiastic people in politics, so maybe overstating things a little bit. she is clearly the underdog here. donald trump is clearly the favorite. but we'll see what happens over the course of the next 48 hours as to how close this race ends up being on tuesday. >> so, charlie sykes, to we -- do you think the republican voters in new hampshire, the independents in new hampshire, will vote for a man and basically seal the nomination for a man who thinks he is running against barack obama and thinks nikki haley was speaker of the house on january 6th? >> well, if they don't, other republican voters will. you know, i do think it is important to have a reality check about this particular moment. even as the evidence piles up that donald trump is, in fact, addled, and that may be the

least worst aspect of his character, but he is decompensating in real time, but here is somebody facing more than 90 felony charges, who has been twice impeached, who has been disgraced. over the weekend, he confused nikki haley with nancy pelosi but also praised the world's most vicious thugs once again, threw taiwan under the bus. yet, republicans, one after another, are about to line up behind this elderly, crazed, accused felon and bigot as the next president of the united states. i mean, it is a remarkable moment, that with everything that we have seen and heard from donald trump, everything that he continues to say in real time, that even people like chris sununu will say, well, yes, if he is the nominee, i'm absolutely going to put party loyalty over country. it is truly an extraordinary moment, even after the seven

years we've all lived through. >> yeah, i mean, the comment by chris sununu on "meet the press" this weekend, when he was asked repeatedly, given all he's said about donald trump, given what he said about his age, about january 6th, given what he has said about his fitness for office, and he still says, "actually, yes, if he is the nominee, i'll support him, as will millions of americans." poor nikki haley, if that is her best surrogate and he is still saying he'll support donald trump on the eve of the vote. i guess, if we think new hampshire is going to crown donald trump as the republican nominee, the thing that might be interesting watching the vote tomorrow is how many republicans actually turn out to vote? the republican turnout in iowa was suppressed compared to history. are there republicans who are sitting at home thinking, "you know what? it's going to be donald trump. he is the party nominee." we know some will stand in line

and risk frost bite for hours and hours, but there may be republicans who decide, come tomorrow and come november, that, actually, they're not republicans anymore, effectively, and they're not going to vote for donald trump. the potential warning signs of a shrunken republican electorate will be interesting to read after we see the numbers tomorrow. >> you know, that is something "the wall street journal" editorial page, very conservative editorial page, has been warning republicans about for a very long time. erick erickson yesterday, very conservative guy, erick tweeted yesterday and said, "you know, already, we're starting to hear, if you don't vote for donald trump, you're helping joe biden." he said, "well, what this argument seems to miss is if you're in the primaries and you're voting for donald trump, you're helping joe biden." make no mistake of it, this is exactly what democrats want. they don't -- they're scared to death of the autocrat, but as

far as who is the guy who is easiest to beat, well, republicans, it's the guy they beat in 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, '22, and '23. i mean, it's -- and, yet, i do want to say, again, we have to underline this. charlie sykes, it just shows a real sickness. it shows people putting their political careers, not even their party because the republican party doesn't exist anymore. >> yeah. >> it's donald trump. party doesn't exist. >> sure. >> they're putting their future political power over america. >> yeah. >> and all the things ronald reagan, things you and i, all the things republicans used to believe in, you know, whether you're talking about debt, they're now supporting -- by the

way, i saw one of the most powerful people in davos, economic people, you're starting to hear this from economic people now, people that run wall street, that run the biggest banks, saying, "come on, there's not a big difference between donald trump and joe biden." donald trump had really good policies. you're hearing that from some people, despite the fact that donald trump is praising the communist leader of china, kim jong-un of north korea, praising vladimir putin after his invasion of ukraine, praising hezbollah, talking about how smart they are. >> viktor orban. >> praising xi. yeah, and praising viktor orban. again, a massive tale, saying he is going to assassinate chairmans of the joint chief for being disloyal. saying he is going to terminate the constitution, jail political

opponents, ban tv networks that are against him. i won't say the guy's name, but you have a wall street leader going, "come on, these people are good people, too." no, they're not. no, they're not. but are they going to do that? plus, a guy who -- >> yeah. >> -- really thinks he is running against barack obama. >> yeah, we're entering a new phase of denialism. have you noticed this? we have a lot of the smart people in the anti anti-trump movement. business leaders, columnists for "the new york times" saying, well, maybe it is not so bad. maybe just calm down. don't pay attention to what he says. he is all bark, no bite. with everything we've seen about donald trump, they're retreating into the, you know, you people that are concerned about authoritarianism, you're overcaffeinated. you're being too hysterical. in fact, it is not going to be that bad. all of the elites in davos are basically saying, you know,

"tune out all the crazy stuff, all things you mentioned. what does he mean for our bottom line? can we make more money with him?" they're okay with all of that. i think it is interesting, there's going to be an effort to essentially say, you know, there's nothing to see here. none of this actually matters. it is going to be okay. which is radically nieve when you think about it. donald trump is telling us explicitly what he is going to do. this time around, he has an infrastructure that will back this. he will bring people into government who will be, in fact, loyal enough to try to implement that. yet, the conservative establishment and the business establishment decided, yeah, maybe it won't be so bad. that's the story they're telling themselves because that's the story they have to tell themselves. >> yeah, and this weekend, he said, again, viktor orban was a great guy. people don't like him because he was a strongman. he said, well, maybe our country needs a strongman, too. again, he's -- this isn't, like,

hey, he is warning you and you have to sift through. no, he is telling you. he is going to run an illiberal state. viktor orban has attacked western democracy and says he runs an illiberal country, where he cracks down on the press, cracks down on political opponents. he has absolutely no real competition. it's a one-party state. it's turned into a one-party state, and it is his one-party state. that's what donald trump will bring here. he's told us that. this isn't, like, oh, "new york times" editorial page, great. no, he has told us that. he told us again this weekend that's what america needs, a strongman. >> this is donald trump, a warning. read madeleine albright's book, "fascism," a warning, pointing to charlie's phrase, radically

naive. you have people vulnerable, will believe anything, or can let anything go by, and that's how it begins. >> read what his top staff members said. read what his chief of staff, the general, said. this is going to be a nightmare for america if he gets elected again. still ahead on "morning joe," earlier this month in iowa, ron desantis criticized republicans who kissed the ring of donald trump. now, those words are getting renewed attention after desantis suspended his campaign and then did what? "morning joe" is back in a moment. >> i don't care what political party you're from, extreme conservative or socialist liberal, everybody should be concerned with that mentality going into the white house. >> yet, you are saying if he is the nominee, that you are going to support him? how can you say that you'll support him given you disagree with that statement? >> most republicans are going to get behind the republican nominee. i'm hoping it is obviously nikki

haley. >> despite his comments on immunity, despite what you said about the insurrection, you'd still vote for donald trump in a general election? >> according to the polls, most of america would.

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you can be the most worthless republican in america, but if you kiss the king, he'll say, "you're wonderful." you can be the strongest, most dynamic, successful republican and conservative in america, but if you don't kiss that ring, then he'll try to trash you. you know what? you deserve a nominee that's going to put you first, not himself first. trump is superior to the current incumbent, joe biden. that is clear. i signed a pledge to support the republican nominee, and i will honor that pledge. he has my endorsement because we can't go back to the old republican guard of yesteryear.

>> oh, my god,yesteryear. >> that was governor december desantis -- >> kissing the ring. >> rough. >> i want to talk about new hampshire. again, you know, over the last couple weeks, there's been fear and loathing, a lot of sack cloth and ashes. for donald trump that lost half of the iowa electorate, despite the fact he's basically the incumbent president. i always said if obama ran as a democrat in that contest, a democratic caucus, he'd get 98% of the vote. only 14% of the vote went out in iowa then. very low turnout. now, you look at donald trump here. you've been going to the rallies. you've been going -- you've been seeing all of this. you and i both were at that massive event in 2016, over

4,000 people in a raging snowstorm. talk about how, again, we're looking at all the crazy, dangerous things he's saying, disconnected from reality, but compare trump 2016 with trump '24. also, compare what donald trump has done to the state of new hampshire in general election terms. >> yeah, i mean, look, joe, you mentioned that event. i was thinking about you on saturday night. it's the snhu arena, across the street from where i am now. it's a big sports arena, they do hockey and basketball games there. we were there together four years ago, willie, you, me, barnicle. it seats 10,000 people. it was packed to the gills in 2016. the other night here, there were empty seats all over the arena. they said there were a few

thousand people there, and there probably were, but that seats 10,000. it was way less than half filled, and even in the lower level, you could see just seats after seat after seat with no one in it. last night, you know, he did an event on sunday night in rochester. the place as a capacity of 700. remember how -- filled 700 seats, but, you know, trump used to brag about the 10,000 people, 12,000 people. we kept 10,000 people outside, as far as the eye can see. he is getting more people to turn out than nikki haley, but the phenomenon, the energy of donald trump that you saw on the ground here, that we saw on the ground here in 2016, to a lesser extent in 2020, partly because of the pandemic, it's ebbed a great deal in this primary. i'll say, you know, as you talk to political people who really know the state here, whether they're pollsters, strategists or whatever, you know, back in 2016, remember, donald trump ran against hillary clinton in this state, and they were within less than a percentage point separated them on election day in 2016.

27-point-something for hillary, and 27-point-something for trump. there's polling out there saying biden wins this state by ten points in 2024. this is a state that has not been transformed by trump from purple to red. this is a state that, under trump's leadership in the republican party, is one of the best examples of the thing you guys, that we talk about all the time, which is that trump has been toxic politically at the national level for the republican party. this state under a normal republican be a battleground state, potentially. instead, you're looking at a state that by the reasonable metrics we're looking at, he'll probably lose the state by potentially double digits, high single digits. that puts the state out of reach for republicans. yet, it's still the case that there is almost no doubt he is going to end up being able to hold off nikki haley here because of the core, the small but intense core of the republican party who is definitely showing up for him

even if turnout is down on tuesday. >> it'll be something to see. >> and -- yeah, and let's keep this simple, katty. if nikki haley were the nominee, new hampshire would be a swing state. since donald trump is going to be the nominee, democrats aren't going to have to spend a dime there. put it in the blue column, it's done. >> yeah, and that lack of enthusiasm, the smaller crowds, the lack of energy, how many other states is that going to translate to? you know, i don't like to use the word confidence when it comes to the white house, but you combine the lack of broader energy for trump and the republican party with those better economic numbers that they're seeing, the consumer confidence numbers ticking up. that was perhaps the most important number we had out last week, showing that, actually, americans are starting to feel better about the economy. you know, you can understand why the white house is just desperate to get on with this race. charlie, let's do a little bit of the postmortem. before we assign him to oblivion

and forget his name, let's do the postmortem on ron desantis. it's big news when a candidate drops out at this stage of the game on a sunday. particularly given that ron desantis, whatever it was a year and a half ago, was ahead of donald trump in the polls. now, i see nikki haley now attacking donald trump more forthrightly in the very last days of her campaign. >> yes. >> was there room all along for a candidate to take that lane in the republican party, and did ron desantis just not take that off-ramp? >> we will never know because they never tried, right? you know, ron desantis was the great hope. when you think about, you know, how high he is riding there. history is full of lots of flops, but ron desantis will rank right up there, you know, given his, you know, original -- all the hopes that were around him. again, as i wrote in this column, the political obituary

is easy to write. he was a bad candidate, lousy message, and a terrible campaign. maybe it wouldn't have made any difference because this says so much about the republican party, as well. he calculated if he moved to the right of donald trump on the cultural issues, however, he could be trumpism without trump. but the republican base wanted trump. they wanted the show. they wanted -- they weren't interested in the legislation, in the policies, in, you know, whether or not he was going to be punching disney in the face. they wanted the real thing. when ron desantis and the others decided they were not actually going to run against donald trump but defend him, rationalize him, provide cover for his various indictments and crimes and lies and sedition, et cetera, it pretty much guaranteed that republicans were going to go, if we could have the fake thing, why not go with the real thing? but, you know, ron desantis was always, i think, overhyped because he was never ready for

primetime. he was never going to scale up. you know, kind of a lesson that, you know, you cannot run if you're not willing to run against the guy you're running against, which seems basic. >> yeah, you know, it seems to me that you have a choice. you have to pick a lane. donald trump had the maga lane, had the extreme maga lane. here you had fat elvis 77, and you had ron desantis saying, "i'm going to go to vegas, and i'm going to fill that lane." why, why? like, if that lane is already filled, then do the beatles. you can't do the beatles, do dillon. be fifth dimension. be anybody, but don't try to be fat elvis. they got that on the strip. >> a lot of it. >> they got a lot of it, right?

you're never going to get people -- >> so much. >> -- heilemann, if somebody has followed elvis since '57, they're not going to drive to vegas in '77 and say, "hey, i'm going to go see the fat elvis imitator." no! they're going to see elvis. they're going to get the sweaty, fat guy with, you know, pulling off the -- you know, throwing his scarves into the crowd, and people think, like, i'm joking. no, this is a perfect, perfect analogy. who in the hell is going to go see a knock-off of donald trump 2024? heilemann, a mainstream republican, do you know how many people come up to me nonstop and say, "why can't we have a mainstream republican? lower taxes.

lower spending. you know, more freedom. forget the crazy social stuff. don't fight on that ground because we're going to lose," which ron desantis did. "don't amp that up. focus on the things that have united the republicans for 50 years." now, people say, "oh, they don't want to hear that." yeah, the maga people don't want to hear that. that's why they're at the sands listening to fat elvis '77. we want to get them over to see ceasars to hear about quantitative easing. i'm joking about the last part. but, man, there is a conservative message to be given to america right now, and no one is giving it, john. >> totally right. look, if you want to see fat elvis, you know, you're going to be in that small, shrinking pool. you're at the one arm bandit, there with your plastic cup full of tokens, and you're putting them in.

