let me set the record straight. are people born wicked? or do they have wickedness thrust upon them? oh! -ah! [ laughter ] no need to respond. that was rhetorical. hm, hmm. . i want to wish all of you a happy thanksgiving. i'll see you this weekend on the saturday show. i'll be speaking to the governor of hawaii, dr. josh green, about dr. oz, rfk jr., and other trump picks and their potential impact on health care policy and public health at large. i hope you'll join us. smoenl ♪♪

hello, and welcome to this special holiday edition of "morning joe," happy thanksgiving, everyone. we're on tape this morning bringing you some of our best recent conversations. we'll begin with one of the days after the election about what the path back to power might look like for the democrats. jonathan, let's get to your latest piece in "politico," entitled "people, not groups: how democrats can retool their message," the breadth of their defeat and the number of voters who abandoned them present the party an opening to rethink their orientation around affinity group politics. the question is whether they will be emboldened or cower when one of the groups says identity based organizations are invariably called, speaks up. whoever can retain the party's commitments to the most vulnerable and appeal to voters

who rejected harris, will emerge as the strongest 2028 nominee. if democrats don't change their appeals, they'll face the same barriers with vast swaths of the country they have in every recent election. they must recognize their leftward acceleration under his presidency, handed them the noter they needed to portray the opposition as radical. the things you have to say and support to win a primary as a democrat running for president come back to haunt you in a general election. just ask 2019 kamala harris. >> exactly. willie, that's exactly right. that spot that got so much play, thanks to the trump campaign was her speaking in 2019. because that was a period where the left was in full flower, the backlash that trump was on and the assumption among most democrats was the path to getting back to power was trying to appear the most pure and race to the left in a primary. the one person, by the way, who

didn't adopt that tactic was joe biden. he won the primary and won the general, but kamala harris paid a price, not at the time, although she lost the primary, but she paid a price five years later when that ad got played so many times. this is to me the central question now with trump back in office. will democrats learn from their mistakes from the last time he was president and not respond by this race to the left on every identity issue to please various groups and their coalition. will they resist that? will they take the harris path in '19 or the biden path? that is the most salient question. what has been encouraging so far in my column today, the response i have gotten across the board from a lot of democrats is they just don't want to keep towing the line. they know that the identity politics and the language, especially, is alienating to large swaths of the country, and

i think they're ready for some level of reform. >> i also read that that answer came in response to an aclu questionnaire and, you know, a lots of democrats asking why ask a question like that on a questionnaire. you're just setting somebody up in the future. >> yeah. >> people may not remember just how crazy things got in the democratic party in '19 and '20, just how far left everybody got. i remember i had become an independent. mika said you need to be a democrat. i said i kind of like this independent thing. and watch the first presidential debate, and everybody up on the stage except for, i think, joe biden, said they supported a return to bussing. and i'm like, that was unpopular in 1974. and they darted so far left in

'19 and '20, you're right, they snagged a commercial from '19. democrats saw it, i got to go far left to win. they snagged that and other things in 2019, and applied it to 2024. and america has gotten more conservative over at past five years because crime, because of the southern border, because of inflation. you go through the list, and so it's interesting that you say that democrats are responding positively to this and saying you're exactly right, we need to find a new way forward. kind of reminds me of bill clinton in '88 through '92. it was sort of the new way for the new democrats. >> joe, here's what's so clarifying about this moment is you can't say that this was a bunch of racist, you know,

driving a pickup truck that done this. i talked to someone who represents one of the most diverse districts in queens. there's not an active klan in flushing told. a lot of her district voted for her and donald trump. these are first generation, asian and hispanic immigrants. you say to them, communities of color or we're going to skrup up lift or center this or that, they don't know what you're talking about. the party is using the language of the amherst faculty lounge. we got to use every day american language, language that my grandmother can understand. that's a really important point, and it doesn't take much. it's not a policy change, but it's an important, i think, reform that's got to be made. >> so let's bring in political columnist for new york magazine,

el kilgore entitled "democrats were crushed in 2004, too. then everything changed and you write in part this, ed, if i may. we are not in an era characterized by much interest in political history, unless there's a podcast on it that i've missed but you don't actually have to go back that far to find a moment when democrats were similarly afflicted. in some ways, election night 2004 was even more painful for partisans of presidential nominee john kerry, thanks to faulty exit polling showing him winning. as we know, the sense of republican strength and democratic weakness that was so pervasive on election night 2004 was ephemeral. democrats flipped both congressional chambers in 2006 and then in the crucible of a highly competitive nomination contest, democrats found the leader they needed in a young senator named barack obama.

none of this, of course, is to say democrats can count on anything like their post 2004 comeback in the days ahead. but there are plenty of things that could go wrong in a second trump administration. so while democrats really should conduct a thorough self-examination of what went wrong since 2020, despair is premature, and probably unwarranted. >> ed, the similarities between what happened in '24 and what happened in '04 as you laid out in the piece were pretty remarkable. willie and i always sort of joked about the fact we have never seen manhattan so depressed as the day after george w. bush was reelected. it may actually have been worse then than the day after donald trump, as you said, but there were so many parallels in the election results, how they turned out, and also until the

overconfidence of republicans. karl rove looked at the 2000 election, republicans overperforming in 2002, republicans overpowering in 2024, and spoke confidently about a majority. two years later, nancy pelosi was speaker of the house, four years later, barack obama won in a massive landslide. >> that's all correct. anytime you hear people talking about permanent majorities or political realignmented or anything so fundamental, and you're hearing a lot of talk from the maga camp right now along those lines, things will never be the same. democratic core constituencies are abandoning the party left and right. trump's making huge gains in new york and california, which he did make some gains. over interpreting the results in either direction is almost always a mistake. the greeks, the ancient greeks called it hubris, and i think

there's a lot of that going on in trump circles right now. there's always a calculation when you win an election. how much political capital do you expend on doing the things you want to do like mass deportation that might backfire economically and politically or how much do you really continue to pay attention to the electorate. one of the fascinating things about the 2004 analogy to me is that right after the election, george w. bush announced he was going to spend some of his political capital trying to quote unquote reform social security, which for him meant a partial privatization scheme. that back feared. republicans began abandoning bush on it right away, and that was sort of the first step toward the debacles of 2006 and 2008. if i were a republican, god forbid, i would be a little

concerned about overreaching by this, you know, chronically over the top president and some of the people around him based on what was, in the end, a pretty small victory. kamala harris came with less than two 2% in the three so-called blue wall states in the upper midwest of winning the presidency. she came very close to doing that, even losing the national popular vote like trump did in 2016. so the idea that democrats are, you know, in some sort of free fall now or republicans are building the majority that will last, you know, hundreds of years is just really kind of silly. i think both parties should avoid over interpreting this election. >> so, ed, 2004 election 20 years ago, i remember it well. it seems as if it were two

centuries ago now, in terms of what has happened in this country. one of the biggest differences, and we were just talking about it with jay a few minutes ago. the democratic party right now seems to have raced away quite swiftly and quite effectively from the concept of common sense. as jay mark pointed out, they have changed labels that mystery people. there's no more homeless people in america. there are the unhoused. things like that, and they seem not able to go back to common sense. so what would that do to their prospects of rebirth and electoral success? again, you could pull apart any close election and decide that one or two things caused the outcome. i think people were doing them. my old buddy james carville is one of them or i think ascribing too much importance of this idea of wokeness. i mean, the reality is that what

we're really talking about is a single moment in 2019 when kamala harris did -- answered a questionnaire that showed her lining up three or four unpopular positions tied up in a bundle. they ran ads on it in every single football game that i saw going into the election. and did that decide the election, i don't think so. i mean, fundamentally, i think the election was decided by the fact that democrats were in power after a pandemic that killed a million americans and disrupted every single person's lives. they were sort of caught with the consequences with the pandemic and the bad feelings. and a significant slice of americans really wanted to go back to the pre-pandemic economy and society, and lo and behold,

the guy who was president then was on the ballot. i think that's more important than a lot of fragmented issues you can talk about. i'm a veteran of the democratic leadership counsel. i'm aware that occasionally democrats need to be told, you know, talk common sense, address the voters, the electorate as it exists, rather than as you wish it existed, and don't do dumb things. >> there you go. political columnist for new york magazine, ed kilgore, thank you so much. good luck with the phone call from james which will certainly be coming later today. what are you talking about. so jay mark, you know, it is interesting, we can do two things at once. we can talk about what the problem with the democrats has been. you know, and talk through that. >> moving forward. >> moving forward. >> and, you know, we can look, again, at the swing states,

which, again, as i said, swing states, you know, so wisconsin, kamala harris lost by less than 1 percentage point. >> right. >> michigan, she lost by a little bit more, maybe .2 percentage points. about 1% in michigan as well by the time the votes are tallied. in pennsylvania, by the time the votes are tallied, she'll probably lose by 1 1/2 points maybe. >> yes. >> right in there. that's about as close as it gets. so before everybody says this is like the worst thing that's ever happened, it's important to remember that, you know, a point here, a point there, a point and a half in pennsylvania, suddenly, you know, everybody's talking about how this was the greatest democratic campaign of all time. that said, there are structural

problems. those aren't the states i'm looking at. >> exactly. >> i'm looking at texas, democrats kept getting closer and closer and closer in texas. they got crushed in texas. >> florida, yeah. >> you look on the southern border between texas and mexico, the southern border, which used to be all blue. >> the rio grande valley. >> all the way to the point where you get up to el paso, that's still blue, everything south of it. everything along the border, red. you look at florida, 3 point difference in 2020, 12, 13, 14, they're getting absolutely crushed in middle america, and so they've got to -- even if they win every single swing state four years from now. if they want to win the senate, they got to play in middle

america. a very close presidential race, but man, they have lost. democrats have lost middle america. >> joe, the reason she had to pull the inside straight and win the three blue wall states, and you're right, it's going to be 200,000 votes and change between those three states. close election, same as 16 was, same as '20 was. the reason they are dependent on having to win those three big states is you can go from saint simons, georgia, to the arizona/california border way out to the desert, and guess what, you're going to touch one blue state the entire time. you can't lose the entire southern tier of the united states and expect to have an easy map going forward. by the way, new mexico is the one state. i think new mexico and nevada are also warning signs for democrats. much more working lass.

heavily hispanic states. she lost nevada. new mexico is close this time around. yeah, joe, it's a real challenge. if you're not able to compete in the big states like florida and texas, and you're losing most of the rest of the south, outside virginia, it's going to be a challenge to get to 270, and you mentioned the senate, too. every state gets two senators. there's a lot more rural states than there are big urban states. it's a straightforward map issue. the other thing is places like new jersey are getting closer. i don't think democrats are getting in danger of lose ago place like new jersey. but you take new jersey or new hampshire or minnesota, these are four to five to six point states now. that's a real challenge for the party, and it's a pure math issue. how do you find 270. if texas and florida aren't options, then you got to start digging. >> and guess what, i mean, you're exactly right. virginia, a five-point margin.

minnesota, only a four-point margin. new hampshire, only a three-point margin. the margins are getting tighter and tighter for democrats in the states they're supposed to win, and wider for republicans in the states they're supposed to win. >> thank you so much for being on this morning. up next, as the u.s. and world prepare for donald trump's return to the white house, nbc's janis mackey frayer looks at america's future relationship with north carolina, russia and china. you're watching a special holiday edition of "morning joe." we'll be right back. we'll be right back.

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when donald trump takes office for the second time he's going to be dealing with several hot spots around the world. a conflict in the middle east, growing tensions with iran, and a new concern over ukraine with vladimir putin now getting assistance from kim jong un's north korean troops. here's nbc news international correspondent janis mackey frayer. >> reporter: one of the more challenging policy issues facing any u.s. president is north carolina. while president-elect trump has said kim jong un missing him, it isn't clear whether that is the case. kim is now emboldened and he is no longer alone. donald trump has long touted his personal touch with leaders like

xi jinping, vladimir putin, and kim jong un. >> you know, i got to know a lot of the foreign leaders and let me tell you, unlike our leader, they're at the top of their game. >> reporter: but in his second presidency, it's a different world trump is facing, with u.s. officials saying thousands of north korean troops are preparing to fight with russian forces in kursk, north korean weapons already on the battlefield and more nuclear capable missiles being tested. south korea's military intelligence agency warned last month that a 7th nuclear test could be coming. kim jong un has been emboldened by the prestige of his ties with russia that have hardened his stance against the u.s. it's a pivot from the optics of trump's first term, which it was all smiles, flattery and letters. >> we would go back and forth, and then we fell in love. okay. >> that took a turn in 2019, when trump at a summit abruptly

broke off talks with kim. now that he's tight with putin, analysts say kim may not be quick to rekindle a friendship with trump. >> the strategic value of the united states, has gone down. north korea has no reason to talk about denuclearization. any talks premised on denuclearization, kim jong un has no reason to show up. >> reporter: tension is tearing at the korean peninsula where kim has called off the goal of unification, blowing up roads near the border and declaring seoul a permanent enemy. it's all a concern here in china that north korean troops could expand the war in europe and pull asia into it. chinese officials avoid commenting on the putin kim partnership saying their bilateral relationship is their business. yet as the economic life line to both russia and north korea, china has the clout. they're just not using it. despite pressure from the u.s. to do more.

>> obviously we would hope that china would use its influence. it doesn't appear that they are. with the russian government to cease and desist. but i don't think that's happening. it's unfortunate. >> in that sense, china presents a dilemma for trump, who said he could end the war in ukraine, but may find the road to a deal goes through beijing. >> there are so many things that we need china, u.s. to cooperate. it is almost everywhere. >> reporter: as trump makes his return to the world stage, he'll be surrounded by familiar faces, but with kim's nuclear advances and his troops aiding russia against u.s.-armed ukraine, the stakes for trump's second term are edging higher. given the uncertainty that's lingering around continued u.s. support for ukraine, analysts in seoul now say the government there is reconsidering whether they're going to send weapons to

kyiv until there is some sort of clarity on what the trump administration is going to do. in the meantime, the office of south korean president said he recently started practicing golf for future meetings with mr. trump. >> nbc's janis mackey frayer, live from beijing, thank you so much. there have been a number of world leaders who have decided that golf diplomacy was the way to go with trump. so richard, let's get your analysis here on what we just heard, how kim jong un, far less isolated than he used to be when trump was in office the first time, and how you see the relationship between washington and beijing once the 47th president assumes the oval office. >> let's look at two things. north korea has far more missiles and more nuclear weapons. and it has a close relationship with russia, and whereas china was at times somewhat restrained in how it dealt with north korea, russia has no constraints.

russia wants north korean help for ukraine. this situation has grown worse. china is not being helpful right now. russia is being anything but helpful. so this is a real problem. what doesn't help is also the last time donald trump was president, u.s. ties with seoul, with south korea, were strained. he threatened to pull u.s. forces out, and so forth. so right now, in south korea, there's a big debate, should they have nuclear weapons of their own, if they can't count on the united states. you've got all of those dynamics. china is the most important bilateral relationship. for the trump administration, the biggest question will be what's our priority. is it to deal with the trailed imbalance. donald trump is talking about 60% tariffs against china. china is obviously prepared to retaliate economically if we do that against american firms. meanwhile, we've got the south china sea. china's moving there against the philippines. that could be the first foreign policy crisis facing a trump presidency. you've got taiwan, china's ambitions to take over taiwan at some point.

we just talked about north korea. this relationship is far worse than when it was when donald trump was last president. it's steadily deteriorated over the years. what this is a reminder is the foreign policy inbox this time around, we haven't even talked about the middle east. we barely mentioned ukraine. the foreign policy inbox this time around is far more crowded and far more difficult than it was eight years ago. >> richard, this is susan page, i have a question for you. i think we met when you were working at the bush white house, another president who lost his bid for reelection, and now we still have another president in the white house governing, on a final trip. what could president biden do in his remaining weeks of his presidency to set up issues on climate change, issues he cares about. they're about to be in a world of hurt. is there anything the sitting president can do, even though he's a lame duck to affect the

turn of events ahead . >> it's a good question, one i have been wrestling with, susan. he can't lock things in, and he can't reassure allies that the united states will be there. i remember four years ago joe biden said the united states is back. well, it turns out donald trump is ck, and that means something very different. what he could do, he could come forward with proposals. one is with ukraine. he could lay out basically a negotiating position for ukraine, but say in order to make this happen, the united states has to commit to support ukraine. you could also put pressure on russia to do that. he could lay out an entire negotiating position there, similarly in the middle east. he could lay out a proposal for gaza. he could lay out a proposal for lebanon. again, he can't lock donald trump in. what he could do is put out comprehensive foreign policy initiatives that donald trump would at least have to deal with. i think it could in some ways frame the situation. at the end of the day, joe biden

is a lame duck. he's limited, but i still think he could use his voice if he prepared to. >> richard haass and susan page, thank you for being with us this morning. >> president trump is liable for everything he did while he was in office as an ordinary citizen, unless the statute of limitations has run. still liable for everything he did while he was in office. didn't get away with anything yet. yet. >> that was republican senator mitch mcconnell explaining his decision to acquit donald trump in his second impeachment trial following trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election. those remarks from nearly four years ago are a stark departure from the tone the senate minority leader takes with trump today. he has said he's voting for him again. joining us now, deputy washington bureau chief for the associated press, michael

tackitt, the author of "the price for power how mitch mcconnell mastered the senate, changed america and lost his party." the book is out now. you're a former editor of mine at the ap, it is a terrific book. you had extraordinary access. unprecedented access to mcconnell and his family's personal papers, ar chives and the like. so many americans think of him as a cynical political operator. we'll get to that in a minute. tell us about how his experiences with io shapes his life. >> when he's 2 years old, he contracts polio. in a little town called five points. his father is fighting world war ii. he has to be treated for polio at warm springs, georgia, where fdr was treated. his mother had to do manual exercises with him four times a day, 45 minutes at a time. here's the thing, they told her, don't let him walk.

he's 2 years old, so he can walk. but they don't him don't let him walk. that will hurt his recovery. he has two years of almost total isolation in a bedroom, and he turns out like a lot of polio survivors to have interesting character traits, hyper competitive. >> once he arrived in washington, he grew so powerful, so adept in wielding power. walk us through some of that evolution, and how he enforced his vision, his rule on his party once he became leader. >> first of all, he was not an overnight success. he arrives in the senate in 1985 with a lot of big names, famous people, bill bradley, ted kennedy, daniel patrick moynahan, but he does a slow, steady climb. he sees every little step he has to take to get power. then finally, he does get it. and he uses it in two very different ways, one, to stop things from happening when

they're in the minority, and two, to make things happen when he's in the majority. >> in the book, you feature some rather revealing quotes about mcconnell about former president trump, among them, mcconnell says trump is quote, not very smart, a despicable human being, nasty, a sleazable, beyond erratic and has every characteristic you would not want a president to have. take us a little more behind the scenes there of their relationship and how if mcconnell feels all of that about trump supported him all along and said he will again. >> mcconnell was wary of trump from day one, but he had to work with him. you have one choice. either you work with the president or you don't. and if you don't, you lose your job. he keeps his job. he and paul ryan try to work hard to keep trump happy. so they came up with a tax bill and called it the trump tax cut so that way trump would support

it. they stayed with him as long as they could. in their minds, they were sort of manipulating him. that's a debate president trump i'm sure would see it differently. they looked at it we're going to get what we can from him. as time went on, their relationship was strained. mcconnell, all this while was recording these comments in private oral histories that he did, and he gave me access to those for the book. you're able to see in realtime what he was really thinking in contrast to his public statements. >> obviously so many viewers watching the show will remember him for his decision to prevent merrick garland from reaching the supreme court. now though, mcconnell feels like a throwback republican figure where many matching might agree with him, and his support of ukraine, he does espouse republican values out of step with trump. we're a week from election. how does mitch mcconnell or people like him, fill in with donald trump's gop, win or loss

next week. >> i think it really depends. if it's a win, it's one way. if it's a loss, it's another way. you're right about ukraine. is a moment where mcconnell put his political capital at risk when it was not in his interest to do so. the immigration bill that didn't pass, he put that bill together, talked to president biden, convinced him to go along. named james langford, a conservative republican to lead the charge on the republican side. everything was set for an immigration deal, and trump called senators and scotched it. >> yeah, because he wanted it for an issue, this campaign. the new book, the price of power. how mitch mcconnell mastered the senate, changed america and lost his party. it's on sale now. author and deputy washington bureau chief for the associated press, michael tackitt, congratulations, thank you for being here this morning. director alfonso, and cate blanchett talk about their apple

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. the new apple tv plus series "disclaimer" is the first tv project from five-time oscar winning film maker, alfonso cuaron, it stars cate blanchett as an esteemed journalist who's life is up ended. the cast joined "morning joe" to discuss the seven-part mystery drama. >> you keep everyone in the dark to maintain a balance, and you

think you have succeeded. >> katherine, katherine. >> it's about me. >> destiny doesn't knock. >> she's outwardly success in an outwardly happy marriage, and she's a documentary journalist who is a bastian of truth and authenticity and integrity and is used to exposing the hypocrisy of others. and the ok arrives on her doorstep, the night after her documentary award, and that book appears to be about a very n ev that happened to her. the more we bury the past, the more it comes like an emotional tsunami. the book gets sent to everybody, and the interesting thing about

katherine is she hasn't had a chance to fully know who she is in the same way that the audience doesn't know. >> she dies. it's pretty enjoyable, too, she deserves it. she was a selfish -- >> writer, director, alfonso cuaron explores the decade's old mystery through the different perspectives of each character, leaving it to the audience to form their own opinions. >> everything that we were describing throughout the first six chapters was actually truthful, that we were not misleading audiences. so there was a constant revisiting of the script, and as cate was diving deeper and deeper into her character because we're shedding continuities, there was no inspiration. i don't think i have had a closer collaboration with an actor. i'm talking about the standpoint of the overall process, from the moment that cate decided to do

this, she was a constant collaborator for the transformations until transformations in the script, the new drafts that we did. >> i knew that woman. i've known that name for years. but until then, i had thought she was just an innocent bystander in my life's demise. >> actress layla george depicts blanchett in the past. revealing details in the past and present. >> it's a complex character, there's a couple of different sides to her, jumping between those versions of her, sometimes in the same day, sometimes in the same morning, you know, and figuring out how i was going to do that in a way that didn't take any time. there's something about being able to, like, watch and study these great ctresses and just attempt to kind of do them

justice. it's terrifying, but also such a huge honor. >> they were friends at cambridge, i've got a number for him. >> there's no story. just leave it. >> should i give him a call? >> actress ho-yeon found the project challenging and rewarding. >> what i loved was the director. he prefers to take long masses. it was challenging. these challenging experiences help me grow as an actor. >> how can you sleep at night? >> you don't deserve us. >> the world needs to know who catherine really is. the world needs to know the truth. >> often when we experience something that we don't deal with, aren't allowed to deal with or choose not to deal with, we get very estranged from ourselves, and i think she's somebody, as a lot of people do,

when you don't want to look at things in your own life, you bury yourself in the lives of others. >> "disclaimer" is streaming on apple tv plus. coming up here, tony and emmy award winning actor, billy crystal, like you've never seen him before. >> here i am at the magical unicorn. >> would you just stop? >> dad? [ knocking ] >> stop what? who are you talking to? >> whoa. billy crystal joins us live in studio next to discuss his latest project "before." we'll be right back. re." we'll be right back. by the unpredictability of generalized myasthenia gravis, season to season, ultomiris is continuous symptom control, with improvement in activities of daily living

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i have a game for you, put your block in the middle, and say something that makes you mad. >> people who do bad things. >> what kind of bad things?