there is just a bigger market out there. there's tom jones down the street. there is wayne newton down the street. you know, there's olivia newton-john, god rest her soul, down the street. you know, there are other options. give them a fresh face. >> olivia newton-john, yes! >> shania. >> fat elvis cornered the market on fat elvis fans, and there is no point in trying to be a fake fat elvis. >> shania has a residency, go see shania. >> definitely go see shania. >> come on. go see adele. >> there you go. >> be that -- >> now we're talking. >> build that lane. >> yeah. >> we already got elvis '77. i'm sorry, john lemire, would you like to bring in a faded rock star? >> actually, it is an analogy the trump campaign themselves were using all along. at the beginning of this race, they said, with desantis trying to be trump without the baggage, a trump aide told me, why would you want a cover band if the rolling stones are still

touring? that's what they said. that's seemingly the analogy working here. >> that's what we've been asking. >> desantis, and maybe this was all doomed from the start, to charlie's point. this was trump's party. republicans are not ready to turn the page yet. but the one moment might have been right after the midterms, when trump was at a low water mark. so many of his candidates lost in the senate in 2022. desantis was the republican bright spot. he won and won big. instead of -- and trump had a faltering campaign launch. instead of taking advantage, desantis went back to florida and picked that fight with disney, tried to move to trump's right on the culture war, and attached himself to the legislative session there, not forcing the law change he needed. he waited on that. if he had been out there from the beginning, maybe he changes the dynamics of this race, but maybe not. because he was a flawed candidate with suspect retail political skills, having a hard time connecting with voters. he did offer one piece of

analysis of the race that i think is precisely right, as he is trying to turn the page to 2028, though i think a lot of republicans think desantis is so damaged from this race, he doesn't really have a future in 2028. only time will tell there. desantis himself said-trump's indictments that sealed the deal. he's right. it wasn't just because trump got indicted and republican voters rallied around him, so did his republican rivals, desantis included. everyone turned to back trump against these, quote, deep state prosecutions, and that was the moment, that was the moment this case ended, and it likely becomes official tomorrow night in new hampshire. >> again, he could have said at the time, "he's a loser. this guy loses. thank god, we loved elvis in '57, '58, '59, went to the war, even '68, the comeback, he was great." fantastic. that was still a decade ago. let's talk about the future. he just -- he could have done that. >> come halfway. >> he could have been a

mainstream republican that said, "what in the world is the manhattan d.a. doing? that's just dumb. that's just dumb. but trump has to deal with that. let's you and me talk about the future." the crowds would have been bigger. it wouldn't have been as awkward. i think there was a pathway for ron desantis. but super maga didn't work. we'll see if the next version of ron desantis is more main street republican because he came on this show at the end, on two or three times, and, you know, he's really a smart guy. he's a really smart guy when he is talking issues and not making them up. >> the bulwark's charlie sykes and national affairs analyst john heilemann, thank you, both, very much for starting us off this morning. ahead on "morning joe," the detroit lions are headed to the nfc title game for the first time in more than three decades. we'll have the highlights as the lions now are one win away from

their very first super bowl appearance. >> what a game last night. >> wow. >> oh, look who is here. >> the bills and the chiefs. >> look who is here. >> wow. >> espn's pablo torre is standing by with his take on that game and the rest of the nfl's divisional round matchups. "morning joe" will be right back. (sigh) (snoring)

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♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ we talked to sean mcdermott after his 1 for 3 performance last week. tremendous support in the building. if he has to make one for us with the game on the line, he will. 44 yards, no, he doesn't make

it! wide right. >> wow. that is -- i mean, i just don't know what to say. an entire city, an entire community's hopes and dreams resting on the foot of a guy who went wide right. maybe he -- i don't know, maybe he played for fsu at one time. wide right, a phrase that again destroys buffalo bills fans. it would have tied the game in the final minutes of a great game against the chiefs. first down later, kansas city seals the win. third time in the past four year, the chiefs knocked the buffalo bills out of the playoffs. let's bring in host of "pablo torre finds out" on meadowlark media, espn's pablo torre. you know, i like the chiefs, right? i've always loved the chiefs. they're a fun team.

this year, really, i was like, come on, the bills need this. i want a lake erie super bowl, the bills and the lions, man. that would have made us all run faster, stretch out our arms further, and would have healed this broken land. not to be. hand it to the chiefs who have been a mystery wrapped inside of enigma, wrapped inside of riddle. i got those wrong, the wrong sequence, but it's the case. i haven't been able to figure them out all year, but it doesn't matter. they figured themselves out last night when it mattered the most. >> i want to start with buffalo, joe. you're right, there are religious overtones in this one. it's not that the city of buffalo is wondering, is there a god? they were wondering, why has he forsaken me? why is he so cruel? >> yes, yes. >> this is old testament stuff. for people who don't understand the legend, the reality, really,

of scott norwood, their old kicker missing a field goal wide right to ensure this team has never won a super bowl and will not again this year. this was as good a year as any. you watch this game, this had the feeling as we watch the clips of a prize fight. lead change back and forth. teams fighting tooth and nail. both deserving, to be clear. buffalo, man, if not now, then when? it is a fair concern for the city of buffalo, for the region of upstate new york in general. you were joking about, you know, the vegas residency before. well, patrick mahomes has a residential in the afc conference game. that title game, he's been there every year he's been a starter. six years in a row. we have been looking, okay, who is the replacement for that brady/belichick and patriots defense our friend, john lemire, loves? guess what?

it is the team with travis kelce blowing kisses and making heart-shaped signals to taylor swift in the luxury box as his brother, jason, is shirtless behind her, jumping into the stands, as well. that's what the kansas city chiefs are. they're goliath. the bills are a david without a slingshot. >> you know, this game and the one three years ago, for this era, this is, like, the playoff matchup. when i was growing up, it was in the super bowl. >> no doubt. >> it was the cowboys and the steelers. of course, in this division, the old afc west division, it was the chiefs and the raiders. man, what a rivalry that was. but that rivalry now, it's the bills and the chiefs. at some point, at some point, maybe the bills win against them. for now, the chiefs just own 'em. i mean, what a historic rivalry

we have here on our hands. >> yes. i mean, look, the attempted parallels have been, is this tom brady versus peyton manning now, right? there was a discussion about who is who. the issue is simply this, patrick mahomes keeps winning everything. we need -- for people who don't know who josh allen is, josh allen is a 6'5" monster who can do everything. >> unbelievable. >> this game, this game was not -- look, it's one thing if you get outplayed thoroughly. when it's the kicker, joe. like, i'm not here to just further sprinkle dirt on tyler bass, the kicker who missed that field goal. >> yeah. >> but if you are the buffalo bills' kicker going wide right, it's time to leave town kind of scenario. >> yeah. >> everything you said about the rivalry is real except for the fact that the bills haven't been good enough to justify the other end of that metaphor.

>> yeah, you know, usually, it's a josh allen interception. >> exactly. >> josh allen plays great, but he'll throw two interceptions, the last one being as dumb as jordan love's interception, which had overtones of brett favre in it. my son goes, "is that what brett favre looked like the end of playoff games, daddy?" "yes, son, that's how brett favre looked." man, what an incredible game that was. the packers, we won't go into that because we need to talk about the team i'm cheering for throughout these playoffs. started 0-6 last year. what can you -- and when they did, their owner goes out and says, "we're not making any changes. i have a vision." she said, "i got a vision, and we're going to stick to this vision. i don't care if we're 0-6." yesterday, big dan and the lions, holy cow, what a scene. take us through it.

>> yeah, so last week, we talked about how this was the first playoff win in 31 years. this is them making their first nfc title game in 31 years. they've never hosted two consecutive home playoff games. they faced baker mayfield, by the way, who had been excellent, on a heater. >> baker, whoa. >> one of the greatest commercial players to begin with. then he is in the role of quarterback. the detroit lions, joe, i want america to appreciate how much the city of detroit needed this. >> yes. >> they have never won a super bowl. they're one of the great sports cities anywhere on the planet. here you have a team that can do everything, led by a man in dan campbell -- by the way, just imagine how the city of detroit is feeling. imagine how dan campbell feels every morning. here's his starbucks order. two vents, two espresso shots in each, okay?

>> yeah. >> that's a million red bulls, i believe. that's the energy that dan campbell brings to every locker room, every game, and that's how this city feels, both delirious and energized, and unable to sleep after watching jared goff, of all people, lead them to an nfc conference game, beating the bucs, who are better than you think. >> we need similar coffee orders here to get us going each and every morning, pablo. let's turn to the matchups looming, the conference title games. >> yeah. >> first, the detroit lions head out to san francisco. the niners, as joe mentioned, they were shaky for part of the game, but they finished at the end, got help from jordan love. they'll be the clear favorites, though. detroit, magic at home, rougher on the road. also talking about the chiefs. they have another test on the road against the likely mvp lamar jackson. the ravens have been the best all year, but it is hard to bet against mahomes and andy reid. >> i will not bet against mahomes in this game, but to

respect what lamar jackson has been. jackson is mvp of the league. the baltimore ravens are the best team in the nfl. they've distinguished themselves as such. i laugh sometimes, if you're a time traveler from 1970 coming to see, in modern day, who are these quarterbacks who are now leading their teams deep into the playoffs? patrick mahomes and lamar jackson are two of the best athletes we've ever seen play the position and two of the best tacticians, right? it's not just the body, it is also the mind. lamar jackson, the question has always been, well, he's such a great runner, the shiftiest runner, michael vick, marvelled at lamar jackson. one of the greatest video game characters made flesh. lamar jackson can dice you up surgically, as well. after the first half in which he struggled some against the texans, the second half, it was lamar jackson showing why this guy specifically is about to be the mvp of the league. give me mahomes, the chiefs, but

that's a close one, man. that could go either way, it really could. >> hey, i want to talk really quickly because i mentioned jordan love's name in vain. that guy was incredible. those packers, i'm watching the packers play, and i'm thinking, wait a second, a year ago, we would have said the nfc north was the biggest garbage division, other than, of course, the nfc south. >> mm-hmm. >> let me tell you something, this packers team next year with jordan love, who was extraordinary in the playoff run right until the end, extraordinary, they'll be in the same division as the lions. in the same division as the bears who just keep getting better. man, that is going to be a great, young division. so exciting. >> yeah, i am not one for moral victories, right? >> right. >> but this game, if you play the best team in the nfc, which the 49ers are. >> holy cow.

>> this close, you outplay them three quarters, honestly. >> yeah. >> what you have leaving this game if you're the packers, the state of wisconsin, is your future. you have in jordan love the guy who, yes, threw the back-footed interception you accurately compared to brett favre, absolutely what i imagined, as well, watching it, but, joe, remember who they had before. remember who was the guy that gave them all caniptions. aaron rodgers won't take our call. they're lucky he didn't. jordan love is the third quarterback they can rest their hopes on and feel safe and secure. this is a moral victory, despite being a heartbreaking playoff loss. >> by the way -- yeah. by the way, jordan love completed about ten magical passes off his back foot against

the cowboys and against the niners, two of the best teams in football. such an incredible player. a great guy to cheer for. one bad pass, he won't make that bad pass next year. unlike brett favre, he is young and can learn from his mistake. yeah, he was great. the afc, let's just say again, the afc championship game between the chiefs and the ravens, i mean, the ravens have been -- i mean, the ravens look like a team that goes to super bowls and wins super bowls. they're just built like a super bowl winning team. >> yes. >> yeah, nobody can bet against mahomes, can they? >> look, definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results. patrick mahomes, man, at some point we'll have the conversation and not feel guilty about it, whether he is the best quarterback we've ever seen. he is a half dozen years into

the nfl career, but if those years result in the most successful run we've ever seen to start a career, at that point, it feels okay. maybe this guy is just actually -- he is, to bring it full circle, he is a messianic figure visiting the world of sports. that seems a wild overstatement, mentioning tom brady, favre, all these guys, but lamar jackson is a special guy, but tre is no patrick mahomes. no disrespect to the area you're in. >> patrick mahomes is doing this in a down year, when nobody seems to be clicking. >> no receivers. he has travis kelce and no receivers. >> right. i think he picked up one now. it'll be interesting. >> all right. you can listen to more of pablo through his podcast -- >> please do. >> -- "pablo torre finds out." >> this podcast, mika -- >> it is amazing. >> -- it reverses male pattern

baldless, helps with the backswing, gets weeds out of your yard. >> we're really late into the second hour. i've allowed this because it is pablo. >> can i just say with pablo, you're always on time. >> okay. >> that's just -- that's where you're supposed to be. >> all right. thank you. >> it is a zen thing, pablo. >> bye, pablo. >> presence. >> okay. we're going to turn back to politics now. this moment from the campaign trail. >> when she comes here, she gets, like, nine people, and the press never reports the crowds, you know. by the way, they never report the crowd on january 6th. you know, nikki haley, nikki haley, nikki haley -- did you know they deserved all of the information, all of the evidence, everything? deleted and destroyed all of it, all of it, because of lots of things. like nikki haley is in charge of security. we offered her 10,000 people,

soldiers, national guards, whatever they want. they turned it down. they don't want to talk about that. >> that isn't a mix-up. the reality is -- >> nikki haley wasn't speaker. >> nikki haley is relying on democrats, just like nancy pelosi, to try to have a desperate showing in new hampshire. >> he was talking about january 6th. >> president trump has not lost a step. he is a stronger candidate, stronger than he is today than he was in 2016 and was in 2020. compare that to joe biden's weakness. >> i can't tell you how disappointing -- disappointed i feel every time i see her talk. >> what a clown. what a clown. >> elise stefanik. >> what a clown. he confuses barack obama. he thinks he is running against barack obama, elise, and you know it, and if you say anything otherwise, you're lying through your teeth. he confused nikki haley with nancy pelosi on january 6th. if you say anything else, you're lying through your teeth. >> well -- >> for what? he's not going to pick you as

vice president. give up the ghost, elise stefanik. >> yeah. that was her coming to the defense of donald trump. >> elise stefanik. >> he was so appreciative of elise stefanik, the woman -- >> elise stefanik. >> yeah. >> okay. he knows her really well. >> right. i mean, he's reportedly considering her for vice president. >> yeah. >> so he praised her. >> he knows stefanik really, really well. he's all with it, stefanik says. >> take a listen. >> from m.i.t., from the greatest schools, though m.i.t. was hurt very badly, unfortunately, by this person running it. did you see that, the three people? how good did elise stepanak do, right? >> who is stepanak? jonathan lemire, i'm looking through the congressional quarterly, who is stepanak?

is that somebody from oklahoma? >> what did he used to -- i forget, what'd he used to call kevin mccarthy? called him my steve or something? >> steve mccarthy. >> yeah. >> by the way, i saw a tweet this weekend. donald trump, he's really lathering on the orange and the -- somebody said that if he continues using bronzer at the rate he is and piling it on at the rate he is, at some point, white nationalists are going to turn on him. >> oh, my gosh. >> i don't know if that day is going to come, but there is a lot. there is a lot of orange bronzer, whatever it is. >> it is. >> so dark. >> tanning bed or bronzer. >> there is a spray-on thing. >> not tanning bed, no. >> bronzer. >> think they spray it on him? >> he has a team. >> obviously. >> i mean -- >> they have vats. they must have vats of that stuff. >> i know a lot of men with

makeup teams. >> stefanak? >> we haven't gotten to the bottom of it, but she seems like she is influential. it is another example of donald trump, you know, not -- >> is that stefanak right there? >> i think that's somebody else. >> whatever. >> this is another moment of donald trump showing, perhaps, some decline. it is something that we have been talking about all morning, talking about for weeks now, about the increased rates, whether it is age or pressure, whatever it might be, but it is going to, and some republicans noted this, this is going to be harder for trump and his colleagues to make the claims that joe biden has lost a step if he keeps getting people wrong like that. >> stefanak. >> here she is. >> also said she did not believe e. jean carroll, despite the fact the judge said donald trump raped her. >> liable for sexual abuse and defamation. trump continued to act like a

vile pig. this is the person elise stefanik is. >> yeah. >> that she'd take a victim and double down or her like donald trump. this is how he treats women. >> a jury finds -- >> elise stefanik is all for that. >> a jury finds -- >> continued defamation. >> -- he is guilt addy. >> -- of someone's character. >> the jury finds he is liable of sexual aassault. the judge says, by any definition, he raperaped e. jea carroll. >> why would you weigh in on that? >> stefanik doesn't believe it. katty kay, katie kai is maybe what trump would call you. >> exactly. >> katty is with us. also, staff writer at "the atlantic," mark leibovich. live in new hampshire. >> very cool.

this -- he has the plaid on. i like it. >> he hadn't been able to cross the new hampshire line since '76. >> okay. >> we have the associate professor of politics at university college of london, brian klaas, author of "fluke, why everything we do matters." we'll get to that in a moment. brian, first, we want to play the hits for you, buddy. i've been saying here that when trump gets elected, maybe he doesn't go full hitler. maybe he doesn't kill 6 million of his enemies. maybe he just does what viktor orban does and destroys democracy, praises illiberalism, then runs all his political opponents out of town, does sham charges against media company leaders, and basically bankrupts

them and says he won't throw them in jail if they leave the country, and he creates a one-party state. we know donald trump wants to do that. what we didn't know is just how transparent he would be about his plans to wreck american democracy. but here he is this weekend. >> now, he's backing a woman that i know very well, a woman that is not capable of doing this job. i know her very well. she's not tough enough. she's not smart enough. she wasn't respected enough. she cannot do this job. she's not going to be able to deal with president xi. she's not going to be able to deal with putin and kim jong-un and all the people -- they're very fine people that you have to deal with. she will not be able to do the job. >> there's a great man, a great leader in europe, viktor orban. he's the prime minister of hungary. he is a very great leader, very

strong man. some people don't like him because he is too strong. it's not pad having a strong man running your country. >> brian, he calls the leader of communist china, who has at least 2 million uighurs in concentration camps, and vladimir putin, who continues to terrorize through war crimes the people of ukraine and who has invaded georgia, invaded ukraine, invaded ukraine again, and kim jong-un, a guy who has been considered the most vile authoritarian leader on the planet, calls them very fine people. and then special praise for viktor orban. talk about it. >> yeah, you know, i think this is something where trump has been extremely transparent about this. it has been a bizarre journey. you know, i started raising the alarm about this in 2016. you know, was called an alarmist and so on. then you say, you know, trump

wants to be a dictator, and republicans say, oh, it's hyperbole, you're being insane. trump says, i want to be a dictator, and they still say the same thing. i think this is the aspect where, as i said, we're sleepwalking to the breakdown of democracy. as someone who studies the breakdown of democracy, i don't know how much more clearly to say it than every single red light is blinking red in the united states and we are headed to a dangerous place. >> brian, how do you -- i mean, when you talk to the campaign, i don't know how much contact you have president trump people, you know, they insist, "no, no, he'll stick to the guidelines. he's never thought of trying to run for a third term or cancelling the 2028 elections," and, like you said, it's all hyperbole and liberal media. but when trump says it himself out on the campaign trail, that he does intend to be a dictator and his campaign says, "we do intend to have much more purview over the department of justice," it's a very different kind of

america, certainly, that he is imagining, than the one we've known until now. if the white house is running the department of justice, you just set up administration after administration of retribution, don't you? i mean, it becomes kind of circular. >> yeah, but, you know, this is not speculative. that what drives me crazy. he already tried to overturn an election. this is not something where we have to imagine. he did it. he tried. he didn't succeed. that doesn't mean the intent was not there. so to hand over the reins of power to somebody who tried to subvert american democracy, and if he had gotten his way, would have killed american democracy, is an absurd point of view. there has been this amnesia in the political class to imagine this old effort is now not part of someone being more transparent, more overt with all of the things he intends to do if he gets back to the white house. >> the effort is stronger than ever before because he, if he were to win a second term, would come in there and hire everybody

who can make this happen for him, as opposed to people who know washington. donald trump continues to argue, by the way, that presidents should be immune from osution for anything that they do in office. think about that. last week, trump wrote in all caps post on his social media, to make sure you all understand what he wants t do, arguing that presidents should have immunity even for events that, quote, cross the line. here's what he said on saturday night in new hampshire. >> and you will have, very seldom, but you will have the -- we call it the rogue cop, the bad apple, and perhaps you'll have that also with president, but there is nothing you can do about that. you're going to have to give the president, you'll have to allow a president, any president, to have immunity so that that president can act and do what he feels and what his group of

advisors feel is the absolute right thing. otherwise, you'll have presidents that are totally impotent, and we've had enough of them already. we've had enough of them already. having immunity is so important, and i hope the supreme court has the courage to do that. >> i mean, he's talking about things that nobody in the crowd really knows about or cares about. he is at a rally in new hampshire, and he's talking about presidential immunity from having seal team six execute his political opponents. they're still there with him. this is a guy who has said he wants to terminate the constitution. he wants to execute generals that are insufficiently loyal to him. he wants to ban tv networks just like orban that don't go along with his views. again, he wants to have immunity, and argued this, if he has seal team six -- is brian still with us or watching a cricket game in london? >> he is here.

>> now i'm talking to brian. very good. sometimes he walks offset and watches a cricket game. thank god he is in new york instead of london. anyway, seal team six, let's not forget, his argument at the appeals court was, i can kill my political opponent. donald trump's argument, "if i killed joe biden as president of the united states and i ordered seal team six to do that, i have immunity from it." he's setting up a dictatorship. and these people, i will say, these people on wall street that run the biggest banks on wall street. these guys that run the biggest hedge funds on wall street, who are going on cnbc now and saying -- it's the davos crowd -- saying, "come on, everybody, relax. there is not that much of a difference." >> we need our money. >> "not that much of a difference between donald trump and joe biden. let's not be mean to donald

trump." these people are ignoring the fact that he is running to be a tyrant. his words, not ours. >> yeah, you know, i think this is something where it is quite clear the rule of law is the thing that separates democracies from dictatorships. trump is explicitly calling to end it for presidents. so, you know, you look at this, and, you know, how much more overt and transparent can he be? he says he doesn't want to be, you know, prosecutable for any crimes he commits. that is what authoritarian regimes have. i think he is not mincing words. it is a question of how we respond to something that he tells us he is going to do. >> mark leibovich, you're in new hampshire right now. tell us, what does the final day look like there? >> you know, it looks like the race seems pretty frozen. if you follow these tracking polls, it looks like donald trump seems to be consolidating the lead. nikki haley is clearly, you know, pretty high double digits

second, almost 20 points in the latest tracking. i mean, i think, look, there is no one left. there are few games in town. we're sort of looking around, not so much for, you know, a story, but for any signs of life here. what's ironic about the primary is that new hampshire prides itself on being first in the nation. in fact, you know, this could end it right here. >> mark, in the last couple days, donald trump picked up some more endorsements. tim scott did so. so did ron desantis after abandoning his campaign. quick side note, if chris christie really wanted donald trump to not be president again, wouldn't this be the moment to come out for nikki haley and say, "hey, my supporters should vote for you," because this would be haley's last stand. no sign that will happen. let's go back to desantis, mark. you wrote in 2022 in-depth about the florida governor. wait until you get to know ron desantis, was the headline. seems like the more people got to know him over the last year or so on the campaign trail, the

less they liked him. this was a stunning implosion for someone who, at least braef briefly, was seen as someone with a credible chance to beat ron desantis. >> it wasn't that stunning for anyone who had watched him for years. he was a classic on-paper candidate, who a lot of republicans were putting a lot of hopes on. i think, clearly, there was a critical mass of donors and voters in the republican party looking for an alternative to donald trump. there was, for a lot of republicans, you know, people coalescing around desantis as a kind of idea, as his, you know -- he did really well in the last election in florida. then he got out on the stump, and it's been one disaster after another, both organizationally, both technical, but also as a candidate performance. sometimes, you know, at the end of the day, the candidate can't do it and he is a classic example of this. i was a little surprised he turned right around and endorsed trump so quickly, especially after the other day in iowa where he said, you can be the

most worthless republican in the country. if you kiss the ring, you'll be in pretty good standing in the republican party. he, of course, did just that, which is emblematic of the bended knees that the republican party continueds to go to donald trump with. >> gavin newsom in the debate with ron desantis said, in the going to happen. sean hannity kept saying, if biden is not the nominee -- and he said, "biden will be the nominee. he'll lock it down. couple weeks, ron desantis will be out of the race and endorsing donald trump." he was, of course, right. i do want to bring up about that endorsement. it came after a year of savage attacks from donald trump and donald trump surrogates, not just of ron desantis, but savage attacks about ron desantis' wife. i just got to say, again, i

don't understand it. you know, i'll say it, those words that everybody loves to hear me say. when i was in congress, drink, i had a close friend in the media who passed away. there was someone in leadership that decided to use that to their advantage. i ground into him every chance i had for 20 years. he finally took me aside and begged me to stop. begged me to stop. we had it out 20 years later, he was out of politics, and i sort of backed away. it took 20 years. that was just a friend. these people, ted cruz, now ron desantis, that watched their wives get chopped up in a thousand pieces politically by donald trump, then turn around and support him, never. never, never in a billion years

would i or most of the people that i grew up with in congress would do the same thing, ever, ever! every waking second we'd be following that man around, making him wish he had never, ever seen my face. >> okay. >> no, i'm just saying. >> how do you -- we get the point. >> i'm sorry. leibovich, i think that's how most men out there think about their wives, and i know that's how most wives think about their husbands. >> well, that is for sure. >> you cross him, you're crossing me. but this doesn't apply to republican presidential candidates when their wives get attacked. it's bizarre. >> i mean, it's just like the

classic surrender of dignity across the board. forget, like, you know, abusing spouses and abusing families and bringing, you know, non-candidates into this. you just at a certain point, when someone does this to you, when someone proves themselves to be as basically as ruthless as donald trump has over and over and over again, you are abiding it and making a statement. again, this was a relatively new story in 2016, in 2020. at least ted cruz, you know, held out his endorsement for a while. he gave that pretty gutsy speech at the convention in cleveland. ron desantis didn't wait more than a few hours, and here we are. i'm guessing that haley will probably do something similar, you know, if and when she loses in new hampshire or in south carolina, when it is over for her. yeah, this has been the pattern. it keeps repeating, and it is really, really depressing. >> it's the end of the republican party. "the atlantic's" mark leibovich,

thank you. brian, your new book, "fluke, chance, chaos, and why everything we do matters," you discuss that throughout history, it's not always the best decisions or strategies that determine the outcome of major events, but rather something often overlooked. explain what you're wriing about. >> "fluke" is chaos theory applied to human society and our own lives. it opens with a story from 1926. a couple goes on a vacation to kyoto, japan. they fall in love with the city. 19 years later, the husband is america's secretary of war, henry stimson. he is in charge of the committee deciding where to drop the bomb. he said, you can't destroy kyoto, it is my favorite city. first is hiroshima. there is brief cloud cover over another city, so the bombers go to the secondary target of

nagasaki. you have hundreds of thousands of people dying or living in two cities because of a 19-year-old vacation and a cloud. most of what we think about when we imagine politics is this neat and tidy story, the narrative from a to b. what i'm arguing is chance, chaos, and randomness often diverts our trajectories much more than we imagine when we look closely at the event. >> brian, the book is full of these examples. it is a great read. one on the civil war, decisive moment for the union army. there's turn to one more recent, the covid-19 pandemic. talk to us about how that seemingly chaotic series of events led to the path we all as a globe had to experience. >> throughout history, flukes and chance evens diverted trajectories, but we are now hyperconnected. when one person is infected with a mutated virus, the entire world is at a standstill. 8 billion people.

also, with suez canal, one boat gets a gust of wind, twisted sideways, $54 billion in economic damage. one of the arguments i theory, t more likely that black swans will wallop us. you have the war in iraq, the financial crisis, arab spring ignited by a guy who ignited himself on fire, and the entire middle east is on fire. we've been blind sided by these events. we have engineered a society in which starbucks is unchanging, our daily lives are routine and ordered, but democracies are collapsing and rivers are drying up. i'm explaining why that is and how we can potentially find more resilience to avoid it. >> brian, what's the next big fluke? you mentioned covid. what's the next big fluke to watch out for?

sidebar question, in a world of a.i. and automation, aren't we automating out the chance of flukes because we'll have data and predictability on almost everything. >> that's the illusion. a.i. will create the illusion of predictability and order, but it'll embed systemic risk into the world. imagine how we live compared to human ancestors long past. they had day-to-day chaos. didn't know where they'd get their next meal or what would happen in their daily life, but the world was the same. parents taught children how to live, not the reverse. now, we have a world in which kids teach parents how to use technology. we have computers we don't fully understand running systems. the models we use are built on this idea of regularity. i think we have actually embedded lots more risks into the future. what the next fluke is, i don't know. that's theentire idea. you can't predict a boat getting stuck in the suez canal and

causing $54 billion in damage. what is more important is to imagine how we might become more resilient by optimizing slightly less in the face of this uncertainty, and building a little more slack into our systems, which i do not think is the driving standard in modern politics today. >> the new book is entitled "fluke, chance, chaos, and why everything we do matters." it goes on sale tomorrow. brian klaas, congratulations. thank you very much for coming on the show this morning. still ahead on "morning joe," another split-screen moment as voters prepare to cast ballots in new hampshire. donald trump may today be back in a new york courtroom. what we know about the possibility of him testifying in the second defamation trial involving writer e. jean carroll. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back.