>> you know what you did. >> that is a look at the new apple tv plus limited series "before." the psychological thriller stars tony and emmy winning actor, billy crystal, who plays eli, at child psychologist who is grieving the death of his wife, when a child named noah at his doorstep, forcing eli to confront his personal demons and greatest fears. billy crystal joins us now in studio. good to see you. >> good to see you, willie. >> folks don't worry if it's scary, the laugh track we put on really helps, it helps a lot. >> we were talking earlier, you see billy crystal, oh, great, this will be fun. when's meg ryan walking into the frame. she's not showing up in this one. i was telling these guys how excellent the series is. it feels a little bit like "the shining" in all the best ways.

for people who saw that, what am i seeing here, how are you describing it? >> it's a psycho drama thriller. when we spoke about it, you had seen five or something. it keeps you right on the edge of your chair, and it keeps going that way. it doesn't resolve itself until actually the very last moment of the very last show. it's -- i have to say, i'm more excited about this than almost anything i have ever done. i mean, really. >> given your career, that's an amazing statement. >> it was the ultimately away game. you know, and to live in this kind of world of -- it's not hard. oh, it's just psychologically draining, and i play a man who's a pediatric psychiatrist who's dealing with this troubled kid who arrives out of the blue and do anything to help him through his trauma. break every law that you're supposed to adhere to as a physician. in the pursuit of, you know, alleviating this kid's pain.

>> in the one clip, the one on one with you talking to the kid and the kid is accusatory of you. what happens to your frame of mind to do that? how do you do that? >> it's acting. >> but this is you. >> i know, it just came to me. >> why? >> because, you know, amazing young actor, jacobi jupe, the challenge of working with that and working with him was extraordinary. i cured robert de niro of his trauma, this kid was nothing to me. you know, it's just, being a parent, and being a grandfather of four, you know, i have been asked, did you do a lot of research, yeah, i'm a grandparent and i'm a parent. you deal with your kids, your little ones and you try to be as

calming and as intuitive and helpful as you can. >> billy crystal, a smile comes to their face. you make people laugh and you're enjoyable. >> but this is a different kind of enjoyment. this is a great mystery. this is a great -- i loved being in this world. and you know, as actors, we play different parts. i have always played different things. i played a guy having midlife confusion in "city slickers," romantic romantic confusion in "harry and sally," to get a role like this is the greatest feeling. >> now that you have had a role like this, is this something you want to visit, it's a darker tone one that might take your fans by surprise. >> but it's a great surprise. it may not be a surprise. >> talk about range. >> yeah, that's what we're

supposed to do, you know. >> new episodes of "before" stream every friday on apple tv plus. the next hour of "morning joe" will continue after just a quick break. your parents have given you some amazing gifts, but what about the inherited ones? celebrate them with ancestrydna, the simple test that shows your deep family roots, from your mom's side and your dad's side, with some serious detail, trace the journeys and history that shaped who you are today, and see the traits they passed down. your connections to the past are all waiting. see just how gifted you are for only $39.

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with godaddy airo good morning, and welcome to this special thanksgiving edition of "morning joe," bringing you some of our best segments from this past fall. we'll start this hour with the first of many postmortems on why the harris campaign suffered such a sweeping election defeat. david french, your new column for the "new york times" is titled, "there were two huge problems harris could not escape," what are they? >> these are the things presidents are judged, the peace and prosperity. if everything is the same, in other words, the campaigns are

run the same, the same candidates, but there was no disastrous retreat from afghanistan, inflation had not gotten out of control for a time period and there wasn't a migrant surge, we're having a very different conversation now. this was a race that was conducted against the backdrop of some facts that were incredibly difficult for the harris campaign to overcome. and also against a global backdrop that saw every incumbent party in the world being punished after covid inflation. every incumbent party in the world. and i sometimes feel like we spend too much time talking about the details and tactics of campaigns and not enough time talking about the underlying fundamentals. and kamala harris was running against some very strong head winds here. >> yeah, you know, what's so interesting is you talk about peace and prosperity, and as i was reading it, that's pretty simple, right, peace and

prosperity, that's why bill clinton was successful in the 1990s when republicans were shocked that people would be voting for him against two world war ii veterans, two world war ii heroes. but peace and prosperity. you look on the peace side of it made me start thinking about the fact that in gaza, in that war, in ukraine, you had with netanyahu and putin, two people who saw themselves as allies of donald trump, who would get a better deal after donald trump got elected if donald trump got elected, so there's really no reason to hold back. there's never any reason to not go forward full throttle, and it's paid off for both of them. and then as far as prosperity goes, you know, it is funny, somebody said last hour that within three months, four months, there will be people on tv talking about how america's economy is the strongest economy in the world because america's economy is the strongest economy

in the world, relative to the rest of the world, stronger than anytime since 1945, the end of world war ii. everything that i have been saying for the past several years. china, we're doing so much better. you look at ai, you look at silicon valley. you look at main street. inflation is down. you look at the job numbers. everything is booming, it's fantastic. but with working americans, the cost of groceries, the cost of gasoline, even though inflation, we see that number down to where the fed wants it around 2%, 2 1/2%, there's the stacking on effect from 2021, 2022, 2023 and here we are in 2024, right? >> by some measures, american families aren't going to fully recover where their income is above the rate of inflation, recover to their 2019 status until 2025, so the overhang from that earlier inflation and as you were saying in 2022 is still

there. people are still behind, even though at the end of this biden first term, wages started to catch up. but to fully catch up, you have to go into 2025, and you have the higher interest rates. it was very telling, joe, it was very telling that trump won lower income voters when in 2020 he lost lower income voters decisively. okay. so who was most impacted by inflation and higher interest rates, low income voters. he won that cohort. that was a big switch because in 2020, biden won that cohort by double digits, and so that is a community most impacted by inflation, and we're sitting here talking about messaging, messaging, messaging, when the reality is, yeah, that stuff makes a difference on the margins. but the fundamental challenge was still there. >> the question is, you know, the voters that came out that made the difference in 2020 in

milwaukee, in detroit, in philadelphia, in atlanta. working class voters, white, hispanic, black working class voters came out, made the difference, gave joe biden, the margin of victory in those swings states. it didn't happen this year, and david's point is, of course, there are a lot of people that were really stretched, that were working class, and there wasn't -- as reverend al said a month ago, there wasn't the excitement where he had seen it four years ago in milwaukee, detroit, philadelphia. >> people vote their pocketbook and that was made extremely evident, given the dark rhetoric on the trump side. people still voted their pocketbook. democratic senator, chris murphy of connecticut, posted this a few minutes ago. quote, of the 20 highest median income states, democrats won 18 of them. of the 20 lowest median income states, democrats won three. yes, race and gender play a big

role in politics, but the hard truth is this democrats clearly aren't listening to the people we say we fight for. >> let's bring in columnist for the david daily beast, david rothcom, you explore the question, quote, why was i so wrong about kamala harris winning, and in your sub stack piece, titled "breathe, repair, resist" about readjusting now that trump will return to the white house. i want to ask you this question. you look at a lot of things. of course we're all looking at the swing states. i will tell you, i'm looking at the middle of the country, and how red the middle of the country is because, you know, democrats are never going to retake the senate if they don't learn how to start winning in places like nebraska again, and places like oklahoma again. you know, you and i grew up with democratic senator warts

from middle america. that's just not happening. you look at texas. texas is a state the democrats have been talking about taking in time because of the change in demographics, and many believe that '24 or '28 would be the year. the democrats, the presidential candidate and senate candidate, you know, lost like ten points in texas. you look along the border, along the texas border, all of those border towns with a lot of hispanics, they all went for trump. you look at florida, deep, deep, red. you know, a state that biden only lost by three points four years ago. isz the question is, as you're talking about reflecting on the loss, what did democrats need to do to reconnect with working class voters that have really been abandoning them for 30 years? >> i think your question contains the answer. they need to reconnect with working class voters, and the way you do that at first is you listen to them.

and i think it's not just working class voters who are inclined to vote republican. it's also working class voters who are prone to vote democrat who just didn't show up in this election. you know, the election was a little bit closer than most people are talking about. there's a really good piece in the "new york times" today by john dell john, if there was a one percent swing, kamala harris would be the president-elect right now. why wasn't that 1% swing there. why wasn't the turnout better throughout the country? because somehow democrats didn't motivate their own base, and they didn't attract the republican base. and so chris murphy's point is exactly right, the point that you have been making throughout the show is exactly right. it's time to listen. it's time to break out of the patterns of, you know, sort of

the echo chamber. you know, i believe that this thing was going to turn out for kamala harris because i kept hearing the same things over. she had momentum. she had the women's vote from roe v. wade. she had young voters. she had crossover voters from the republican party. not all of those things could be wrong, right? all of those things are wrong. we need to get back to figuring out how to attract people who are regular main street voters, but also to motivate democrats who are regular main street voters who just simply sat on their hands this time. >> go ahead, joe. >> so important, jonathan. i'm so sorry, jonathan, and so upset as are many people that their children do not get off for veterans day that i wasn't listening to the cues from alex, so my apologies to all of you and the children who were not

able to pay respects to veterans. so, jonathan, there are two things here that we need to talk about, and david brought them up. one is this idea that democrats will say, and you hear this every year. you hear this every four years, oh, in 2004, it was, oh, if john kerry had just gotten the number of votes or the number of people that go to an ohio state buckeyes game, he would have beaten george w. bush in 2004, and then, you know, people were saying in 2016, if hillary had only gotten a slice of votes here or there. then in 2020, it's if donald trump had gotten 45,000 more votes across certain states, he would have been president. you hear this every four years. okay. that's true. and if democrats want to win that way, they can just win that way. i say the bigger problem that they need to focus on that davis

is underlying here is not just sneaking by in wisconsin, michigan, and pennsylvania every four years, and pennsylvania, by the way, getting much harder, because of republican registration going up, the question is how do you start winning in the heartland again, because until you do that, you lose the senate every two years, every four years, every six years, they have got to rebuild a national party, and not justice a party that helps them win by 40,000 votes across three blue wall states. >> i mean, even in the immediate electoral concern, i was speaking to one of the top names in the democratic party about two years ago who said this, might have been the last cycle of pennsylvania might have been in play, according to the models, becoming more and more like ohio, a state demographically that has gone very red. pennsylvania seems like it's going in that direction too. and we also know, and there's been chatter about this in

recent day, if demographic and trends continue after the 2030 census, it's going to be the blue wall states wouldn't be enough for democrats to get to 270. there is a real reckoning. a moment to see what could be next to broaden its appeal to not just be a coastal party to not just be a party of white college graduates but to appeal to all americans, including those in the heartland. up ahead, a new book tells the stories of those impacted by the october 7th terror attack, the author of 10/7, 100 human stories joins us next when "morning joe" comes right back. n "morning joe" comes right back ♪ limu emu & doug ♪ woah, limu! we're in a parade.

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the escalating violence in the middle east comes ahead of monday's one-year anniversary of the deadly hamas terrorist attack on israel. last october 7th israeli journalist, lee yaron was in the middle of a fellowship at columbia university, when hamas launched that attack. within days she boarded a plane back to israel and spent the next six months talking to survivors, first responders, and eyewitnesss. yaron has compiled those accounts in the new book, which has the title "10/7, 100 human stories", and she joins us now. lee, thank you so much for being here. >> thank you for having me.