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the manhattan d.a.'s case, it's not a sure case. there is georgia, washington, d.c. >> some are strong cases? >> those are serious cases. the federal cases are serious cases. i think they're not to be taken lightly. >> joe tacopina, one of donald trump's former attorneys, with that assessment of the federal criminal cases against the former president. meanwhile, trump is expected to be back in court today in new york and may take the stand in the defamation damages trial involving writer e. jean carroll. a source close to trump tells nbc news that the former president is, quote, planning on testifying, but his testimony will be limited if he takes the stand. not sure how that works. let's ask former litigator,

msnbc legal analyst lisa rubin, who will be in the courtroom today. how does one limit his testimony? >> mika, the judge has already limited the subjects about which he can and can't speak, so when they're circumscribing the testimony, it's an understanding of what he can't testify about. he can't refute the fact of the sexual assault. he cannot, for example, say he never defamed her. both of those things were determined previously by a jury of nine peers last may in the first e. jean carroll defamation trial. this judge, judge kaplan, has determined because the parties are identical, the issues were identical. the statements litigated last time are virtuallyidentical, so those things cannot be retread here. that's what the former president's advisers mean when

they say the testimony will have to be narrowed. we're not sure what he can testify to given the rulings already in the case by judge kaplan. >> i'm trying to think of what he could even say. if you look what he was saying in court yesterday, interrupting e. jean carroll, talking to the point where the judge had to tell him to shut up, i believe there's some reporting that indicated he was saying things that were untrue. >> he was. he was listening to testimony and to, in fact, video tapes of himself on the campaign trail. for example, when he was confronted with a video of himself saying that e. jean carroll's case was an absolute disgrace, that's something that the plaintiff side wants to use to illustrate how he continues to defame her, notwithstanding last may's verdict. the former president was shaking his head, saying, "well, that's true, that's true." at one point, he said, "it is a disgrace." i could definitely hear him from my perch in the courtroom.

i was sitting in the fifth row, in the far corner. if i could hear him, not only could plaintiff's counsel hear him, but i'm quite positive the jury could hear him, which is what led to the admonishment from judge kaplan last week, mika. >> real quick, where does this go after today? how many how much longer do you expect this to play out until they decide what the damages are? >> it really depends on who testifies. there's one thing i know for sure is going to happen today, and that is e. jean carroll's side is going to call robbie myers, the editor in chief at carroll's former magazine. she'll testifying to the damage to her reputation. after, i expect e. jean carroll's lawyers will further confront president trump with some of his prior statements. usually, you have to have a witness in the chair to introduce evidence. one exception is party admissions. you know, mika, as well as i do,

the former president has given a series of depositions in which he said things that might be relevant to this case, even though the depositions were far afield from whether or not he defamed or sexually abused carroll. the new york attorney general's case, he was deposed. he says a number of things about his net worth, brand value, how much cash on hand, all of which could be highly relevant to a jury considering punitive damages. depending whether donald trump takes the stand, we should be done tomorrow or wednesday. lots can happen between then and now, mika, as you know. >> former litigator and msnbc legal analyst, lisa rubin, thank you very much. we appreciate it. we'll be following. coming up, today marks 51 years since the landmark roe versus wade decision by the supreme court that gave women the right to abortion health care. until it was overturned in 2022.

with the procedure now severely restricted or banned in nearly one-third of the united states, our next guests have a new strategy to safeguard reproductive freedom and abortion health. that conversation is straight ahead on "morning joe." g joe. >>,

besides from the death of lyndon johnson, the tragic death and hopes for peace in vietnam, is the decision of the united states supreme court. it handed down a historic decision about abortion. the court said in a 7-2 decision that in the first three months of pregnancy, only the woman and her physician may decide whether she may have an abortion. in the second three months, all the state may do is regulate abortion procedures. only in the final three months of pregnancy can the state forbid abortion. the court ruled in cases from texas and georgia, but all 50 states are effective, whatever their laws. >> nbc nightly news reporting 51

years ago today on the supreme court issuing its roe versus wade ruling. today, a year and a half after that landmark decision was overturned, president biden will meet with key members of his cabinet to discuss abortion rights and reproductive freedom. nbc news has learned the departments of treary, labor, health and human services will issue new guidance today to clarify standards and support expanded coverage of fda approved contraceptives at no cost under the affordable care act for millions of women nationwide. joining us now, attorneys catherine colbert and julia f. kay. they're authors of "controlling women, what we must do now to save reproductive freedom." also with us the ceo of all in together, lauren leader, who has written about this on know your

value. let's start with the book. kathrine colbert, i'll start with you, what can be done at this point moving forward that, in certain states, aren't already trying, and what can be done from the highest level in the land, the white house? >> well, mika, thank you so much for having me. i think the most important thing to remember here is that there is no one strategy that will work. there has to be a multiple-wrong attempt to reverse what's going on, both at the state level and, eventually, at the federal level. because there are now almost one-third of the states in this country that ban abortion, that make it very, very difficult for women to obtain it in those states, and women's health is drastically undermined as a result. to reverse that, we need to look at state statutes, state constitutions, federal statutes, a new federal constitution.

that all sounds very daunting, but we need to work at this one step at a time. i think the important part here is every person who cares about abortion rights needs to take a stand and do something with your energy, to make this politically unfeasible going forward. >> 100%. julie f. kay, the same question for you. >> well, i think right now we're in a public health crisis as well as a human rights crisis. so we need to get engaged politically, but we also really need to think about those women who are on the ground, who are not getting access to services in vast pieces of this country. a lot of advances have been made in medicine, particularly telemedicine abortion, where you do a virtual visit with your doctor and get safe, easy medication abortion pills through the mail, is really the wave of the future. women are voting at the voting booths and also with their choices online of how they'll access care that's safe and

affordable and a way that's their choice. >> lauren leader, on this anniversary of roe v. wade, you're writing for know your value about what women have both lost and gained in these past 51 years. tell us about it. >> well, look, i mean, i certainly don't want to imply there is any silver lining to the end of roe because there's not. it was a catastrophic decision for tens of millions of americans. however, i think for many years, the politicalgalvanization of abortion went from ronald reagan to today, and it was successful. for the first time in my lifetime, a majority of women, and even men, as well, have woken up to this reality that rights are not guaranteed. they can be rereversed. without our active political

participation, anything is possible. the wake-up call for americans has been very real. we saw it at the ballot box in places like ohio, kentucky, and in every place where abortion has been on the ballot since dobbs. that is a really incredibly important sort of political change in this country. the advantage now, the political advantage is on the pro abortion -- not pro abortion but pro abortion rights movement. that is a huge shift, a political earthquake. >> kathryn, can you give us a political update in the 18 months plus in the dobbs ruling on what has happened to abortion in this country and the expansion of tele med and trying to step into the breech and how important that has been? >> well, i think the most important thing is in states where abortion is banned, women have to struggle to find services. that affects both women who are trying to terminate an unintended pregnancy and women who are pregnant and facing a variety of health difficulties

within their pregnancy. we saw in the news repeatedly stories of pregnant women who are late in pregnancy by field anomalies and are suffering severe consequences because doctors won't perform procedures in banned states. >> right. >> so it has really caused significant, as julie just mentioned, a public health crisis for pregnant women. in addition, though, what we've seen is a whole range of women having to struggle every single day to find services. either by telephone, by finding friends who can help them, and in many states like in texas -- well, not many states -- but certainly in texas, be criminal prosecuted for trying to find services from their friends. and there have been a number of cases in texas in which people helping women have been threatened with litigation. so, we've seen both the public

health crisis, the criminalization, and, most importantly, as lauren said, a reawakening among women that this is not allowable, that they need to become politically active, that they need to say this is no longer okay and begin to show that in the ballot box. >> so, julie, you sat down here, we talked about what an outsized role abortion played in the 2022 election, it did last year in the 2023, and we believe it will again this year, even as we're talking about other things right now, this belief from the democrats that at the ballot box abortion will really matter. we live in a society with short attention spans, but you think this issue is going to stay, it's going to be something at the forefront of people's minds for years to come. tell us why you think that. >> well, abortion is part of the regular health care experience for so many, many women, and we

also have a maternity mortality rate in the united states that is way higher than it should be and is appalling. when you look at a political football and such an issue for women and those who love them, it doesn't go away. it's something that will be a flash in the pan. the more we're aware and talking about abortion rights, and people recognizing what a risk this court has posed to women's health and lives, it doesn't go away, it doesn't go away at the ballot box. we've seen successful elections at the state and federal level where abortion was either specifically on the ballot or whether it was a candidate talking about supporting those rights. that will continue. we've seen people continue to come out and march in the united states and globally to support these rights. and we've seen women helping women and helping people to access abortion through

telemedicine, through mailing of abortion pills since states that have taken away he's rights, helping women travel when they need to and want to. the outrage of some of the extreme cases in texas and other places where there have been real risks so women's health and life and fertility has been huge. so, that's with us. >> so, lauren, all in together trains women across america on the too manies of political power. i just wanted to get your thoughts on this. i feel like women advocates, politicians need to reframe what this is about, especially after what we've been witnessing as a country. over the past two years. of course this is about reproductive freedom, but i think it's about a lot more. it's about our health. it's about not dying when you have a nonviable pregnancy. it's about not being tortured mentally and physically when you have a need for a dnc or a

nonviable pregnancy. and we've seen this play out, so it's not like pie in the sky, maybe this would happen. this is happening to women. they're bleeding out. they're becoming sterilized. they're becoming traumatized. they're physically tortured because of the lack of health care, abortion health care that they need. it's about our right to life. it's about the right to life of your sister, a new mother, somebody who wants to have babies but has a nonviable pregnancy that has gone terribly wrong, her right to life and her right to not have to watch that baby gasp for air and die in her arms hours after it was born, and then find out she's sterilized and then get mentally tortured by that, perhaps need a lot of mental health care, our

right to a normal, healthy life. this is about more than reproductive freedom. when you say reproductive freedom, stupid republicans, stupid short-sighted and hypocriical republicans, many of whom probably have people in their lives who have had abortions and needed them and they've been able to pay for them, those people, men and women at this point, will take reproductive freedom and say look at those lazy women who got pregnant, and now they want to murder a baby. that's what they use those words -- how they frame those words. and we have real-life experiences that show that we're fighting for our right to life at this point, for our right to abortion health care, to a healthy life. is this a strategy or something that you think could work? and do you think reproductive freedom is not enough at this point?

>> i mean, i think it is a fundamental question of whether or not the constitution grants women the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. it is an absolutely fundamental question of our place in american society. and, you know, when roe was decided on this question of privacy, i think that's a really significant part of it, which is why are women no longer able to have the same kind of privacy, the same kind of choices, the same kind of access to decide their own futures and the futures of their families as men do. and i think that message is really one that is deeply personal for millions of american women, whether or not they can consider themselves pro-life. we've been talking about this on the show for 18 mos, horrible cases of women suffering needlessly because politicians decided to interfere in their private decision. you'll hear more of this on the life and liberty piece, i think especially from the vice president who will be out today

speaking about that during the campaign. and i think americans really need to understand that is fundamentally what is at stake here. when we talk about additional rights that may be rolled back, we see the potential for this court, people need to take that seriously. the court has told us what they intend to, and it is not to move in the direction of more freedom and liberty for americans in general and women specifically. i think americans understand that. to your question about the politics, i talk to democrats all over the country. i think one of the most effective ads we saw this last cycle was andy beshear's ad. all he did was put a 12-year-old kill on camera to talk about her experience of having been raped and what she faced and having to make agonizing choices. i think we'll see more of that. we should. let women speak about what's happening to their lives, about the liberty they've been deprived of. that's what's at stake. >> co-founder and ceo of all in

together, lauren leader, thank you so much. her new piece is online now at knowyourvalue.com. attorneys katherine and julie, thank you both, as well. their book is entitled "controlling women: what we must now do to save reproductive freedom." coming up, while most republican lawmakers are starting to fall in line with their support of donald trump, there are some who are criticizing him. we'll show you who the two gop congressmen are who called out the former president yesterday on fox news. plus, an update on the border deal that includes critical aid for ukraine. president biden is challenging speaker mike johnson and house republicans to act on what he opens will be a bipartisan package. and we'll head back to new hampshire, where donald trump was again confused on the campaign trail. the former president continues to mix up his political opponents and what decade he's in. we'll show you the latest

mistake and get an update on the race ahead of tomorrow's primary.

with obama, we won an election that said everyone couldn't be done. obama dropped missiles that hit a kindergarten. if that's the case, he'll be indicted when he leaves office. obama doesn't want to talk about it. he doesn't even mention them in a statement. it's all coming through iran.

>> you mean president biden. >> we were interviewing him two weeks ago, and they said what would you alleged vise president obama? the whole world seems to be exploding. they never report the crowd on january 6th. nikki haley -- nikki haley -- nikki haley is in charge of security. we offered her 10,000 people. soldiers. s national guard, whatever they want. they turned it down. >> he was confused. he was confused the same way he said joe biden was going to start world war ii. >> we would be in world war ii very quickly if we're going to be relying on this man. >> clearly donald trump is not the same trump from 2016. >> when i came here, everyone thought bush was going to win. they thought bush because he was supposedly a military person. he got us into the -- he got us into the middle east. we came up with a new word for -- a new couple worlds for corn. viktor orban, hungry, very

powerful. he fronts on russia and ukraine. they were funding hezbollah and hamas. >> when he gets off the teleprompter, there's a lot of mistakes and stream-consciousness stuff. >> we're going to employ strong regulations for banks trying to debank you from, you know, your political beliefs, what they do. they want to debank you, and we're going to debank -- think of this -- a big hello to a place we've done very well, sioux falls. thank you very much, sioux falls. >> you're in sioux city. >> oh, all right. sioux city. let me ask you, how many people come -- how many people come from sioux city? >> oh, good morning. and welcome to "morning joe." it is monday, january 22nd. good to have you here with us this morning. >> you know, the nikki haley thing -- >> that one.

>> -- was disturbing. we talked about this on friday, about obama and the problems. there was actually some poor guy who said, oh, they're making things up now to distract from joe biden. not trying to distract from joe biden. joe biden is doing just fine. we're talking about the fact that time and time and time again, donald trump, who's obviously, as ron desantis said, lost more than his staff, and as nikki haley says, israeli -- you know, really confused up there, and she says our kids deserve better than somebody who doesn't know where they are or what they're doing. but you see him go through his speech. he struggles. he starts to say obama, then he cuts himself off, because his mind is going, wait, is obama still president? >> what decade am i in? >> he continues and says obama's

name because he can't remember biden's name. and we had the same thing the other night, nikki, nikki, nikki, he says it three times. and then he moves on thinking that, wait, that doesn't sound quite right but maybe that's right. then he comes back and he accuses nikki haley of being nancy pelosi on january 6th. we gave her -- offered nikki haley -- think about this. donald trump saying we offered the former u.n. ambassador 10,000 troops. she wasn't even there. she wasn't even government. so, the confusion just continues. i can tell you joe biden knows where he is, what decade he's in, sure as hell knows who he's running against. there's just really no comparison here. so, yeah, you want to talk about who's addled, this is an easy

one. he can't even remember that barack obama hasn't been president of the united states in eight years. >> yeah, and you have to think, is this age? it could be. but it also could just be the mountain of legal action against this man just crushing him and making him so stressed that he's literally confused. because no one person could handle all the cases that he has against him, all the lawyers he has to deal with, all the lawyers he can't get. i mean, some of these cases put him away in prison for the rest of his life. >> except for the fact he's in 2016 most of the time. he talks about the landslide victory against barack obama. jonathan lemire, let me bring you in here because you've been seeing this. he talks about the landslide against obama. he talks about obama so much as president of the united states that brian kilmeade on his radio

show has to interrupt him and correct him. that's this whole, oh, trump is -- no, he's not. he actually -- his mind is so -- it's like scrambled eggs when he gets up there and gets tired. he really thinks that he's running against barack obama. and just like he thought nikki haley was speaker of the house on january 6th. >> of course he launched his career on the racist lie of birthism, which involved barack obama. much of his campaign was against the obama/hillary clinton axis of the democratic party. but a couple things are at play here. anyone who spends any time with trump, his closest advisers, he's almost fossilized with 2016, that bug preserved in amber, because that was the definitive race for him. even in 2020, he would repeat word for word stories on the campaign trail he told four years before. he's just never moved past 2016.

he thought that was going to be his whole political career because he didn't expect to win and it was all about that campaign. so he's been in that moment ever since. we're also seeing clearly increased signs of confusion, age, pressure, as mika said, probably playing a role as well. these slip-ups are happening more and more. he's been doing this for a long time, but because he gives a fireplace hose of falsehoods and lies but mistakes that kind of blow past everybody, what's happened here is some have been so profound and noteworthy people are focusing on them. that's what happened in the last couple days, joe and mika, his mixing up nikki haley for nancy pelosi -- >> not hard to miss. >> too little too late perhaps for a campaign, but she seized on that. the biden white house did, as well, president biden tweeting he and nikki haley don't agree on much, but they can agree on one thing, that she's not nancy pelosi. >> right. okay. so, here it is, again, on friday, this is when trump confused nikki haley for house

speaker nancy pelosi. trump began mocking haley for crowd sizes at her rallies. but then he pivoted to discussing the january 6th insurrection and claimed haley, not pelosi, was in charge of the capitol security that day. >> you know, when she comes here, she gets, like, nine people, and the press never reports the crowds, you know. by the way, they never report the crowd on january 6th. you know, nikki haley -- nikki haley -- nikki haley -- you know -- do you know they destroyed all of the information, all of the evidence, everything, deleted and destroyed all of it? because of lots of things like nikki haley is in charge of security. we offered her 10,000 people, soldiers, national guard, whatever they want. they turned it down. they don't want to talk about that. >> if you look recently, there have been multiple things. i mean, he claimed that joe biden was going to get us into world war ii.

i'm assuming he meant world war iii. he said he ran against president obama. he never ran against president obama. he says i'm the one that kept security from the capitol on january 6th. i was nowhere near the capitol on january 6th. but, margaret, you don't be surprised if you have someone that's 80 in office, their mental stability is going to continue to decline. that's just human nature. i don't know if he was confused. i don't know what happened. but it should be enough to send us a warning sign. >> as lemire pointed out, president biden's campaign drew attention to trump's mistake, writing on x, i don't agree with nikki haley on everything, but we agree on this much: she is not nancy pelosi. and he posted this video montage. >> last night, trump is at a rally. >> nikki haley -- nikki haley -- nikki haley -- >> and he's going on and on mentioning me multiple times as to why i didn't handle january

6th better. >> nikki haley is in charge of security. we offered her 10,000 people. they don't want to talk about that. >> i wasn't in office then. they're saying he got confused. >> buy a loaf of bread, you have i.d. to buy a loaf of bread. what? i'm driving over a road where it's almost all paper. and, you know, you can see paper. i know paper. i know cans. but all the time now we see whales washing up onshore because of the wind -- our veterans don't have cell phones, do they? he got confused. he got confused and said he was running against obama. he never ran against obama. >> and redid it with obama, we won an election that everyone said couldn't be won. obama doesn't want to talk about it. >> you mean president biden. so -- >> don't put our country at risk like this. >> i'm joe biden, and i approve this message. >> i bet you do approve that message.

oh, my god. jonathan lemire, first of all -- >> on the he's too old concern from biden. >> it's gone. it's gone. if they want to bring it up that joe biden has a stutter that he's had since, like, he was 14 years old, they can bring that up. biden campaign hopes they bring it up. but there's so much here. by the way, voter i.d. to buy a loaf of bread, says he's driving over paper, nobody knows what he's talking about because he doesn't know what he's talking about because his mind sometimes becomes mush. i have to say, jonathan lemire, that's just -- again, that's just brutal. he looked lost. he looked confused. he looks -- he just -- again, this super extreme maga -- those voters, they'll stay with him through praising every communist

chinese and communist north korean dictator on the planet. they'll stay with him through an episode of -- i don't know if it's early onset of dementia or what it is. the swing voters, again, as we've said, as the biden team said, as the bulwark said, the more they see this guy, the more they're going to say, like they said in 2020, no thanks. >> there are few things ideologically consistent about donald trump, but his crazy fear of windmills, he talks about that in a nonsensible fashion all the time. to your point, joe, the biden campaign has looked at this race consistently throughout where they understand that donald trump by far, more than any other republican, poses bs v, in their estimation, the greatest threat to america. the stakes couldn't be higher with trump on the ballot. that said, it's also the retail sales -- race they want, because

they feel trump's age, the increased confusion negates what could have been a pretty powerful republican attack line against president biden, who's certainly shown no signs of confusion like that, but is over 80 years old. can't change his birth certificate. they also think, though, to your point a moment ago, some aides told me this mid last year, they felt trump had become background noise for so many americans, yeah, he's in the headlines for this case or that, but outside of the die-hard maga base, no one's been listening to trump. he's sort of been in the ether. but frankly in about 48 hours, donald trump might be the republican nominee because the primary could be over, so they'll have no choice but to pay attention. when they see him and hear him and how he's lost a few steps but also how his rhetoric has gotten angrier and more dangerous, they think that will turn off the independent swing

voters, who maybe back in '16, backed him in' 20, but wouldn't in '24. >> a lot of people want to see nikki haley and before didn't want anyone challenging donald trump. the white house is not in that group. the white house wants donald trump to nail this nomination process down as quickly as possible and wake up young voters, wake up black voters, wake up hispanic voters who have gone away from him because they will say in focus groups there's no way democrats will be facing trump. again, the disengaged voter, no, no, no, that guy's never going to be here again, that won't be our choice. so, the white house has been waiting for this moment to arrive. new hampshire is a landslide for trump and he names it down, the white house gets what they want. they get that matchup with the one guy that joe biden's team

knows he can beat. >> because he's done it before. so there's proof. but, yeah. if those who haven't been that into it, they tune in now and see trump, he's very different, much more -- even physically seems different. let's bring in u.s. special correspondent for bbc news katty kay, founder of the conservative web e website the bulwark, charlie sykes, and national affairs analyst john heilemann is with us. good to have you all with us. >> john, a lot going on in new hampshire over the past 24 hours. tell us, where are we? is this going to be another big donald trump victory? >> well, first of all, i think it's been really hard on donald trump. you know, joe, i get you confused with joe strummer all the time. guy named joe with the last name starting with "s." they should probably give him

the new form of the cognitive test. person, woman, tv, nikki haley, nancy pelosi. the next time the doctor does the cognitive test, they should see if he can pass it. i'll say this, that this primary feels unlike perception there's a lot going on up here, always lot in some sense going on in the new hampshire primary, but compared to any primary you and mika have been to in the past, there's not much going on here in the sense we almost never see a situation you're down to a two-person race. nikki haley on the night of the iowa caucuses said we're down to two people in this field, and people sort of latched at her and said you came in third, how could you be part of a two-person race. turns out she was right. it may have been impublic to say that, but she knew ron desantis didn't have a path forward. it's a two-person race. so we've seen in the last weekend often one of the most electrifying periods in all of american politics. we've seen donald trump showing up once a day to do a rally,

concord on friday night, manchester on saturday night, last night out in rochester, and not basically campaigning the state at all. then you have nikki haley, who had. after iowa last week, was not campaigning all that actively here, was doing a few events a day but not running the way a normal challenger runs in new hampshire. suddenly on saturday, some say at the urging of the governor, chris sununu, started to run a full new hampshire campaign, a full schedule all day on saturday, all day on sunday, taking questions from reporters on both days, and, as you noted, finally deciding to go after donald trump on an issue of genuine vulnerability, which is the question of his age and his mental acuity, something she has been loathe to do in the past. we do not see, at least so far, a lot of signs of the gap between the two of them narrowing in the polling. but as you know, new hampshire is very -- especially in the last few days can be tough to

cap which you were late movement. there's definitely energy at her events, people turning out for her. the governor, chris sununu, keeps talking about the momentum he sees. he's obviously one of the most enthusiastic people in politics. maybe overstating things a bit. she is clearly the underdog and donald trump the favorite. but we'll see what happens in the next 48 hours as to how close the race is on tuesday. >> charlie sykes, do you think that the republican voters in new hampshire and the independents in new hampshire are going to vote for a man and basically seal the nomination for a man who thinks he's running against barack obama and thinks nikki haley was speaker of the house on january 6th? >> well, if they don't, other republican voters will. you know, i do think it's important to have a reality check about this particular moment, that even as the evidence piles up that donald trump is, in fact, addled, and

that may be the least worst aspect of his character, but he's decompensating in real time, but he's facing more than 90 felony charges, been twice impeached, been disgraced, who over the weekend continue fuszed nikki haley with nancy pelosi, but also praised the world's most vicious thugs once again, threw taiwan under the bus. yet republicans one after another are about to line up behind this elderly, crazed, accused felon and bigot as the next president of the united states. i mean, it is a remarkable moment that, with everything that we have seen and heard from donald trump, everything that he continues to say in real time, that even people like chris sununu will say, yes, he's the nominee, i'm absolutely going to put party loyalty over the country, it is truly an extraordinary moment, even after

the seven years we've all lived through. >> that comment by chris sununu on "meet the press" this weekend when he was asked repeatedly, given all he's said about donald trump, about his age, january 6th, give kwhan he said about his fitness for office, and he still says, yes, if he's the nominee, i'll support him, as will millions of americans, which shows poor old nikki haley, if that's he were best surrogate and he's still out there saying he'll be supporting donald trump on the each of -- each of the -- if we think new hampshire will crown donald trump as the republican nominee, what might be interesting watching the vote tomorrow is how many republicans actually turn out to vote. the republican turnout in iowa was suppressed compared to history. other republicans who are sitting at home, thinking you know what, if donald trump -- it's going to be donald trump, he is the party nominee, we know that there are those who will stand in line and risk frostbite for hours and hours and hours.

but there are also those republican who is may just decide, come tomorrow and come november, that actually they're not republicans anymore, effectively, and they're not going to go out and vote for donald trump. the potential warning signs of a shrunken republican electorate will be interesting to read after we see the numbers tomorrow. coming up, our next guest says there are seven reasons why ron desantis' campaign was dead on arrival. "the daily beast's" matt lewis joins us with his new column. okay everyone, our mission is to provide complete, balanced nutrition for strength and energy. yay - woo hoo! ensure, with 27 vitamins and minerals, nutrients for immune health. and ensure complete with 30 grams of protein. (♪♪)

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you can be the most worthless republican in america, but if you kiss the ring, he'll say you're wonderful. you can be the strongest, most dynamic, successful republican and conservative in america, but if you don't kiss that ring, then he'll try to trash you.

you know what? you deserve a nominee that's going to put you first, not himself first. trump is superior to the current incumbent, joe biden. that is clear. i signed a pledge to support the republican nominee, and i will honor that pledge. he is my endorsement because we can't go back to the old republican guard of yesteryear. >> oh, my god. yesteryear. >> that was governor ron desantis -- >> kissing the ring. >> john heilemann, we'll get to that in a minute. i want to talk about new hampshire, you know, because, again, i just -- you know, over the last couple weeks, there's been a lot of fear and loathing, a lot of sack cloth action for donald trump that lost half of the iowa electorate despite the fact he's basically the incumbent president. i always said if obama ran as a

democrat in that contest, a democratic caucus, he'd get 98% of the vote. only 14% of the vote went out in iowa then. very low turnout. you look at donald trump here. you've been going to the rallies. you've been going -- you've been seeing all of this. you and i both were at that massive event in 2016, over 4,000 people in a raging snowstorm. again, we're looking at all the crazy, dangerous things he's saying, disconnected from reality, but compare trump '16 with trump '24 and what donald trump has done to the state of new hampshire in general election terms. >> yeah. i mean, look, joe, you mentioned that event. i was thinking about you on saturday night because it's the

snhu arena, a big sports arena, they do hockey and basketball games and stuff. four years, we were all there together, you, me, willie, barnacle. it seats 10,000 people. it was packed to the gills in 2016. the other night here, there were empty seats all over the arena. they said there were a few thousand people there, and there probably were a few thousand, but it seats 10,000, and it was way less than half filled. on the lower level, you could see seat after seat empty. he did an event at rochester. the place has a capacity at 700. trump used to brag about his 10,000 people, 12,000 people. we kept 10,000 people outside as far as the eye could see. he's getting more people to turn out than nikki haley, but the phenomenon, the energy of donald trump that you saw on the ground here, that we saw on the ground

here in 2016, to a lesser extent in 2020 partly because of the pandemic, it's ebbed a great deal in this primary. i will say, as you talk to people who know the state here, whether they're pollsters, strategists, whatever, back in '16 he ran against hillary clinton in this state and less than a percentage point separated them on election day in 2016. less than half a percent. biden won the state by seven points in 2020. and there's polling to through the that says biden wins the state by ten points in 2024. this is a state that has not been transformed by trump from purple to red. this is a state that under trump's leadership in the republican party is one of the best examples of the thing you guys, we talk about all the time, which is that trump has been toxic politically at the national level for the republican party. this state would under a normal republican be a battleground state potentially.