>> these are of course innocent lives, some ended that day in terribly violent fashion, others forever changed. tell us a little more of first, what compelled you to go do this? >> i started writing this book in the end of october, still very much whelmed with grief, with anger. i felt like i needed to do something for these victims, and the only thing i could do is what i always did is to write. i have been a journalist with the israeli liberal newspaper for almost a decade, and i have been focused on human stories on the people on the margins of israeli society, the lgbtq community, asylum seekers, people suffering from domestic violence, and time and again, ooich i've seen how the people in power not only shape policies that affect these people's lives and retell people's stories. i came to understand, if i want to represent to my readers, the

real political reality, i want to do it from the bottom up, the real story lies with the real people. if we're thinking about it, what happens since october 8th, we have been flooded with information and misinformation, and disinformation about israel and palestine, but again, it came to us from the top down. so this book is my attempt to reclaim the story of 10/7 from the people who created the crisis, and bring it back to the people who suffered from it. to go beyond the statistics, beyond the political agendas, and give my readers a real ground level view of the conflict and of 10/7 from the hearts and the homes of the regular people caught in the cross fire. >> lee, it's such a, you know, as we approach the anniversary and obviously today also the second day of rosh, it does feel like the misinformation, the disinformation has so

proliferated. what is the thing you want the world most to know about the survivors and the victims of 10/7. how does understanding their stories help us move forward in these seemingly intractable conflicts? >> you know, we're living in this time of great political polarization, when israelis and palestinians and our allies of each side are becoming blind to each other's pain, each other's grief. i'm a big believer in the power of empathy to build bridges of coexistence and i believe that human stories, these humanizing stories are the best way to build this empathy. that literature allows us to do that much better than, you know, our brief covering in the media does. >> what did you learn writing this book? >> one of the things i understood first is that 10/7 is not just part of israeli history but it's part of jewish history,

and, you know, when the fence was broken on 10/7, it wasn't just the physical barrier, it was the dream of generations that came to israel, believing that there will be a place of safety for their children and grandchildren. and on that day, this dream was shattered. i hear it from families of victims that came from arab countries, fleeing to israel, people that came from the former soviet union, people that came from iraq. time and again, you're speaking about this world reopening. and maybe i'll give an example. in the book, there's a story of shaha, a piece activist, a man that gave testimonies to the organization, breaking the silence, gave tours in iran and the occupied territories, and really fought for a two-state solution, but on this day, when hamas terrorists entered his kibbutz and murdered 10% of the

population, he defended the clinic. when the terrorists came, he put his hands up, i'm not your enemy, please don't shoot me, but they did. and when i'm speaking with his family, they tell me about his grandmother, carmela, there was only a child in iraq and baghdad when she survived in 1941, and she escaped where her arab neighbors murdered her jewish neighbors and came to israel building this kibbutz believing that will be the place for safety for her children and grandchildren. what carmela would say if she knew how her grandchild was murdered. >> the important new book with the title 10/7, 100 human stories. it's on sale now. author and journalist, lee yaron. lee, thank you very much. >> thank you so much for having me. and we'll be right back with more "morning joe." ht back with more "morning joe. so, what's your glucose number right now? good thing you don't need to fingerstick.

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boston fans, they don't know what it's like to be on a winning club. >> dropped by davis. >> yankees to the world series. >> really, we're just going to be another in the long line of teams that fall short? >> that curse was just lingering. >> we hadn't won. the only way to make it go away is to finally win. >> the red sox decided to compete, player for player, dollar for dollar. >> let's go. >> from that point on, i got hot. >> david ortiz jackson. >> cowboy up, son. >> that's us.

just a bunch of goof balls. >> clean shaven, good looks, rich. >> he has a bloody sock. >> it was a nightmare. >> yankees have pounded their way, three gaps mes to none. >> no team has come back from a 3-0 deficit. you're going to tell me the red sox are going to do it to the yankees? >> wow. >> that was a look at the new netflix documentary "the comeback," tower boston red sox. it goes behind the scenes with a team that stakes the greatest comeback. erases a 3-0 deficit against their arch rival new york yankees, and then sweeping the st. louis cardinals in the fall classic to break boston's 86th year world series title route. it was nothing short of extraordinary. my son and i watched this a couple of nights ago, and

between cheering for plays that were performed 20 years ago and wiping tears from our eyes repeatedly, it was -- it's just an extraordinary story, not just of baseball but of just love between teammates, heartbreak, and just unimaginable joy. let's bring in the emmy award winning creators of the comeback. director and executive producer, colin barnacle, nick barnacle, and also with us, proud father, mike barnicle. colin, if you could, just for people -- your boys done good, mike. just for those people that may not know just the massive, the history behind what happened 20 years ago, and also just to repeat it, one more time for willie geist and other yankee fans, what exactly happened in 2004 that is the center of this documentary? >> yeah, so the documentary is

really about how the red sox were able to change their culture from eight decades of losing to, you know, coming back from three down versus the yankees, which nobody had done before, and for all intents and purposes, no red sox fan remembers. mike's not that old. you weren't born then, right? >> close, though. >> yeah, you're close. won the world series in 1918, so it's about how you change the culture of an organization to become winners. you know, kind of the what it takes, and, you know, how you get down 3-o 0 0 and you have t confidence to come back. you're following these characters through it. >> you know, nick i talked to your dad the other night. at times i felt a little foolish watching this documentary because i would see things happening, and i would jump out of my chair like it was happening in realtime.

there was such an emotional connection. and yelling. and cheering because it took you back to 2004. and of course moments when they were talking about tim wakefield wiping tears from my eyes, i will say, being able to see a man who's really been excluded from red sox nation, you guys talking to him, and bringing him back, curt shilling, to one of the most remarkable pitching performances ever. it was so great to see all of them back there. and i know mike told me this happened at the premiere, people were jumping and screaming in their seats, and yelling and cheering. they were weeping. you could hear crying through the theater at the end. what is it about this documentary and this story that so connects people emotionally? >> well, i'll tell you what, we lived it, and then we made it,

and then we watched it sunday night with our friends at the boston red sox in boston, you're gripping your chair, as nervous as i m right now on television, not knowing how it might end, and there are tears, there was laughter, and in the ends, right here, they win this. and it was just a tremendous experience making it and it was a tremendous experience reliving it. it comes down to kind of great team work between colin and i and our family, and fantastic production team. but you do have moments of doubt even having made it and lived it. >> mike, i sat down to walk this excellent series last night, and i immediately thought, why am i doing this to myself, as a yankee fan, what am i doing to myself, so i flipped over to the knicks game and the celtics were beating the knicks by 40, so i went back and finished it. the boys did such a great job telling this story. from start to finish. i had forgotten, even, the way

they went about building this team. big papi, he was not big papi when they brought him from the twins. weren't sure where to put him, defense, dh, he goes on to become the boston icon. about colin's point about creating a winner, the tension between the old and the new. you've got the old school guy in grady little, the manager who goes on his gut, and 28-year-old theo epstein who's going on data from the billy bean school, and totally revolutionizes the franchise. i'm curious what you thought reliving as a boston fan. >> the first thing i'm reliving is i'm wondering, looking at colin and nick here, am i going to be able to get them to school on time this morning, but that's a long time ago, you know, colin and nick alluded to the red sox mystery, how this happened, the culture of the red sox was

captured by a quote from an old utility player, frank duffy, a stanford graduate who played for the red sox in the early '90s, and was abhorred by the uniqueness, the selfishness of the players he was playing alongside that he captured the phrase, red sox, 25 guys, 25 cabs, what happened, i think, in 2003, 2004, two elements that are not under played in the documentary, but i think people under play it in their minds, one was the addition to the roster of kevin malar, who was a natural team molder, bringing people together. and the other was the arrival of a new manager, ito francona. funny, knew about baseball, and knew how to deal with players, one on one, individually and as a group. that was the core of why the trajectory kept going. >> you know what was so crazy, i always remember, of course,

because of a back injury, i was laid up on my back and wasn't able to be there. you were kind enough to call me every night, and i remember after we were down 3-0, and then won the first game. i remember us calling each other, and both of us just had this really strange. we had this strange sense of confidence. down 3-1. and such a star here, he's incredible. but malar over and over again going, don't let us win tonight. don't let us win tonight. and you see it in the documentary. if you let us win tonight, you're going to be sorry. and it's weird, even you and me talking back and forth every day, we had a sense of confidence after that first win going, man, anything's possible. they believed that they could do something that no other team in over a century had ever done, didn't they? >> yeah, they did. they did. and that was an amazing element

of it. i mean, kevin pumping his fist in his glove, talking to dan, you let us win tonight, pedro tomorrow. game seven, you never know. we're going to win this thing, and they did amazing. >> it's 20 years later, and i can't believe it happened. 2004 red sox is a team changed my life, my family's life, everyone in the region's life. it can't be overstated. i always thought that part of why this could happen is because of some o.f the personalities o the team, other guys who simply by their own admission, the idiots who didn't give into the pressure of boston, the pressure of 86 years, manny ramirez, pedro martinez, danny ortiz, as you revisited the characters, and character is the right word. tells the role of character that led them to have a comeback like this. >> a lot of it is, you know, these characters working through

self-doubt, you know, it's -- john henry paid 3/4 of a billion dollars for the red sox and hired a 28-year-old kid who lived down the street with two other guys, you know. he wasn't uber confident in that. he was very smart, analytically driven, and theo working through self-doubt, he's from boston, he knows the stakes. i think the way he put it to us is, when things are going good at fenway park and you're the gm, it's alive and electric. when you're not doing well, it's like a six months death march. it's awful. working through the self-doubt. kevin, he's going to japan, out of baseball. his career is over in major league baseball. david ortiz is a scrappy guy, released. these kind of characters coming together and saying, like, in a way, this is almost our chance here, some of us are at the

beginning o. f the journey, som at the end. this is our chance to come together. we got to do something different here. we got to put together a clubhouse, and you know, our old man knows boston can be a pressure cooker, you know, and a lot of teams, the downward pressure on them. the clubhouse was about the size of the table. there's 40 media members in there. it's hard not to break apart, and kevin malar had a lot to do with making it a walled forwarden. -- garden. we're good in here, we can be who we are. those three elements of allowing your character to come out and going through it personally is one of the things we were trying to achieve, and you know, it's not hard to make a good documentary when you have david ortiz, kevin malar, derek lowe, these are great guys. >> it's incredible.

i learned so much about the red sox. i thought i knew everything about them. theo and sam kennedy grew up together and everything, but it was so tight knit, such a family, but i want to talk about culture because i obsess on culture, nick, all the time, the culture of teams, culture of businesses. it's such a prediction of success. for the red sox, first thing they have too old is do is get their superstar, clubhouse poison. they had to get rid of him, and suddenly, you guys tell the story, one guy goes out to eat. then it's two guys going out to eat. then it's five guys, ten it's ten. then every night, the whole team is going out. they're eating together. they're talking together. they're living together. and man, you see that when their backs are against the wall, and

they're fighting over a century of history, don't you. . >> well, and joe, you know, jonathan, mike, colin, mike, dad, you guys know that there's a huge change in culture from the previous ownership group to the new ownership group. john henry. tom werner, and larry, changed the way they thought about building teams, and 28 years old, 29 at the time, and he's got no mar, number 5 and he decides this is not going to happen. we got to get rid of him, and deals him. and the deal does not come through as something that's like spectacular. it's cabrera, two guys that don't hit but they can field. who knows how this is going to work out. it's a nerve racking thing for theo, and he decides we're going to do it. and jed hoyer, deputy at the time, in the doc, fantastic. says we don't know if this is a bottoms up trade or if it's going to work out, and it ends

up working out. >> 25 guys going to a restaurant. i'm sure they were going to a restaurant not a bar. big reservation. >> the new three-part docuseries "the comeback 2004 boston red sox" is streaming right now on netflix. director and executive producer, clinic barnicle and executive producer nick barnicle, it's weird to say that because we have known them for 14 years. >> how did we ever get on the show? >> i don't know, actually. we're going to take a look at the season 2 of the dark comedy "bad sisters," which follows the lives of the close knit garvey sisters after the quote, accidental death of one of their husbands. the cast. >> oh, my god. >> how lucky are we?