instead, you're looking at a state that, by reasonable metrics, he'll probably lose the state by potentially double digits, high single digits. that puts the state out of reach for republicans, and yet, you know, it's still the case that there's almost no doubt that he's going to end up being able to hold off nikki haley here because of that core, small, but intense core of the republican party who will show up for him even if turnout is down on tuesday. >> let's keep this simple, katty, if nikki haley were the nominee, new hampshire would be a swing state. since donald trump is the nominee, you don't have to spend a dime there. >> the lack of enthusiasm, the smaller crowds, the lack of energy, how many other states will that translate to? i don't like to use the word "confidence" when it comes to the white house, but you combine the kind of lack of broader energy for trump in the republican party with those

better economic numbers they're seeing, the consumer confidence numbers ticking up, perhaps the most important number we had out last week, showing americans are starting to feel better about the economy, and, you know, you can understand why the white house is just desperate to get on with this race. but, charlie, let's do a little bit of postmortem before we consign him oblivion. ron desantis, it's big news when a candidate drops out at this stage of the game on sunday, particularly given that ron desantis, whatever it was, a year and a half ago, was ahead of donald trump in the polls. now, i see nikki haley now attacking donald trump more forthrightly in the very last days of her campaign. >> yes. >> was there room automatic along for a candidate to take that lane in the republican party? and did ron desantis just not take that off-ramp? >> we will never know because they never tried, right.

ron desantis was the great hope. when you think about, you know, how high he was riding there, you know, history is full of lots of flops, but ron desantis is going to rank right up there, you know, given his -- you know, given his original -- all the hopes were around him. again, as i wrote on this column, the political obituary is almost too easy to write. he was a bad candidate. he had a lousy message and a truly terrible campaign. but maybe it wouldn't have made any difference because this says so much about the republican party as well. he calculated if he moved to the right of donald trump on the cultural issues, that somehow he could be trumpism without trump. but the problem is the republican base wanted trump. they wanted the show. they wanted -- they weren't interested in the legislation, in the policies, in, you know, whether or not he was going to be punching disney in the face. they wanted the real thing. and when ron desantis and the others decided that they were not actually going to run

against donald trump, that they were going to actually defend him, rationalize him, provide cover for his various indictments and crimes and lies and sedition, et cetera, it pretty much guaranteed that republicans were going to go, if we can have the fake thing, why not go with the real thing? but, you know, ron desantis was always i think overhyped because he was never ready for prime time, he was never going to scale up. and, you know, it just -- kind of the lesson that you cannot run if you're not willing to run against the guy you're running against, which seems kind of basic. our next guest garage waited from the florida high school where that mass shooting took place back in 2018. congressman jared moskowitz is heading back there in a renewed push for gun safety in america, and he joins our conversation straight ahead on "morning joe."

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we talked with sean mcdermott. he has tremendous support in the building, if he has to make one for us on the line, he will. 44 yards. bass. doesn't make it! wide right. >> wow. that is -- i mean, i just don't know what to say. an entire -- an entire city, an entire community's hopes and dreams resting on the foot -- oh, god. he went wide right. maybe he -- i don't know. maybe he played for fsu at one time. wide right, a phrase that, again, destroys buffalo bills fans. they miss a field goal that would have tied the game in the final in a great game against the chiefs. a first down later, kansas city seals the win, the third time in the past four years the chiefs

have knocked the buffalo bills out of the playoffs. espn's pablo torre. i like the chiefs, right. >> yeah. >> i've always loved the chiefs. they're a fun team. but this year i really -- i was, like, come on, the bills need this. i want a lake erie super bowl, the bills and the lions, man. that would have -- that would have made us all run faster, stretch out our arms further, and would have healed this broken land. not to be. hand it to the chiefs, who have been a mystery wrapped inside of an enigma wrapped inside a riddle. i get those wrong in sequence, but it's the case. i haven't been able to figure them out all year, but it doesn't matter. they figured themselves out last night. >> i want to start with buffalo. you're right, there are religious overtones in this one. it's not that the city of

buffalo wondering is there a god, they were wondering why has he forsaken me, why is he so cruel. >> yes. yes. >> this is old testament stuff. for people who don't understand, the reality really, of scott norwood, their old kicker, missing a field goal wide right to ensure that this team has never won a super bowl and will not again this year, this was as good a year as any. you watch this game. this had the feeling, as you watch these clips, of a prize fight. lead change back and forth, teams fighting tooth and nail, both of them deserving, to be clear, but buffalo, man, like, if not now, when? >> come on, man. >> it's a fair concern for the city of buffalo, for the region of upstate new york in general. and you were joking about the vegas residency before, well, patrick mahomes has a residency in the afc conference, okay. in that title game, he has --

he's been there every year he's been a starter. it's six years in a row. we've been looking, okay, who is the replacement for that brady/belichick defense that jonathan lemire loves. guess what? it's the team with travis kelce blowing kisses and making heart-shaped signals to taylor swift in the luxury box as his brother, jason, is shirtless behind her, jumping into the stands as well. like, that's what the kansas city chiefs are. they are goliath, and the bills are david without a slingshot. >> this game and the one three years ago, really, for this era, this is, like, the playoff matchup. i mean, when i was growing up, in the super bowl, it was the cowboys and the steelers. of course in this division, the old afc west division, it was the chiefs and the raiders. man, what a rivalry that was. but that rivalry now, it's the bills and the chiefs. and at some point, at some

point, maybe the bills win against them. but for now, the chiefs just own them. but, i mean, what a historic rivalry we have here on our hands. >> yes. i mean, look, the attempted parallels have been is this tom brady versus peyton manning now. there was this discussion about who is who. the issue is simply this -- patrick mahomes keeps winning everything. for people who know who josh allen is, he is a 6'5" monster who can do everything. >> unbelievable. >> and this game was not -- look, it's one thing if you get outplayed thoroughly. but when it's the kicker -- i'm not here to just fther sprinkle dirt on tyler bass, the kicker who missed that field goal, but if you are the buffalo

bills' kicker, going wide right is a time to leave town kind of scenario. everything they said about the rivalry is real except for the fact that the bills haven't been good enough to justify the other end of that metaphor. coming up, a live report from new hampshire on the eve of that state's presidential primary vote. nbc's vaughn hillyard joins us straight ahead.

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coming up, the governor of michigan, gretchen whitmer, is standing by. we'll talk about her new election push on behalf of the biden campaign. >> and the detroit lions. >> well, of course. all that when "morning joe" comes right back. >> their fans have rarely heard for the second time, the lions are one win from making the super bowl.

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. today marks the 51st anniversary of roe v wade, the supreme court decision that granted women a constitutional right to an abortion. the landmark ruling was overturned in 2022, and now the biden/harris campaign is making abortion rights a key issue in its reelection effort. vice president kamala harris will be in wisconsin today, a key battleground state, to urge for more reproductive freedom. wisconsin essentially banned abortion for 15 months after roe was struck down, reverting to a law written in 1849. but in an ongoing court case, a judge ruled over the summer that law did not apply to abortion. the ruling will likely be appealed to the state's supreme court. on friday, wisconsin republicans

introduced a bill that would call for a statewide referendum on whether abortion should be banned after 14 weeks, but wisconsin's democratic governor is almost certain to veto the measure. joining us now with more on the critical abortion rights cases and ballot measures across the country, daniella pierre bravo. >> there are several anticipated court rulings this year that could have an impact on abortion access. first are the cases to watch in the supreme court. a decision is expected this summer on whether to restrict access to the abortion medication mifepristone. in texas anti-abortion groups sued the fda. the medication accounts for more than half of u.s. abortions and is used in the management of miscarriages. the second is whether idaho's

abortion ban violates the federal protection law that gives doctors and hospitals the ability to perform abortions in emergency situations that require stabilizing a patient. earlier this month, the supreme court ruled that idaho is allowed to enforce its abortion ban even in medical emergencies while the legal case plays out. then there are abortion cases playing out in different states, seeking clarity around the language of exceptions to abortion bans. two of the most consequential are thoseeing brought by pregnant with women and doctors in texas and idaho. both statesave near-total abortion bans. how to handle complicated on on pregnancies, fearing harsh penalties. i spoke with the president of the center for reproductive rights. >> the state of texas keeps

fighting us on the simple request that we have, which is that women with obstetric emergencies can get abortion to save their life and future fer tilt. many followed the case of kate cox in december. she stood up while she was pregnant when she had a devastating diagnosis about the state of her pregnant, and texas fought her and said, no, she shouldn't get to have an abortion that would be so critical to her health and future fertility. she had to leave the state. >> finally, there are the ballot measures to protect abortion access in state constitutions. so far those measures have passed in every state where they've been on the ballot. next month, of course, florida's state supreme court will hear arguments on whether to remove a similar ballot measure after it was challenged by the state's republican attorney general. >> it's just hard to believe

this is where we are. thank you very much for that report. today, the biden/harris campaign is releasing an ad that focuses on the issue of abortion rights. here's part of it. >> two years ago, i became pregnant with a baby i desperately wanted. during a routine ultrasound i learned that the fetus would have a fatal condition and never survive. i had to flee my own state to receive treatment. i think donald trump bears an incredible amount of responsibility for these restrictive laws. we need leaders that will protect our rights and not take them away. and that's joe biden and kamala harris. >> joining us now, democratic governor gretchen whitmer of michigan, national cochair for the biden/harris 2024 campaign. thanks so much for being on this

morning. i want to start with this issue. it's so serious and it's not just about reproductive rights and freedom. it's about health care. do you think the strategy will be to try and explain that to voters, to take it beyond the word reproductive rights? >> absolutely. this is a national issue. i was asked over the weekend is this just going to be pertinent in the nine states that have issues before them at the state level, and i said no. abortion rights are very much at risk in all 50 states, even a state like michigan where we eviscerated the 1931 ban without exceptions and we made strides in terms of making access

affordable and easier for women in michigan. that could all be lost if we had a national abortion ban. there's no question that each of the republican candidates for president has said that's something they support. this isn't over even in a state like mine where we've made such great strides. >> right. your state has made great strides. i'm curious if you are seeing more of an understanding as to what this is about since roe was overturned and since we had some of these high profile cases where women are being asked to bleed out in parking lots and losing their fertifertility. it goes on and on, the nightmares that women face when abortion health care is not provided for them. it's not just about getting abortion. it's about getting the care around terminating a pregnancy, all sorts of things that have to

do with keeping the mother alive, trying not to torture the mother literally, physically and mentally. i wonder if you're seeing a deeper understanding among female and male constituents as to what this is about. >> yes. i can tell you that when we had our opportunity to amend our constitution in michigan, we did roundtables all across the state. there were moments when women shared incredibly personal, vulnerable moments in their lives that were so difficult. a woman sat across the table from me and said i did not vote for you, i am not a democrat, i'm a republican, but you are the only one fighting for my daughters' rights to make their own decisions about their bodies. i'm not just here to talk about this. i'm knocking doors about the ballot initiative. i do think people understand this is deeply personal.

no politician should be making that choice for women. it should be theirs, their families and their health care providers. >> what's your message for women across the country? we had josh shapiro on last week. i kind of loved his answer. i think everybody was like joe biden is not doing enough. shapiro was like, why don't you guys get your butt out there? isn't this a moment in history where it's all hands on deck, whether you're talking about abortion or, i don't know, democracy, the constitution, rule of law? >> it has to be all hands on deck. it's hard to believe we are once again at this dire moment where we have to galvanize everyone to hold onto fundamental rights of

voting, fundamental rights to be equal under the law, to make your own decisions about your body, things we thought had been litigated and secured are very much still at risk. i'm excited about what i saw happen in ohio last year, a very red state that neighbors mine where people were coming from to michigan to get this fundamental care. they demanded their rights and made their voices heard loud and clear, but it's not settled. we have more work to do, and everybody has to be a part of ensuring our country doesn't go backwards. >> our country is what we need to talk to people about. i have to congratulate you on the lions. i didn't watch it all, but joe was screaming a lot in the living room. i figured it was good news. >> oh man, it's been such a

great season for football in michigan. we got the national college champions with the university of michigan. we have the detroit lions that have invigorated detroit and michigan. i've been watching the lions since i was a little kid. to see this team is just phenomenal. >> michigan governor gretchen whitmer, thank you so much for being on today. we will talk to you again soon. we are into the fourth hour of "morning joe" right now. 6:00 a.m. on the west coast, 9:00 a.m. in the east. it's two minutes past the top of the hour. we begin with a major shakeup in the republican presidential race as florida governor ron desantis suspends his campaign. he announced it yesterday, and then he endorsed donald trump. tomorrow's new hampshire primary is now a two-person race.

nbc news correspondent garrett haake is in manchester, new hampshire, with the latest. >> i'd like to take time to congratulate ron desantis. >> reporter: with another challenger in his rear-view mirror donald trump becoming the endorsement of former rival ron desantis. >> he was very gracious and he endorsed me, so i appreciate it. i appreciate that. and i also look forward to working with ron. >> reporter: the kind words from trump a sharp break from what has been a bitter battle between the two gop candidates. >> so ron desanctimonious was very upset. >> reporter: desantis threw his support behind mr. trump. >> trump is superior to joe biden. that is clear. >> reporter: desantis' departure from the race so sudden, some

supporters had had already arrived at a campaign event he had scheduled hours later. for republicans, that choice is now trump or haley, who welcomed the news of the shrinking field overnight. >> it's now one fella and one lady left. >> reporter: haley also sharpening her attacks on trump, highlighting his age after trump seemed to repeatedly confuse her with nancy pelosi when discussing the capitol riots. >> nikki haley is in charge of security. we offered her 10,000 people, soldiers, national guard, whatever they want. >> reporter: haley weighing in. >> they're saying he got confused. when you're dealing with the pressures of a presidency, we can't have someone else that we request whether they're mentally fit to do this. >> reporter: she's counting on a strong showing here after a disappointing third place finish in iowa. two new polls released this

weekend show haley trailing trump by double digits with only one day left to change minds. >> don't complain about what happens in a general election if you don't vote on tuesday. >> joining us now from manchester, new hampshire, is vaughn hillyard and former msnbc host and contributor to "washington monthly" chris matthews. also senior columnist for "the daily beast" matt lewis. what are the storylines and narratives you're looking at heading into tomorrow's primary? >> donald trump is this close to securing the republican nomination and he knows it. this is much different than eight years ago when it took the likes of marco rubio and ted

cruz months to come around. this go around, though, you continue to see a coalescing not around the trump alternative nikki haley, but around the former president of the united states. we over the course of the weekend saw multiple surrogates of his back on the campaign trail with him, including new york congresswoman elise stefanik, who is under consideration to be his potential vice presidential pick. his endorsements, his success in iowa and likely here on tuesday is coming at the same time he awaits criminal trials and we are awaiting the judge in the new york civil fraud trial to make his decision known. just today donald trump is in new york again and potentially taking the stand in the e. jean carroll defamation trial. i want to let you listen to an exchange i had with the new york

congresswoman elise stefanik over the weekend. >> reporter: how do you grapple with standing by his side? >> these are witch hunts. >> reporter: why not believe e. jean carroll? >> the media is so out of touch with a american people. like 2016, you are going to see the american people speak out loudly and clearly with their vote. >> reporter: we don't know what november of 2024 will look like, but we do know republican elected officials around the country, despite these trials and despite the allegations and despite a jury finding him to have sexually abused e. jean carroll, they will continue to

stand by him. >> fascinating thing is it's not a witch hunt. it's not the media that's in the jury. it's a jury of his peers, whether it's in new york that found him guilty of sexually abusing e. jean carroll. that's not a witch hunt. that's a jury. it's not a witch hunt when you have a judge saying that what he did would be defined as rape anywhere else. it's not a witch hunt when you have grand juries, whether they're in florida or whether they're in washington, d.c. or whether they're anywhere else across america. it's juries. i've noticed these republicans are supporting a guy who says he can execute his critical opponents with seal team six and not face any charges. i understand they will say anything for donald trump, but you have people like marco rubio

and elise stefanik basically saying the hell with the jury system. we don't trust juries anymore. anything that goes against donald trump, if juries go against donald trump, then the hell with the jury system, the hell with the rule of law. nothing applies to donald trump. that's where we are once again. >> well, you've got 200 people who have already plead guilty to felony charges for january 6th at the u.s. capitol. that's real business. these people can face up to 18 to 20 years in prison. i think the law is coming after donald trump and it's going to get him. i think the same system that's worked for those 700 people altogether that plead guilty to january 6th and the mastermind behind it alllied about january

6th and the 2020 election and the e. jean carroll case. i believe her completely, just like the jury did. i think they're going to give a lot of money to her, maybe $10 million in addition to everything, because they really believe she's been hurt by this. i think trump is lying all the time. the people that believe a liar all the time are crazy. i do not understand why 70 million people out there accept a constantly lying person. he did not win the election. if you just asked him point-blank tell us the states he won that we didn't know about, did he really win in georgia where he asked the secretary of state for 12,000 votes? where did he win? they don't know. they just follow his lead. he's lying. >> facts don't matter. again, doesn't matter that 63 federal courts, a lot of them trump-appointed judges, said

there was no widespread voter fraud that would have changed one election. the supreme court said the same thing. you even had clarence thomas and sam alito write a concurrence saying, you know, we ought to look a little closer into this pennsylvania case even though we know there aren't enough votes out there to change the outcome of the election. even trump's closest allies on the bench say there's absolutely nothing there. yet, chris, they keep looking at chinese religious cults' websites and presenting it as gospel. epic times is run by a chinese religious cult. they get their propaganda from trump who pushes it through there and other outlets. in new hampshire, does nikki

haley have a shot, or is this just going to be the coronation of donald trump? >> boy, i have to tell you, i thought she'd make it a real challenge. when she took down the confederate battle flag down in charleston, she basically made a statement. there was a before the flag was up there and there was an after. in politics you have to have a before and after moment, whether it was ronald reagan saying i paid for this microphone up here in new hampshire or hillary clinton becoming emotional about what the toil of the campaign affected her personally. there has to be a moment where you reach the voters. i have to tell you i've been to all the rallies. i have to tell you governor sununu has been fabulous. he is a great cheerleader. he gives a great speech. he did it last night again. there was a great endorsement by the union leader of this state,

fantastic endorsement. everybody did everything right. now comes the candidate, robotic, no personal connection with the audience, no reality, no moment where you just say i'm here, let me tell you why i'm here. just take the moment and just say i think it's really awful that we're going to run this guy again, this guy for president again as a republican party. i think it really is going to hurt our history. just say something that's real. i get the feeling when i watch her, she comes into the room without bringing herself into the room. you have to bring yourself. joe, you've been campaigning. you have to bring yourself into the room when you meet the voter. you have to be there. you have to be human, human. it's not there. i wanted it to be there. i think the audience is waiting for it. i watched the crowd last night. she gave 20 minutes about running for governor. i said, okay, that's good.

eventually you have to talk about china and russia and north korea and the world we live in. you're running for commander in chief. you have to talk like it's that important on this planet to be commander in chief of this country. she didn't rise to the occasion. i wish she had. i think it's going to be probably 50-40 if she's lucky tonight or tomorrow. it was on the plate for her if she just became human. i wish she could still do it tonight. i don't think she's wired for it. i don't quite get it. she wants to be too programmatic. she talks about chaos. chaos isn't a human condition. the personal aspect of a president who has lied to us, who endorsed the january 6th attack on our capitol. say something! >> polls suggest that message is not resonating with voters.

a poll out this morning has trump up by well over ten points. there's a chance if the polls are right and trump pulls off a decisive win tomorrow night, this primary could be over wednesday morning. for one candidate, it's already over. that's florida governor ron desantis. in november of 2022, he was seen as the great gop hope for those who wanted to turn the page on trump. he came off an impressive election win. trump seemed weak. that was the high watermark. it was an implosion, a candidate with shaky retail skills, to be kind, some miscalculations in terms of what the gop voter wanted. give us your analysis of what went wrong for ron desantis and what could be next for him. >> there's a similarity to what we were talking about with nikki haley, something not quite

there, not the political athlete, not quite ready for prime time. nikki reminds me of a quarterback that looks great and then in the playoffs falls apart. ron desantis has a similar thing. on paper ron desantis looked pretty amazing. you could make a pretty compelling argument about a year ago that ron desantis was donald trump without the baggage, that ron desantis was younger. he was going to pass the torch to a new generation. he actually had the same maga philosophy, but he was implementing it into law. he was actually going to get things done, impose trumpism. i think that fell apart. i think there are a lot of reasons why that fell apart. in fact, my recent column at "the daily beast" i listed seven of them. he just wasn't the man for the

job. on paper he looked great. here in america, look the presidents that we elect. you know, bill clinton, i feel your pain. bill clinton had that charisma, that charm. george w. bush. i mean, in a different way, he had this swagger, this charisma, reagan, barack obama. our presidents tend to be rock stars. donald trump is a rock star in a different way. i just don't think nikki haley or ron desantis have whatever that is that it is. they do not have it. >> one other thing that nikki haley does not have is january 6th on her, doesn't have four dead cops on her conscience like donald trump should if he had a

conscience, doesn't have all the things that trump has, 91 federal counts, the stealing of nuclear secrets, the claim that he can assassinate political opponents with seal team six and not even be convicted with it, the urge that he lets writes it down on his truth social and everybody freaks out and he comes back the next day and says i never said it but he did, terminate the constitution. he praises communist leaders. this is all very clarifying to me. everybody always wants to make excuses for the republican electorate, oh well, there are too many people in the field,

there was this, there was that. there is no excuse now. this is very clarifying. for all of nikki haley's failings as a candidate, you have republicans now who can choose, as the "wall street journal" says. the field is down to two people in new hampshire. it is down to two people in south carolina. republican voters can vote for a governor who's very successful, whose family has lived the american dream. they can do that. they can vote for a guy that inherited $400 million, a guy who lost it all, a guy who has, according to a new york judge, raped a woman and continues to defame her years later, a guy who, according to another judge, has committed fraud. everybody knows he's done it for years and he's lied about how much he's worth. a guy who's stolen nuclear secrets, a guy who praises

communist leaders, a guy who says that america needs strong man like orban. they got that or they got somebody who is running a main line conservative campaign. so they got the choice. another nice way to put it is they have no excuse left. they have no excuse left. if they go with the tyrant, that is on them. when they lose for the eighth year in a row, instead of picking nikki haley, who wins going away in the general election, according to every poll, if they do that, that loss and that stain is on them forever. >> yeah. the fact that he mixed up again -- we'll obviously see that tape for a long time, and we should, convincing himself that nikki haley asked for 10,000 troops. she's not nancy pelosi, and that is so clear.

i don't know how he gets women mixed up like this. i think the idea that since this is the anniversary of roe v wade, i should point out that he did say to me on camera there needs to be some form of punishment for a woman who chooses to have an abortion. he should have that hanging around his neck come election eve. anybody who votes for him when he has that record of statements that he thinks in addition to roe v wade, in addition to the whole thing and dobbs and everything else, he wants women punished. what is he talking about? who is this guy? character does count. i'm sorry, it counts. this guy is a liar. >> yeah. plain and simple. vaughn hillyard, just want to close out with you here as trump gets ready for new hampshire and sets his sights on south

carolina. it looks like these republican fools for trump just line up behind him no matter what he says about them or their families. >> reporter: this last decade is going to have to be written chronologically year by year. when folks look back on this moment, nancy mace is somebody they're going to have to look back on, because she formally endorsed donald trump instead of nikki haley. last year i was on the campaign trail with nancy mace, who was on the trail with nikki haley campaigning on her half around her south carolina district, because donald trump was trying to oust her from office. nancy mace in the aftermath of the january 6th attack said, we

need to rebuild the republican party. donald trump made it his effort to boot her from congress, backed her gop rival. it was at that point that donald trump campaigned against her in her district. that rival called nancy mace a turncoat. what happened? nancy mace barely won her race and she changed course. she's part of a tiny part of the republican elected officials who actually went against donald trump and won their elections. that's including lisa murkowski, brian kemp and nancy mace. it's a very small part of the party. unlike brian kemp, nancy mace went back to donald trump, just like ron desantis and others. it is clear who the future of the republican party is. it's donald trump in their minds. they've made the calculation to get in line now instead of waiting for nikki haley to drop

out. >> thank you all very much for your reporting and analysis. >> also, you talk about january 6th. you have these members that were hiding from the so-called hostages that they now call hostages, hiding and crouched down, because they know if they found them they would be killed. you of course, had the little guy from missouri with birdlike hands -- >> josh hawley. >> josh hawley, that's it. you had him running away from the mob that he now praises. >> he was in danger. he had to run. >> there he is. those delicate little bird hands where he's trying to do a power to the people pose or something like that. but he also ran away from the mob that he helped whip into a frenzy. you have all these other people,

that guy from texas who was pushing the door back screaming to the rioters to get away, that he was ashamed of them. and now, of course, he's in line with them. what would be the word? what would be a good word for it? obviously deeply offensive, but also the height of cowardice. all of this for one person who is promising and has promised this weekend he is going to turn the united states of america from a constitutional republic to a strong than autocracy. he said it. america needs a strong man like victor orban, praising communist leaders. that's what he does. that's what he promising and that's what these republicans

are now supporting. >> he's turned on everybody that's worked for him. he'll turn on you in a dime. yet they still suck up to him. it's unbelievable. coming up on "morning joe," the biden campaign gives donald trump a reality check on the economy with some help from fox news. the economy with some help from fox news plus, andrew ross sorkin joins us fresh off the davos economic forum. off the davos economic forum remember in school when you learn complicated math stuff like sine and cosine and you think, "will i ever use this in real life?" well, the answer is "no", but a kettlebell squat. well, that's the opposite of whatever cosine is.

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he got her confused yesterday with nancy pelosi on january 6th with the national guard. i would say 25 years ago he wouldn't have made that mistake, but he kept saying nikki haley did this with the national guard. he was talking about nancy pelosi. that's another example of -- you

know, he wouldn't have made that mistake if he was younger. >> here's the problem. this summer they're going to be litigating these courts in the court and these indictments are going to ripen into convictions and we're going to be talking about the finer points of whether you can pay a porn star with your campaign money or whether you write it off as a business expense. the lawsuit itself is ridiculous, but the underlying facts aren't disputed. i think people are going to recoil from that when all this stuff starts coming out this summer. the polls that show him beating biden, those are going to switch quickly. >> that's something you're hearing from more and more conservatives. as we're moving closer to this and all of this stuff is piling up, donald trump praising the head of the chinese communist

party. just like the biden people have been saying all along, oh, we're losing in the polls, what in the world will we ever do? they tell you what we're going to do is, we're going to watch as the weight of donald trump's own mistakes, ownegregious behavior, own words, own lack of memory, belief that he's running against barack obama. he has to have brian kill immediate on fox correct him and go, i'm sorry, sir, barack obama is no longer president. joe biden is president right now. and then nikki, nikki, nikki, uh, we gave her 10,000 troops. you know, if republicans think

that is going to be cool with voters, you know, let me say something i've never said on this show before. you need to listen to thomas massey. as all of this piles up, it's going to be too much for republican voters. there's also ralph norman backing nikki haley, making cases again on fox news against donald trump. as former president trump continues to praise the economy under his administration and bash its current state, the biden/harris campaign is countering by sharing this clip from a fox news broadcast on friday. >> fox news alert here as we take alook at the markets. the u.s. stock market continues to hit record high after record high. you're looking at a fresh 300-point gain on the dow. the s&p 500 which is a snapshot

of the broader u.s. stock market is hitting an all-time high, surpassing the previous record set two years ago. there continues to be a lot of enthusiasm and optimism in the u.s. stock market. there's still anticipation the federal reserve will cut rates this year. we'll see how that plays out. >> that's a lot of good news. >> the quote is, record high after record high and this all-time high even surpasses the last all-time high under the biden administration two years ago. let's bring in andrew ross sorkin. i've been seeing some people on wall street, we saw schwartzman talking about, oh, we can't afford another four years of joe biden. really? why? because you're making so much money right now? then he said something about the debt, which is funny, because it

was donald trump who raised the debt higher than anybody else in u.s. history. mr. schwartzman, let me explain to you that donald trump raised the national debt more in four years than the first 42 presidents combined from 1789 to 2007. schwartzman knows that. then you were talking to a guy i like. i hope i don't get dragged off for saying this by the teeming masses, but i like jamie dunn. jamie dunn going why are we being so mean to trump? what's the difference? come on, guys. it didn't sound like jamie dimon at all. i'm trying to figure it out because jamie is pretty smart. let me just say a no bull