>> these are like the best actresses in the world. >> the cast of the hit show will join us live with what to expect this time around. they're super scary and weird and alluring all at the same time. "morning joe" will be right back. ning joe" will be right back

i know what you did. ♪ all i need is a good defense ♪ >> we found a dead body in a suitcase. >> we would like to ask you a few more questions. >> there's something much bigger at play here. >> wait, you haven't heard from ian in two days? i think grace is in trouble. >> let's get one step ahead. >> we are not safe.

i don't want to have about my own sister. >> i'm thinking of going to the place. >> somebody's dead. >> you've got blood on your hands. >> i expect the cops are the right person. >> we are the right person. >> bad, bad, bad, i need my bad sisters. that was a look at the second season of the hit apple tv plus series entitled "bad sisters," the show picks up two years after the death of jp, the abusive husband of one of the five garvey sisters. now, chased by personal foes and law enforcement officials alike, the sisters must once again fight for their freedom all while keeping their family together. and joining us, four of the garvey sisters and costars of the show, sharon horgan, who is also an executive producer and writer, eva birthistl earrings, eve hewson, and sarah green.

great to have you all, we're all obsessed with bad sisters. i could not need this more right now. sharon, we'll start with you. wasn't this supposed to only be one series? how did this happen where it continued, and i guess how could i get so lucky? >> there was only supposed to be one season because it's bassed -- based on a belgian series, "clam," there was one season of that, but, then, i don't know, i just thought, there's such a great response to this show, and we thought that what happens after he dies and how the sisters cope with it, and how grace, especially, deals with the guilt of, you know, offing her awful, awful husband was more interesting, you know. >> yeah, exactly. >> fascinating, actually. >> exactly. and eve, mika and i enjoyed, we

had a very soapy summer this summer, watching you in "the perfect couple." >> so good. you were so good. >> so fun. >> thank you so much. so what was it like getting the call and saying are you going to get a chance to do this again? the first time was supposed to be a one-off. it went so remarkably well, but how excited were you to be able to do this again? >> so excited. i think i screamed, actually, when i woke up in the moment and saw the e-mail. but we were all really -- we all fell in love with each other, so we all were hoping that maybe we would get a season 2. i don't think they told us until the season finale aired, so it was a while of waiting, and then we were all very happy. >> so eva, let's go one step further then, there's the kpamt excitement to have the series come back, and the expectation, there's people who love the show, are obsessed with the show.

what is the pressure or responsibility to keep delivering? >> i mean, there is pressure, i suppose, but i think it's taken -- the excitement and the desire for it, like you say, was so well received. but i think the appetite for it is so great that that sort of takes over the pressure. there is a different pressure, of course, because you have to come up with the goods, so to speak. >> yeah, you know, everyone was so lovely, but you don't want to let your audience down, you know, but also i don't want to let the characters down. i was more pressure you guys reading it than actually putting it out there, you know, i think. >> and, sarah, you've talked about being able to come back with your on-air sisters, also being with an almost all female cast, not having to deal with dudes, with bros, with guys, i mean, that's awful, and i hate

it. and it must feel great to feel back into this sister hood where you don't have to worry bout the pay disparities and everything else. >> it's a really safe, supportive environment to work in. we really do all love each other, and we champion each other, and it's, yeah, it's a real joy to come to work every day. >> and people notice your shoes, you know, like. >> yes, after all that work, my god. >> you know, it's the important things, it's the little things. >> very important. let's take a look at a clip where the garvey sisters encounter their new nemesis this season, angelica. >> she looks awful. >> played by the legendary fiona shaw. >> she's a queen. >> who's going to be next? ready? >> me, me, me.

>> [ laughing ] i got it. i got it. >> we've got something to celebrate. [ laughing ] >> what do you know, hope springs eternal to the human breast. >> so aggressive. >> so, sharon, no spoilers, but tell us a little bit about this character and the new dynamic as part of the series? >> oh, i love her so much. she's a terrible, terrible bigot, awful woman, but i love her. she's roger's sister, and she got very close to grace, and she finds out her secret. she finds out what she did, and she kind of uses it to get closer to grace and to get closer to the sisters, but, yeah, she's a worthy foe. she's fiona shaw, it's just been an absolute joy working with

her. she's the funniest and the liveliest, and she's an honorary garvey sister. she calls herself the heroine of the piece. >> i love it. >> eva i would love to ask you, i would love to ask all of you this, but we have only so much time, but the concept of having a cast of female leads, it seems to me from watching it on a really serious note, it's the opportunities to explore the humanity of being a woman, of all aspects of being a woman, and sort of equalizes us with men to an extent because sometimes you only see one or two sides of a woman when you have a female lead, but when you have a large cast of female leads, isn't that a different experience? >> it is. and it's a joyful one, and i think it's, you know -- because, like you said, we haven't been

used to that for a very long time. when you suddenly see material like that, actually read it, it's full of excitement, and thank god we're being written about, and when it goes out then, the people see the show. the response is what it is, because people want and need to see real women, with all their flaws and all their complexities, and unfortunately you don't see them that often. the response has been what it is, because it's like, there we are, we're being represented, and that's essential. >> and, eve, same question to you, what does it mean right now, particularly in this moment, to have this cast and strong female characters? >> i'm about to burn my bra. >> well, why don't we -- why don't we just end it right there, i like the way to end it. and the first two episodes of the second season of "bad sisters" are streaming on apple

plus, we are so excited even if the interviews went off the rails. >> she's wearing one. thank you all so much, sharon horgan, eva birthstle, eve hewson, and sarah greene. >> stick around this morning on smoe, "morning joe," we'll be right back. ," we'll be right back that years after i'm gone this guy will be standing the test of ti... he's melting! oh jeez... nooo... oh gaa... only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty, liberty, liberty, liberty ♪ we are living with afib. and over 400,000 of us have left blood thinners behind... ...for life. we've cut our stroke risk and said goodbye to our bleeding worry. with the watchman implant. watchman. it's one time,

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♪ ♪ good morning, and welcome back to this special edition of "morning joe." we're grateful to be on tape this morning, and we'll bring you some of our best discussions

of the past few weeks. one surrounded democrats trying to figure out what led to kamala harris's loss in this past election. congressman ritchie torres is laying some of the blame at his party's left flank. the new york democrat posted on social media, the day after the election this, donald trump has no greater friend than the far left. which has managed to alienate historic numbers of latinos, blacks, asians and jews from the democratic party with absurdities like defund the police or from the river to the sea or latinx. there is more to lose than there is to gain politically from pandering to a far left that is more representative of twitter, twitch and tiktok than it is of the real world. the working class is not buying the ivory towered nonsense that the far left is selling, and the congressman explained his position to us here on "morning

joe." it was shock bug not surprising. it will keep on being the gift that keeps on giving until there's a serious reckoning with the results of the election, and a serious recalibration. the far left of the party is pressuring the party to take positions like defund the police or open borders that alienates the vast majority of americans like most americans are in the center. right, that's not a statement of personal policy preference, that's a statement of political reality. when the republicans swung the pendulum too far to the right on abortion, the american people punished the republicans in the 2022 midterms. their red wave became nothing more than a trickle. if we swing too far to the left on public safety and immigration, then we will pay a price as we did until the 2024 election. when you swing the pendulum too far to the left, it elicits a public reaction that will make the country more right wing, not

left, more restrigs on abortion, not less. it has the opposite effect of what was intended sglt. >> the swing states were very close. donald trump swept all seven. but they were still very close. what raised eyebrows is how well he did in areas that people didn't expect him to do. take your district, for example. what did you hear from constituents before and after the election, why some of them, maybe black voters or latino voters, asian voters, moved toward donald trump? >> look, the simplest explanation is almost always the best and the simplest explanation is inflation and immigration. working class communities of color are hit the hardest by inflation, and then on the subject of immigration, it was genuine political malpractice. since 2022 there has been an unprecedented wave of migration, whose impact was felt not only at the border but in cities like new york where the shelter system and our municipal finances were completely overwhelmed, i think quinnipiac

found in december of 2023, 85% of new yorkers were worried about the impact of the migrant crisis on new york city, despite clear signs of popular discontent, it took the biden administration two and a half years to issue an executive order restricting migration at the border, and by then it was too late. the republicans had won the issue, had weaponized it against us, and when the president issued the executive order, polling revealed that it was popular among the american people, people from every racial category, blacks and whites, latinos and asians. if it was effective at reducing migration at the border and popular among the american people, why did it take two and a half years to issue the executive order because it was unpopular among far left elites who have

deal with inflation differently. first, acknowledging it was a problem sooner and messaging it. poll after poll suggests, a lot of americans, no matter what demographic they belonged to were unhappy. it contributed to the sense of unhappiness. that's a harder one. i would say white house persons i've talked to say they aren't sure what the right approach would have been. what do you think? >> when it comes to inflation, we were truly a victim of circumstance. unprecedented supply chain disruptions during covid led to record inflation. when you're the party in power in an age of inflation, it's a political death sentence. >> was there too much money put in initially? >> for me, inflation was a global phenomenon and it's best explained by global causes so i would not attribute it to any local factors. i think the biden administration was a genuine victim of circumstance. for me, we did not have a messaging problem. we had a reality problem.

inflation is not a messaging problem, it's a reality problem. no amount of messaging is going to make people feel good about inflation. >> some of what happened in these elections were inability to turn out younger people and the base. can you make that square? >> i think if you have a status quo marked by an inflation shock and a migrant crisis, it's going to have a depressing affect on turnout. the data was crystal clear. again, i was shocked but not surprised by the results. more than 70% of americans disapproved of the biden administration. more than 70% of americans felt like we were on the wrong track. and in recent political history there is no precedent for an incumbent party winning a presidential election when the majority of people think the country's on the wrong track. >> jacob. >> congressman, i'm just curious, back to the issues pertaining to the border, which i think you bring up a great

point and were a huge issue. and i know that you mentioned that it took too long for president biden to act with an executive order, but also with probably the strongest bipartisan legislation republicans could have ever gotten, and trump killed it, as we discussed. >> yes. >> my question, is it just the administration and them being too slow on issues because they did make major moves on them, or were there other factors, disinformation, republicans not telling the truth about that. donald trump killing legislation that would have actually helped with the problem in a significant way that was co-written by james langford. that's not nothing. >> if you remove inflation and immigration from the table, we win the election. regardless of disinformation, we would have won the election were it not for structural causes like inflation and the migrant

crisis. look, republicans have no interest in governing. their only interest is in demagoguing. here's the hard political fact. when you are the party in the presidency, you are held accountable for everything. and the american people are allergic to the substance or even the appearance of incompetence. when donald trump was incompetent in managing the covid pandemic, the american people punished him in the 2020 election. when the biden administration demonstrated incompetence in managing the migrant crisis, they punished him in the 2024 election. incompetence in a time of crisis is a political death sentence. when there's a metaphorical fire provoking a widespread public outrage, you have to act decisively to extinguish that fire otherwise the voters will decisively punish you at the

ballot box. >> mika makes a great point, that there was a bipartisan big, republicans deliberately killed it. the problem is, going back before that in '21, '22, '23, you had a crisis at the border that leaders in the democratic party pretended didn't exist, right? and so this is the sort of thing, again, the numbers were so massive, and the denial was so complete that obviously that overwhelmed any good that would have come by signing onto a bipartisan bill, right? >> look, you have to level with the american people. the american people are not stupid. you cannot gaslight them. people know the reality on the ground. people know their own lived experience. and the republicans have been acting in bad faith and did sabotage a bipartisan border security compromise and she would held accountable, but the

president had the unilateral ability to issue an executive order restricting migration at the border and he waited 2 1/2 years and that, to me, is political malpractice. we should be honest about it. >> it is political malpractice. willie, if you want to know where the voters were, look along the southern border of texas that borders with mexico. you could go back to 2012, even 2016. it was still predominantly democrati democratic. now it's red from el paso all the way across. it has shifted over the past four years especially, but the past eight years, it has shifted dramatically to the republican party. >> donald trump won all the counties along the border and among the swing state victories, his was the largest in the state

of arizona, also a border state. i was talking about people coming up to me on the subway yesterday during the veterans day parade saying, what are we going to do, is it going to be okay, new yorkers? i'm sure you're hearing that if you're a woman, immigrant, rightly about some of the policies donald trump has talked about the campaign trail. what are you saying to your constituents, to other democrats about what the next four years will look like? >> even if the republicans win the house, which is a question mark, the republicans will not have anything resembling a majority, so house democrats are the best hope for protecting our country from the extremes and excesses of a donald trump presidency, but i worry he's more boldined than ever before. i expect a second trump presidency is going to be more vintictive than the first. and the fundamental difference between then and now is that he enjoys absolute immunity. he's free to weaponize government against his political rivals which he refers to as the

enemy within. i worry we're going to see a much more emboldened, much more vindictive donald trump than we've ever seen. >> he intends to be very hard line on immigration. he made a campaign promise for mass deportations, a scale we've never seen before. this is something that will impact your district. what preparations are you and other local officials taking? what is this going to look like? >> look, we'll have to do everything we can to resist a donald trump presidency but the president has ultimate authority over immigration. there is a limit to what we can do. the best resistance is house democratic conference -- caucus. >> you've been a strong defender of israel, demands to bring the hostages home fighting against anti-semitism in new york city and the country. what is that relationship now between a trump administration, israel and gaza look like now? >> it's unclear. there's no predicting the unpredictable. there are elements of the trump

administration that might be pro-israel. but there are also elements of the trump administration that are isolationists. my argument is if america withdraws from the world and creates a power vacuum by the likes of china, power, iran, that's a detriment, not benefit to the u.s./israel relations. >> democratic congressman ritchie torres of new york covering a lot of ground with us. congressman, thank you for being here. we appreciate it. we chose hope over hate. competence over chaos. decency over division. that's who we are as north carolinaens. i'm so honoreded that you have elected me to be your next governor. >> that was north carolina governor-elect josh stein giving

us his victory speech on tuesday in raleigh. despite donald trump winning north carolina 16 electoral votes, stein, a democrat, won his race defeating the current republican lieutenant governor mark robinson. in fact, 15% of those who voted for trump for president also backed stein for governor. in addition, democrats in north carolina have broken the gop's super majority in the state legislature after flipping a key seat in a district just east of raleigh. that means come january, republicans will not be able to override any vetoes from the incoming governor and county governor-elect joins us, currently the state's attorney general. it's great to have you on the show. congratulations. there were, how do i say this, there were some cross-currents in your election that impacted the outcome. and yet i'd like to know what you think was part of the success of bringing folks from the other side to vote for you

that, perhaps, went beyond the weaknesses that your opponent were revealed about your opponent in the final weeks before election day. >> i'm incredibly honored the people of north carolina elected me to be their governor. extremely eager to get to work on the issues that matter. i think that's why with we had success in north carolina. we were able to present the stark contrast. it wasn't just my race. it was up and down the ballot here in north carolina between folks who fight for people on issues that matter to them in their daily lives and to deliver in a meaningful way against people who are just extremists. and i'm really gratified that the voters not only elected me, but we defended our secretary of state and the attorney general's office. we flipped lieutenant governor and public of construction. as you noted, we broke the super majority in the state house. there's a lot on what was otherwise not a great night in

north carolina or across the nation at the presidential level. we actually had a pretty good night here in north carolina. now it's time to get to work. >> governor-elect, congratulations, good morning. i know you're preparing for the heels, big road test tomorrow night. we'll try to be brief as you get ready for that game. >> fair enough. >> i want to ask you about what was determinative in your race. there's been so much talk, so much morning after, so much discussion about where democrats went wrong in national races and some of the senate races. can you speak to the way you ran your campaign and what lessons might be available to other democrats as they try to pick up the pieces from what happened on tuesday night. >> you have to do two things. have you to reassure folks that you actually care for them and work on issues that matter to them. people to the know they're going to are safe in their home and neighborhoods. they want to know the economy is

going to present more opportunities for people to have a better future. they want to know their personal freedoms, women's right to be able to make their own reproductive health care decisions are going to be respected. when you contrast that to where my opponent was, i think it was a clear choice and the additional factor is i have a history of delivering for folks here in north carolina. i'm a two-term attorney general. the trump won twice. i showed folks i'm willing to work across the isle. there are enough good ideas out there. i partnered with the republicans to five the fentanyl crisis, partnered with republicans to eliminate what had been the largest backlog of untested rape kits in the nation, partnered with republicans to better protect our sex crime laws.

victims are democrats, republicans, unaffiliated. it doesn't matter as long as you're there fighting for the people of north carolina. >> mr. governor-elect, there has been a lot of second guessing about democrats, how they left their coalition behind. president-elect trump made inroads with latino voters, black voters. you obviously have had success there. what is your message? what can the national party learn from your victory ensuring those groups don't feel taken for granted? >> just fight for people. people have a lot of the same interest no matter who they are, whether you're latino, african american, white, asian, it doesn't matter. everybody wants good schools. everybody wants an economy where they have a fair shot at making it. everyone wants safe neighborhoods, everybody wants their personal freedoms respected. if you talk about those issues in a way that appeals to all people, and you show that you

can deliver on them and you have a track record of getting things done, i believe the voters will reward us. >> one of the issues that will cross your desk immediately and i know you've been dealing with it is the continued recovery and clean-up from the hurricane and flooding, particularly in western north carolina, the wonderful town of asheville. what can you say about progress there and the efforts to rebuild? >> well, it's going -- this is a project of months and in many instances years. the devastation to roads and water and sewer infrastructure, the devastation to people's homes, businesses, and, of course, the immense loss of life so we have to be there for the people of western north carolina the way they have been there for each other throughout this whole process. i've reached out to legislative leadership, two united states senators, tillis and bud, and i look forward to working because, again, the people of western north carolina are people. they are people first. they don't care if the person

they're helping is a republican, a democrat or an unaffiliated. they just care they are a person who is in need and that's the exact same approach we have to take as their governor. >> north carolina governor-elect josh stein. thank you very much for coming on the show this morning. we really appreciate it. take care. we'll be right back with much more "morning joe." ."

pretty shot there of rockefeller christmas tree. a few weeks away from being lit. we still have thanksgiving to look forward to first. the new cover story for next month's issue of "the atlantic" offers a sprawling examination of how the ivy league broke america. in it contributing writer david brooks argues six main points. first, the system overrates intelligence. success in school is not the same thing as success in life. the game is rigged. the meterocracy has created an american caste system. it has provoked a populist backlash that is tearing society apart. david joins us now. david, a fascinating and important piece. let's start with that last one coming after the election, of course, where it does seem like

a lot of what fueled this trump vote, he saw gains across the board, was sort of an anger, a backlash, a populist anger at america's elite. >> thanks for summarizing a 12,000-word piece. i wish i would have thought about that. >> brevity works sometimes. >> diploma divide, college educated people are trending sharply to the left, high school educated people are trending sharply to the right, to donald trump. he rode a populist wave of anger from people with high school degrees and not college degrees. but that anger flows out of something. it flows out of life in america right now. people with high school degrees die nine years earlier than people with college degrees, ten times more likely to die of opioid addiction, they make much less money, much less likely to marry and much more likely to divorce, much more likely to have kids out of d wedlock.

people with high school degrees are more likely to say i have no close friends. i'm trying to describe a chasm, which was created by policies that segregated people by bogus categories and now the people left out of that segregation system are revolting. as we talk about the appointments and all the things that are important, we need to address the deep structural issues that gave us donald trump. >> hi, david. i found this fas cinating, your whole people. i said, not david sounding like bernie sanders because the populism undertones here are strong. i wonder how race plays into this. if you look at a number of surveys taken throughout the election, i think back to a goldman sachs survey specifically and they surveyed middle manager, upper manager,

black women in corporate america and the majority said they feel like they're living paycheck to paycheck. how does race account into this? i do think that many of the points you make here are spot on. too much focus on, you know, grades and standardized tests and not enough focus on, as my husband might say, street skills. >> that's absolutely right. first, i have a buddy who worked for bernie sanders who is razzing me for joining the bernie bro. i'm alarged by that, frankly. i do think the number of people living paycheck to paycheck and the way race plays into it, i would say one of of the things we have to have in american colleges is representation. representation to diverse communities. when affirmative action was taken away by the supreme court, if you look at the statistics of how much -- how many black students there were, minority students, there are just not as many. that's because they have one

standard for getting into college. one threshold before anything is considered at an elite university is how you did on the s.a.t.s. that's a system that is rigged because the rich people can afford to spend tons of money on their kids and get them higher s.a.t. students, tutoring, all these extracurriculars, boost their gpa average. if you grew up in the top 1%, you have a 77 times greater chance of getting into the ivy league than people making, say, $40,000, $50,000 a year. the whole game is rigged so rich parents can pass their advantages down to their kids. that's led to a permanent divide in our society. if you happen to be part of a community that has suffered 400 years of slavery and discrimination, of course you're going to be disadvantaged by that system. we need to have a better system that actually represents ability. that's my core point here. it's not can you do well on a standardized test? that's fine.

it's important to have a high iq. if you're an astro physicist, yeah, that's point. but for most of us, are you curious, do you know how to be a good teammate, do you know how to make sound judgments, are you kind? these are the things that actually matter in life. are you creative? somehow our system does not favor the things that really matter in life. and favors the things that make you good in a classroom. >> contributing writer for "the atlantic." the new cover story available to read online now. symone sanders-townsend, thank you as well. coming up, inside the political battle to fund one federal program that has literally saved tens of millions of lives. you're watching a special holiday edition of "morning joe." joe. ♪ limu emu & doug ♪ woah, limu! we're in a parade. everyone customize and save hundreds on car insurance

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welcome back. an update now on a story we've been covering here on "morning joe" about the landmark legislation pepfar, president's emergency plan for aids relief which was signed into law in 2003 by then president george bush and the largest -- the for more than 20 million people across 50 countries. and pepfar's global success has

transcended party politics until now. its reauthorization has become a bargaining chip in the heat partisan culture wars. nbc news congressional correspondent has the latest. >>guys, the fate of this life-saving program is still at stake now that all three branches of government are under republican control. the culture issue holding popfar to an end with donald trump back in the white house. if not, lawmakers worry all the progress made to combat this disease will go away. it's difficult to watch the despair across the globe two decades ago. the hiv/aids epidemic, many holding the bodies of parents. their orphans now left behind. today the deadly virus has been greatly suppressed thanks to the most successful global health program ever that for the first time surnd threat.

>> it has saved 25 million lives. it's no longer a death sentence. >> reporter: it's why president george w. bush signed the program into law on may 27, 2003. barbara lee was there. >> i was definitely against almost every policy that he put forth. but on this issue, it was about saving lives and the quality of life and about the richest and most powerful country in the world doing something. >> reporter: it was a bipartisan compromise. a deal struck by a now unimaginable pairing of a conservative president and nearly all lawmakers on capitol hill. >> the president of botswana told me that you have and your country have saved a generation in my country from extinction. if you think about that, a whole generation from extinction, that's what this program has done. there is no other program that does this. it's the most successful global health program in the world. and that's why it's important to continue it.

>> reporter: u.s. funding totals $120 billion used to fight aids, tuberculosis and malaria. the program has saved more than 25 million lives and prevented millions of hiv infections. congress reauthorized pepfar on a five-year bipartisan basis until now. the reason, a debate over reproductive access with some republicans suggesting the funds could be used for abortion. >> i strongly supported pepfar when it was created this 2003 and i was a sponsor of the reauthorization in 2018. regrettably it has been reimagined, hijacked by the biden administration to empower pro-abortion into national ngos, deviating from its life-affirming work. >> reporter: michael mccaul, gop foreign relations chair, disagrees. >> it's very clear they cannot use the money coming from the united states for the purpose of abortion. that's by federal law. >> reporter: and so does lindsey graham, two powerful republicans

who witnessed pepfar's success firsthand. >> there are so many people alive today. if you're pro life, this is a great pro life program. >> reporter: right wing groups like the heritage foundation are blaming the biden administration for misusing pepfar as -- >> a vehicle to promote a radical agenda that is simply so divisive here in the united states, and is completely rejected by people overseas, especially in africa. >> reporter: these groups also want countries benefiting from the program to pay into it t even though many already do. >> we're in year 23 of what is an emergency program. that's the e in pepfar. after spending $120 billion, these countries -- most of these countries are unable to manage the pepfar funds themselves. >> reporter: south africa, ground zero for the hiv/aids epidemic funds 70% of the work to combat the disease. dr. dave clark says he has never seen pepfar dollars misused.