[ bleep ] guy. i'm curious why the bs was spewing out of his mouth, because he doesn't believe that. what have you guys been feeding them in davos? >> let me say about the jamie dimon interview. i was conducting that interview. my sense of it is this. i fear actually that the headlines misconstrued a little bit of what he was saying. i think he was effectively trying to make a wakeup call to democrats. he considers himself one. he talked about his family and his wife and daughters being democrats. i think that his view is that the democrats are not taking trump seriously enough or trump voters seriously enough and by decrying those voters and ignoring those voters or

suggesting they're dumb or stupid or silly that it ultimately is not going to enure to president biden and his supporters. i do not believe he was saying please go out there and vote for trump. i don't think that's what was happening. >> that's why i'm talking about it here. it sounded more like a six of one, half dozen of the other. >> no. i don't think so that's what he was saying. i think he was saying, look, often times democrats and liberal voters historically have looked at trump voters and described them as the deplorables. i think what he's trying to say is there is a reason or at least some rationale why those voters have the views they do and they need to be taken seriously in a way that is beyond just sort of decrying them as crazy.

i think in doing that, he was making some points to suggest that there were certain things that former president trump was at least partially right about. immigration was one of those. by the way, i think there are a lot of democrats today who would say maybe they made a mistake in how they thought about immigration given the challenges. i don't think this was a call to arms to go vote for president trump, but boy have the headlines been taken in such a way about it. >> i never worried that he was raising a call to arms to vote for trump. it was more like moral equivalency of what we're facing in 2024. but you were there. if that's your impression --

i'll go with you. i do wonder, though, why do those people in davos think trump is going to win? >> well, look, two things. the davos, quote, unquote, consensus has historically been very, very wrong. let me say that again and again and again. oftentimes you walk out of davos with a particular perspective and you can go back to 2020 election and 2016 and the late '90s. just take what you're hearing there with a grain of salt. what a lot of them are doing is very basic. they're looking at the polls. i think it's not that they're pushing for trump. it's a resigned sense that trump may well become the winner. if there was a vote tomorrow, it appears that would be the case. we can debate whether that's try

or not. that is all i think those folks are saying. the bigger question behind the scenes was so many of them are frustrated and upset and nervous and worried about it but don't want to say that out loud. why? for the same reason they didn't want to say it when president trump became president last time, which is they are scared of retribution. to the extent we're going to see an outcry from ceos saying we can't have trump become our president again, i think most of them are going to stay mum on that issue. >> andrew ross sorkin, this has been fun. >> this was great. >> thank you. >> he's the best. >> he was the belle of the ball in davos. >> he's a jet-setter. >> he is. they don't invite us to davos. why don't we go there?

president biden says he believes the bipartisan senate immigration reform bill will be finished as early as this week. now that is far more exciting than any trip to davis. >> a group of senators has been crafting a bill to put more restrictions at the southern border in exchange for gop support and aid for ukraine and israel. house speaker mike johnson has all but said the legislation would be dead on arrival in the house. >> i don't believe they're going to stab israel in the back. i don't believe they're going to stab ukraine in the back. i don't believe republicans as a whole are going to walk away from the best border security deal they will ever get. >> here's what biden had to say about that on friday. >> i've been clear from the very beginning. the system is broken. my first day in office i sent

congress a comprehensive plan for immigration reform. my friends on the other side have done nothing for that. i've asked for resources to step up action at the border. my team has been in action for weeks now with a bipartisan group of senators to negotiate a deal, including the border, because i believe we need significant policy changes at the border, including changes in our asylum system to make sure we have what we need to control the border. i'm ready to act. they have to choose whether they want to solve a problem or keep weaponizing issues to score political points against the president. i'm ready to solve the problem, and i mean that sincerely. >> joining us now, democratic member of the house oversight committee, congressman jared moskowitz of florida. >> the senate is going to get a deal. when you hear john thune and lindsey graham say this is the

most conservative policy they've ever been able to accomplish, then you see my colleagues in the house say the border is a huge crisis, fentanyl is a huge issue, but we can't do anything until after the election. we don't want to help joe biden solve this issue, because they want to use it as an election issue. they want to weaponize it. these are literally the words of several republican congressmen including the speaker who said he doesn't want to solve it until after the election. joe, i hope you're right. they hope they take the senate deal. if they don't, we need to expose it to the american people that they're not serious about solving this for the american people. >> they talk time and time again about dead americans because of fentanyl coming across the border. mike johnson says we're going to allow americans to continue to

die and allow fentanyl to stream across the border over the next nine months and just let americans die, let the fentanyl stream across the border, let illegal immigrants come across the border because we don't want to have a bipartisan deal. are they really going to say that? also, are they really going to stab israel and ukraine in the back? i think mike johnson gets the crackpots in the back row that are saying let ukraine collapse, basically telling israel to go to hell all because we don't want to give biden the toughest border security win republicans could ever get. >> listen, i hope you're right. if you saw a couple of months ago speaker johnson already told israel to go to hell when he knew that bill was dead in the senate. he knew it was dead in the senate. the house passes something that

they know the senate won't take and they declare victory. and the senate passes something that the house won't take and they declare victory and they pretend they actually did something when that bill never becomes law. we delayed the security package for months now. in speaker johnson's first week in office, he split us apart and politicized that aid package. he's going to do whatever trump tells him to do. they talk every week now. that's where the house gop is. i agree with you that the pressure is going to be overwhelming. we know there are moderate republicans still in the house, but are they going to step up and challenge these conservatives, the freedom caucus that wants to bring back isolationist policy, they talk about china and russia. if we start taking our foreign

aid away and china and russia are going to declare victory and start increasing their influence all over the world. >> i don't like to correct members of congress. there are no moderates. i knew moderates when i was in congress. there are no moderate republicans left. there are conservative republicans, like chairman mccaul. there are conservative republicans who don't want to stab israel in the back, don't want to stab ukraine in the back. >> i'm trying to incentivize them to stand up to the lunacy that trump is trying to feed them. >> yeah. they're very conservative, but they get radicals that are trying to stab israel and ukraine in the back and kill the best border deal they'll ever

get. >> instead of getting things done, they're focused on hunter biden and showing naked pictures. a benefactor for hunter biden is accuing house oversight chairman james comer of mischaracterizing his closed-door testimony. morris's attorney is demanding the full transcript of the five-hour interview be released, a spokesperson for the house oversight committee says the transcript will affirm comes statement. >> no, it won't. arnold the pig is talking to comer right now and telling him he's screwed. he's saying if the transcript comes out, you're going to look bad like you always look bad.

>> they won't have them come out. the release will be delayed because they, quote, do not have it from the court reporter at this time. >> i wonder if that was strategy from arnold the pig. >> they're just so blatantly stupid. how do you work with these people? >> if you put your hand on a hot stove the first time, okay, maybe he didn't know that was going to hurt, right? he keeps doing it, keeps making himself look stupid. republicans keep looking stupid on that committee. and i'm dead serious. >> how do you do it? >> when are they going to figure out that there is no "there" there and they're only embarrassing themselves? >> well, look, this is why i

know these hearings have been a total debacle for them. it's been failure theater. you saw what they tried to do with hunter. going back to the witness who just sat for a deposition, that's why hunter biden accepted chairman comer's invitation to appear publicly. that's why hunter biden has been so aggressive. this is what chairman comer and the republicans have done this entire time. they hold a deposition and then they selectively leak things from the deposition and never release the transcript. hunter biden and the chairman and the committee have come to an agreement that he's going re transcript. so, look, hunter biden and the chairman and the committee have come to an agreement that he's going to sit. my guess is we'll see that full transcript come out pretty quickly so that this incident doesn't happen. this is why there's no trust with anyone coming before the committee in these depositions,

is because they come out and leak them. so, look, the chairman even said, well, this isn't really about impeaching joe biden anymore. really? you voted for an impeachment inquiry. they're all over the place, and they don't have the votes to impeach joe biden. why? there's no evidence on joe biden at all. >> none. none. it's like saying, we're going to impeach mayorkas because the southern border is crazy. at the same time, you know what, we'll kill the bill that senate republicans -- like james lankford, the most conservative senate republicans who say they'll bring order to the southern border. trying to do both at once. >> finally, congressman, you and six of the families of victims from the 2018 mass shooting in parkland are going to be leading education secretary miguel cardona and others through a

guided visitation of marjory stoneman douglas high school later this morning. can you tell us about what exactly this event -- what you hope to -- what message you hope to send with this walk-through? >> thanks, mika, for the question. i'm at a house right now which is half a mile from the marjory stoneman douglas high school, the high school i graduated from. we've done these tours before the freshman building was, almost six years ago, as a time capsule. it's exactly the way it was the day after the shooting. they have not touched it at all. the backpacks that fell off, the shoes, the computers that were on the desks, the essays people were working on, the broken glass that's all over the place. we've been bringing congressional delegations through. i've been bringing republicans through. now this is the highest ranking member of the biden administration, the secretary of education, to come through the building. that building, within the

horrors of those walls are lessons to learn on how we can keep our kids safe in schools. some of these failures we saw happen in parkland, we saw repeated again in uvalde. so i'm hoping to have a conversation with the secretary. i'm hoping to show the secretary that, in addition to doing stuff on gun violence prevention, we also need to be doing stuff on school safety, and we need a national standard on school safety and a national standard when it comes to responding to these events. >> it's one of the reasons why there's such hypocrisy now with people who call themselves pro-life while they let women die, as you talked about in the 7:00 hour, they let women die on the operating table or let women go out and die and say they can't -- >> or sterilize them. >> or sterilize them. you look at what has happened here, more children -- >> carnage. >> -- of guns. it's the number one cause of

death for children in america today. who is pro-life? who is pro-life that supports the continued proliferation of weapons of war? the answer nobody, nobody. weapons of war. jared, i want to thank you so much. i know our good friend fred guttenberg would appreciate, and i'm sure he'll be a part of it. we think about jamie all the time and the others who lost their life that day. we're so grateful that you are drawing attention to this, and hopefully move us out of this madness where we can start actually being pro-life towards children who are actually breathing and living today. >> democratic congressman jared moskowitz. thank you very much for being on this morning. >> thank you. all right. earlier we spoke with andrew ross sorkin about the world economic forum last week.

one of the big foreign policy stories out of the summit was an address by ukrainian president volodymyr zelenskyy, warning that russia's vladimir putin had aspirations beyond ukraine nearly two years after he launched a full-scale invasion of the country. joining us now, senior correspondent for "time" simon shuster, his new book is called "the showman, inside the invasion that shook the world and made a leader of volodymyr zelenskyy." jonathan lemire has the first question. >> congratulations on the book. let's start with the extraordinary access you had to president zelenskyy. walk us through how often you saw him, where you saw him. >> i met and got to know president zelenskyy before he became president. i met him backstage at one of his comedy shows which kind of doubled as a campaign rally.

met him, pro filed him for the first time for "time" magazine then and basically followed his administration throughout, throughout the first impeachment of then president donald trump where president zelenskyy played a major role as i think a lot of your viewers will remember. as the war grew closer, i traveled with the president to the front lines to see the russian forces gathering on the border. when the invasion actually began in february 2022, i was in a pretty unique position because the relationships i had established over those years to approach him and say let me be a fly on the wall. let me write this book about historic events happening around you. >> simon, you're so right. viewers of the show, americans writ large viewed him as a comedian, someone involved in the first trump impeachment. he's become almost a churchill-like figure as a symbol of resistance as ukraine repels a larger russian invasion. talk to us how you saw the

evolution occur. >> his transformation was dramatic. from the naive, happy-go-lucky character, when i was writing on an optimistic platform, fighting corruption, ending the war in eastern ukraine, the separatist conflict. that was his goal. the person we know now wears this kind of armor. you see him on tv and he's just tough of nails. that transformation is kind of described in the book as an evolution. you mentioned churchill. i asked him about these comparisons to churchill. one very telling moment in the book is, he said, yeah, i don't really like comparisons to churchill so much. churchill was a noted imperialist, supporter of the british empire. zelenskyy sees this war fundamentally as an anti-imperialist war, a war to break the last bonds of empire that moscow has over ukraine. so he prefers to be compared to, as he mentioned, actually character like charlie chaplain who made fun of hitler in the

middle of the holocaust. as president zelenskyy put it to me in one of our interviews, there were artists, figures in history who used their skills of artist, skills of communication and language, to fight against evil, fight against fascism. he said their work was often more powerful than artillery. that's sort of how he sees himself, the pantheon he wants to join, the way he understands his role. >> that's fascinating. churchillian prepares him good, saved western civilization of the world in 1940-'41. we'll have that debate with president zelenskyy when we talk after the war. i want to talk about before the war. because i think this is a fascinating part of your book where you ask him to reflect on the lead-up to the war. what mistakes did you make? this is something we all do in our own lives, but something this grand, what i'm struck by is his willingness, his openness

to go back and say maybe i should have done this differently? maybe i should have done that differently. talk about what you learned in your reporting about how he could have changed things before the war. >> one thing i think he learned the hard way was not to rely too much on some of these western allies that were supposed to be so close to him. that came through in the early months of his administration when hep got caught up with then president donald trump in this impeachment scandal. to remind some of your viewers, president donald trump at the time tried to extort political favors from president zelenskyy. i saw that scandal playing out from the halls of the president compound in kyiv, spending time with zelenskyy and his team at the time. one thing he told me was, man, you can't trust anybody at all in this world. none of the allies are that reliable. everybody just has their interests. so that's i think a hard lesson

he took, and he took it with him into the way he's waged this war as well. >> what about america's repeated warning that russia was going to invade and his refusal to believe that? >> i'm sorry. say the question again. >> i said what anti america's repeated warning that russia wednesday going to invade ukraine and zelenskyy's reluctance to believe that? >> yeah. that is a billing part of the lead-up to the war that i chronicle in the book. he didn't believe it. he was getting a variety of intelligence information from different sources. a massive full-scale invasion from three directions meant to kill zelenskyy or remove him from power. he was getting different perspectives from german intelligence, french intelligence and indeed ukrainian intelligence agencies that had different interpretations. he chose to believe a less extreme s