>> it would be clearly wrong to say these funds are being used illicitly for abortion type of work. the money is being deployed where it needs to be deployed in dealing with the hiv epidemic and getting it under control. >> reporter: as coo of a leading health organization in the battle against the disease, clark says a one-year reauthorization of the program will lead to deadly consequences. >> so, the decision to move on a year-by-year basis drives uncertainty. like the stock market, uncertainty drives risks and the risk carries. will it continue? will we have support? the control we had will break down again and fairly rapidly and we'll see people, the infection rates and incidents of the disease climb again. so it's not time to stop. >> reporter: the only hope for the bipartisan program is a bipartisan solution to save it. >> here's something to keep in mind, the president-elect's pick for secretary of state, marco

rubio is a big supporter of this program but he did accuse the biden administration on pepfar on abortion and gender identity. experts deny that accusation but it's a sign that under the trump administration that vows to end any diversity and inclusion efforts, pepfar could be fully reauthorized next year prepare. coming up next, our good buddy from america's most beloved weatherman to chef, the man knows his way around a kitchen. al roker and his supremely talented daughter, courtney r with us to talk about their new cookbook for which courtney did all the work. al roker's recipes.

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the best part of father's day i'm looking for this year is i'm a grandfather. >> cheers. cheers to that. >> cheers to pop pop. >> hang on. >> i went and visited al in the hospital not that long ago so that really warms my heart. >> well, this little girl -- and

you hear people go, oh, my grandchild. i was like blah, blah, blah, blah, and then this kid hits. it's like, oh, my god. >> how is it different from a child? >> because it's pure joy. there's no responsibility. other than you want them to be safe and happy and all that. it's just you and her and you're not worried about -- i don't have to teach her anything other than, hey, i'm the candy man. >> that is our good friend co-anchor al roker on father's day talking about the joys of being a father and now a grandfather over some of the best pizza in new york, by the way. the intersection of food and family at the heart of al's new cookbook titled "al roker's recipes to live by." al and one of his daughters, professional chef, courtney roker-laga co-wrote the book. they join us now. it is so great to have you guys on this side of 49th street.

>> i'm never hear this early. >> congratulations on the book. i was so honored to be at your book party and hear the story and genesis of how this came together. courtney, you are the chef, the professional chef. very talented chef. al is a great cook. let's not -- >> yeah, let's not -- >> -- get it twisted here. how did this come together between the two of you? >> during the pandemic, he was making a lot of social videos with my little brother nick. and he was just getting a lot of positive feedback. you should write a cookbook, a show, something. in my head i'm thinking, i'm a recipe developer. this is a great opportunity to write a cookbook and a bonding experience, a family cookbook. i brought the idea to him and he was not interested at first. >> i said, no. >> really? you turned down your daughter. >> yes. >> yes. tough love in the roker house. i've written one like 30 years ago and i know how much work it is. i'm like, you're the recipe person, so you have to do the

recipes. i'll write the head notes but this is your baby, literally. >> where do you begin then? al, you do that big green ailg but where do you begin as a professional chef, courtney? >> yeah. hi to talk to some people. i talked to obviously him from recipes for my grandmother, debora, my mom, my in laws and get as much information as possible. >> we wanted to do a family cookbook. >> i don't know in your house, but nobody wrote anything down. trying to get info from my mother was like pulling teeth. she had to be this recipe detective to figure out what would go into what. >> this is a tough question, but do we have favorites in the book? are there go-to recipes you guys will cook on a weekend? >> i love the aeperol spritz, the -- >> i like that your first recipe

was a drink. >> i raised them well. i love my mother's oxtail stew and dumplings. coming into a cold weather. and dessert, more pineapple upside down cake. simple but good stuff. >> can we talk about the family dynamic which is so beautiful. i wrote a book with my dad ten years ago. one of the unexpected beauties of that was spending all this time with him. doing interviews and going on book tours. what's it been like for you, courtney? >> lately, it's been great. >> what do you mean lately? >> wow, wow. >> whoa. >> it's been amazing. with my dad not everyone can say that, doing something so special. the cookbook process was a little stressful, but now that we're here, it's been great. >> now it's good. >> yeah. what it is, you know, when it's time to show up for a show, you're here. when it came to deadlines, i'm a little fuzzy -- >> sure. >> i see that as a more of a

suggestion. she was like, dad, we have to do this. i was like, okay. >> this really is -- we were talking as your kids get older, they go out, have their own lives, have beautiful babies, you don't get to be around them. >> this is probably the most time we have spent together one-on-one since she was in school, in elementary school when we would take some road trips. it's been great. we can see this as yours get older, it is so special to realize your kid is really good at what they do. she's a professional. she's really good. she's done restaurant work, worked at michelin star restaurants, now a -- >> and personal chef. tiny spoon chef. >> get the plug in. >> she's a really good mom, you know. >> thanks. she got a great partner in her hubby wes. it's the whole package. >> superstar. >> this is just like the icing on the cake.

>> mika has a question for you guys. mika? >> i want to do the cinnamon buns. this is so close to my heart because i've been trying so hard to remember my mom's yellow cookie recipes and get it right. my daughters and i are trying to do it by taste. but i also have been watching you, al roker, over the years, and you look amazing. and some of these -- i mean that in the most -- in terms of health. some of these recipes are so healthy and wonderful. tell us about those. >> well, i don't really care about those. no, we did -- because debora is like, she goes -- she said, you should put something healthy there. >> there's a couple. >> there are. they're really good. >> just to say they're there. it's like, my daughter, lila, the veggie burger. there are some things you could theoretically make healthy, but, come on.

it's about moderation. you aren't going to eat all this stuff every day. but you can find stuff in there if you would like. >> i found a few. i love it. >> good. >> there you go. see? i just want you to -- the smothered chicken is for joe. >> yeah. joe's not looking for the healthy ones. he's not your veggie burger guy. it's great to have you here. congratulations. the new cookbook is al roker's recipes to live by, he'sry memory making dishes for every occasion. coauthors al roker and courtney roker laga. >> sweet willie geist. >> we got it in. coming up, huma abedin will join us to introduce us to a the woman iconic and sometimes controversial magazine issues of all time. she'll explain that next. zine if all time she'll explain that next

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oh, it's gratuitous. that's because they didn't know the whole picture.

>> women who support women. women who see the beauty in women. why would you not want to support them? >> she changed my life. >> that issue is seen by an estimated 50 million people every year. one-third of them women. that might not be what you'd expect. but then again, julie campbell is not what you'd expect either. >> if you respect beauty, you've nourished your soul. oh, my god. this is how i feel. >> welcome back to "morning joe." i'm huma abedin here to take you through this next story. what you just saw was a glimpse at the new documentary "beyond the gaze: julie campbell's swimsuit edition." the film directed by julie's daughter-in-law takes a look at the life and legacy of the legendary founding editor of the

"sports illustrated" swimsuit edition. throughout her 32-year tenure at the magazine, julie navigated a sexist work environment while fighting accusations of objections fiction. at the same time empowering models like christie inkley, and many, many more. joining us is the film's director, jill campbell, along with the aforementioned model and actress carol alt, also with us is "forbes women" editor maggie mcgrath. there is so much in this film that documents american society, history and culture. at its center is a pioneering women professional.

tell us why you decided to make a film about your mother-in-law, julie, who passed away two years ago at 96. what did you want viewers to know about her? >> her story was really never told. she was planning to write a book, and she never wrote a book, so i kind of moved in with her during the pandemic. she was so full of so many stories that i had never heard because she -- she would would go away on trips and she would come home and she never wanted to taung about her job because she worked so hard and, you know, at times her position was maligned. and she would just want to chill out. yet towards the end of her life she really wanted to share her story. we all need to learn from these empowering, pioneering women right now. >> they certainly do. >> carol, the footage of julie on set showed such a visionary yet protective force for her models. what was it like for you to be on these shoots with her, especially as a young woman navigating your own career? >> in a word, intimidating.

first of all, i think i understood at an early age that "sports illustrated" could help my career. and what julie did for the girls and for me personally, no other magazine at that time was doing. they put our name on the cover and created a personality. i remember the first time i was recognized. i thought, why -- did i go to high school with you? why do you recognize me? the guy said, aren't you on the cover of "sports illustrated"? i said, you recognize me from there? he said, your name is on it. julie was an artist. every picture she took had a complete vision behind it. it wasn't, let's just happen upon this or maybe this will turn out okay. i told jill a story where we walked through the woods at 4:00 in the morning and the sun is coming up and we're rushing along and i'm going, where are we going to? we pop out on a beach and there on the beach is a boat the same color as the suit that i was wearing. the rainbow suit. so, it was quite shocking how

organized and how she had this complete vision of the story from beginning to end. >> lots of examples of that in the documentary. but, jill, talk to us about the criticism that julie faced and what did it mean to you to watch her break the glass ceiling in a male dominated industry? >> i feel like i'm walking in her shoes right now during this film because people have always asked me when i'm telling them i'm doing the film, are you approaching the criticism. and, of course, we're looking at that. and, you know, she now used to protest her -- women thought she was objectifying women but she was celebrating women and she protected the women she worked with. she used to pull gratuitous shots from the pile and never let her male executives see them. she figured out how to navigate a 1960's sexist male work

environment. this was -- i mean, i love "sports illustrated." it's a great magazine but it was all men she was working with. and she figured out not only how to be successful, but she created one of the most lucrative magazine issues in publishing history. it was because she was an artist and she was confident and she was a woman who had no self-esteem issues. >> that is such a good point. there are so many lessons that i think we can take from julie's career. carol, i'm curious, what lessons do you take from her life and career? >> well, ever since i worked with julie, i've always championed other women. whenever i see somebody who might need help or might need some advice, i always step in. i just do, because i had that from julie and i think that that was a great gift from somebody who really just, you know, stepped forward and said, listen, you're too thin, you're

this, whatever it was, julie was right -- she was like a mother hen. and i'm kind of like that. even sometimes with the other girls, you know, and paulina had her hip replaced. i said, is somebody helping you? do you need anything. i mean, that's something i learned from julie is to care. and to really reach out to other women. as women, we tend to not support each other and i think that's a big mistake. we could really learn from each other and really advance. i think that's really important. >> absolutely. jill campbell and carol alt, maggie, thank you all. "beyond the gaze" will be playing at the documentary film festival docnyc on november 17th and 18th and the film will continue to play at select theaters across the country. you can get all the details at juliecampbell.com. we'll be right back with much more "morning joe." woah, limu! we're in a parade.

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good morning and welcome to a special thanksgiving addition of morning joe. we are on tape this morning serving up some of our to have discussions and recent weeks. first up this hour, some perspective about the election from our friend, presidential historian. >> the coalition that donald trump put together, and again, i would suggest not because of the things he said and the horrible statements that he said in the antidemocratic pro authoritarian statements he said but because people were trying to get away from with democratic elitists. >> the coalition they put together. i'm sorry. i'm still thinking it's friday so i'm talking slower today. the coalition. >> i'm just agreeing.

>> i'm quoting the new york times. a working class coalition across racial lines. i remember reading a beautiful book written about bobby kennedy and after the assassination. as the train went from new york down to washington d.c. and people waving, black people on one side of the tracks waving flags and white people on the other side of the tracks waving flags. i'm sure you saw it. and is that train went past, they turned around and they went their separate ways and there has not been an election where they came together and voted again. let's not overstate donald trump's support among black voters. he did much better. but make no mistake among hispanic voters, they did come together with working-class white americans. donald trump has, in 2024, put together a working class coalition of white working- class voters and working-class

voters of people of color and that is something, if the democratic party does not think that is something that they need to get under the hood of right now, today, this morning, then they are clueless. >> i totally agree with that. and what it is beginning to remind me of, joe, you are showing the map of blue democratic areas that won on tuesday versus the red ones. look where the blue areas are. the democrats are in danger of becoming a regional, coastal party. the so-called blue wall states did not prove to be a blue wall tuesday. you have states along the west coast and states along the east coast and a couple in the northern midwest and the democrats can see everything else and say, we are going to essentially let that go because we are not going to be connected . the results of that is that

every parent presidential election now becomes what it did on tuesday, a democratic presidential candidate having to thread the needle of making sure that he or she sees those few potentially democratic states and could lose one or two and there was more than that on tuesday. the democrats are locked out. i'm not going to go so far as to say it is like the 1920s but you grew up in the south. not in the 1920s but in the 1920s, the democratic party was a relatively small, white, racist, regional party that was centered on the south. it was fdr in 1936 that was able to expand that coalition to the cities and bring in black voters. black voters before the 1930s were not democratic. those were the whiteracists whether we like donald trump or don't like donald trump or approve of everything he says or does, you have to give him

credit for what he did tuesday. >> this was a red wave. a potential realignment, a movement that could last in the future. and the other thing is, you combine that with his ambition to be the strongest president in american history. >> still ahead on morning joe, as united states works to combat this information online, our next guest is looking at how the flow of information has shaped our culture and our world . especially in the age of artificial intelligence. you are watching morning joe. we will be right back

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♪ ♪ google announced plans to extend its election related restrictions to most of its artificial intelligence product. the tech giant said through election day, the a-features will not show responses for a range of election related topics including questions about candidates, voting processes and election results. our next guest writes about the future of democracy and

artificial intelligence. we have more now with his new book entitled, "nexus, a brief history of information networks from the stone age to ai" ." we don't have time to go from the stone age to ai but you will be back tomorrow. so today let's focus on the impact of ai on our politics, which we are seeing already and have seen in the last couple of election cycles. as you study it and look at it, what is the impact, the potential impact that ai could have on the way the country votes this fall? >> to be clear to everybody, we have the most sophisticated information technology in history and people are losing the ability to talk with each other. something is obviously wrong. there are many excellent nations that are unique to the u.s. about what is happening in the american society in american politics but you see

exactly the same thing in my home country of israel. you see the same thing in brazil, france and the philippines and all over the world. the democratic conversation is falling apart and democracy is a conversation. and the fault is with technology. democracy is built on top of information technology. for most of human history, large-scale democracy was impossible because large-scale realtime conversation was impossible. the only examples we have of ancient democracies are city states like athens or even smaller tribes. you don't have an example of a large country. millions of people over thousands of kilometers that function democratically before the rise of modern information technology, newspapers, radio and television. information technology is not something you have on the side

of democracy. it is the infrastructure, the basis. any major upheaval of information technology is bound to create a political earthquake which is what we are experiencing. >> we have this sort of world, don't we, of choose your own adventure which, if you can hear the story you want to here, based on your political ideology or your certain candidate. how does ai plan to that. we talk about the silos, the diversion of truth and the facts we present on our show every day. it can be 180 degrees from the lies you might hear it other places. how does ai factor into that? >> it amplifies it. it can now start to create content by itself. previously, we saw the algorithms, battle for human attention, by presenting us with certain content. but they couldn't create the content by themselves.

all the content was created by human beings. ai is the first technology in history that can actually make decisions by itself and create new ideas by itself. it can create text and images and videos and so forth. and we have just seen the beginning of this new wave. and the other thing that ai is capable of doing is creating intimate relationships with human beings, hold conversations with them. if you think about democracy as a group of people standing in a circle and conversing and talking with each other, imagine that the group of robots join the conversation and speak very eloquently. speak very emotionally and you can't tell the difference. you don't know who in the circle is a human being and who is a robot. when we are together in the flesh around the table, we can still know it. when you see something on the

screen, you can no longer be sure whether this is a real human being or whether it is generated by ai. of course are not helpless in the face of it. ai is not necessarily going to destroy democracy. it can also strengthen democracy. it depends on the decisions we make. one obvious decision is to ban fake humans. previously in history, we put a ban on fake money because you couldn't duplicate money. nobody bothered to ban fake people because it wasn't the technology to create fake people. now we have the technology. so politicians should ban this. >> and ai poses a huge problem to the survival of democratic institutions. what are the unintended consequences of this technology being unleashed within authoritarian states? >> they are also afraid of it.

the scariest thing for a dictator is a subordinate that is more powerful than you and you don't know how to control. and this is ai. if you think for instance about online censorship, dictatorships work by terrorizing people. if you go on the russian internet and say something bad about vladimir putin, they will come after you. what do you do? with the descending ai that says things against ludwig hooton? you cannot threaten his family. for a regime based on power, it is different when you have millions of new independent agents that are impossible to terrorize and which are unpredictable. the other main problem of dictators is that they are

always the target for manipulation. in a democratic country come to take over the country, it is very difficult because you have to deal with so many conflicting organizations and institutions and whatever. a dictatorship is a centralized information system. you basically need to manipulate one person to control the country and it has been done many times in history with humans. for ai to manipulate a single dictator, it is much easier than to manipulate a democratic structure. you basically need to figure out this one extremely paranoid individual, how to press their emotional buttons and you have control of the country. >> you just said something a few minutes ago that to my ear makes ai sound more dangerous than dynamite. what you said was that you could fake -- ban fake humans on

ai. we cannot ban assault weapons in this country. how do we get to ban fake humans through ai? how does that happen? >> it is a political problem. i don't know. i'm not a politician. i don't see why republicans or democrats would like the idea of fake humans. this is not good for anybody. we have our differences. when it comes to humans versus the robots, everybody should be on the same side. whether it is possible or not, i'm not sure. one of the things we know about history is that we should never underestimate human stupidity. it is one of the most powerful forces in history. the key question i start the book with is, if we are so smart, why are we so stupid? we are such as smart species. we can get to the moon. we can split atoms and whatever.

but yet we are on the verge of destroying ourselves. previously was nuclear war. now we have the ecological collapse and the rise of ai. we know these things and dangerous. we know we can't control them and yet, we produce them. so it raises a big question mark about the human species. i think the good news is that the problem is not an our nature. the problem isn't human nature. it is our information. when you give good people and most people are good people but when you give good people bad information, they make bad decisions. >> the new book is entitled "nexus, a brief history of information networks from the stone age to ai." thank you. next time we give thanks to america's military heroes with a new book by james patterson. the best-selling author joins

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i even made a new friend. i have a friend. and she is an operating system. charles left turbo pot behind. but she is totally amazing. she is so smart. she didn't just see things in black and white but this whole gray area and helping me explore it. and we just bonded really quickly. kind of weird that is weird right. >> i don't think so. actually the woman i have been seeing samantha, i didn't tell you but she is in os. >> you are dating? what is it like? >> it is great actually. i feel really close to her. like when i talked to her, i feel like she is with me. >> that was a clip from the 2013 movie, "her" in which a divorced writer cures his

loneliness by developing a romantic relationship with a virtual assistant with artificial intelligence. earlier this year, the u.s. surgeon general declared loneliness and epidemic. one fueled in part by the rise of and reliance on technology in everyday american life. joining us now is the lead consumer technology writer for the new york times, brian chin.'s latest piece is entitled, "help tech created a recipe for loneliness." we already know from the surgeon general that there is an epidemic and i think we all see it and our families and communities. the question is, if the tech companies won't work on this, won't put in proper perhaps regulations on themselves in terms of who can use tech and what time in their lives, things like that, how does this problem get solved? and if you

can state exactly how tech creates loneliness. >> thank you for asking. i think the specific aspect of social media that the researchers are pointing at is this issue of social comparisons that is when we compare ourselves to other people in unfavorable ways. on social media, that can manifest in many different ways. say you could be comparing your body to somebody else's body and saying, this person is prettier then i am or you could say your appearance and the newborn is developing more slowly then someone else's newborn or another friend has more likes than you do and you might conclude that this person is more popular then i am and maybe i'm not very likable. and the result is that when people seem ahead of you and you feel behind, you start to feel quite lonely. you start to feel isolated and alone behind them.

and social media academics have been looking into this issue for years and pointing out how facebook and others can do a better job at enabling this sort of behavior where people feel like they are behind other people and making comparisons and how do you mitigate those results. meta, for example, has given the option to hide the likes and shares and so forth. but that has not been very effective. >> brian, a lot has been made about the technology is far social media. isn't the other piece of this is a more simple one. you make the argument that it is about texting versus a phone call. we text all the time. it is an easy way to check in with somebody. there are a lot of good things about that. at the same time, it doesn't replace a phone call, that back and forth. and a phone call doesn't replace the face-to-face personal interaction. talk about how technology has changed even in this simple way.

>> text messaging is by far the most used mitigation method . i think it is obvious to a lot of people by now. and even for work, it is very common for us to use slack and other messaging apps to communicate. i think what happens when we relied too much on text messaging is we default to that is our way of connecting with other people and a lot of teenagers in these studies done by harvard said that they felt like they were less lonely when they felt more connected with other people and in a more authentic way. when they were able to form an authentic bond and since the same vibes and that kind of thing. and it is very difficult to imagine, isn't it, that you can sense vibes and authenticity through a text message? you would since that from a face-to-face interaction or at least a voice conversation. you can sense authenticity. i think that is something missing in a lot of conversations we have these days if we are primarily focusing on

text messaging. that was the number two issue underlined in the article for sure. >> the new pieces online now. for the new york times lead consumer technology writer, brian chin, thank you for being on this morning. with veterans day approaching, new book is highlighting the height bravery and sacrifices of the united states fighting forces over the past 80 years. the book titled "american heroes" features gripping first- hand accounts of heroism on the battlefield from world war ii all the way through the war in afghanistan. joining us now, the book's co- authors, new york times best- selling author newark james patterson and retire first sergeant matt everson. it is their second book together. the first, walking mike combat boots come true for stories from america's bravest, was released in 2021. thank you for being here. tell us about the genesis of this book in your own

experiences with combat. >> that is a great question. and this was all jim's idea. from the beginning, this idea of, how do we tell the stories of these brave american sons and daughters. that is what i did with my combat boots and over the years, it progressed up to american heroes. and i could only add, combat is such a unique experience. it is intense and zero to scary and a second. it all the ropes and it is so unbelievably overwhelming. and you find yourself in this moment where i have to take action. and then you realize it is not enough. with these guys and gals, what they do is that next thing that is combat. >> i asked matt at one point, we were out to dinner and i said, how close are you with the movie black hawk down, matt was the sergeant. is it how close are you? he said this close. that is the reality of what these men and women do or did. >> tell us the challenges of

that experience which is unlike anything in the human experience. how do you translate that to the front page? >> matt did most of the interviews. he has been through it. these stories blew his mind. matt and i talked about with baseball we have the dodgers on the yankees and we have kansas city. the most special day, shohei ohtani, it does not compare with any of these stories in terms of heroic action from just the extraordinary moving part of these stories. >> the thing that is interesting, these men and women are self-deprecating to a fault . you start talking to them and you say, tell me a little bit of your story. and they are literally like, i didn't really do anything. >> but you found it that way and real combat. >> it's true. and these men and women would tell you, i did it for

everybody else and i just did what needed to be done and they say it so humbly that it is so motivating. >> in this one, he got the medal of honor. he put the grenade in his pocket and he lived. stories like that, one guy, the helicopter wit come in to pick up the wanted and he ran out into the field and said, if i can stand here, you can land here. >> how did you choose who to highlight in this book and tell us one or two other stories. >> we were very help grateful for help from the congressional medal of honor society to get a living recipient to the medal of honor and it was asking friends and friends of friends. and we kind of spread a wide net . and i will tell you, these stories, one is as good as the next. almost to the point where the editing piece, thankfully i wouldn't have to do anything about -- not to see it making the cut, they are all amazing. they want to have to highlight

is colonel ralph puckett. the reason is, ranger legend. it is the only interview of all the books we have done that we did in person and sadly, colonel puckett passed away before publication. but he was just amazing. a korean war veteran. the last living korean war medal of honor recipient. he stood on the top of the hilltop 205 fighting off the chinese army. wounded in action. tells everybody to get off the hill. leave me here. and thankfully, his rangers disobeyed the order and came back up and carried him off the hill. >> and right there, i have to tell you that we need heroes. not necessarily are you going to do that but there are small things you can do we need people where it is about us and not about me. >> that was an image of president by delivering that award. i was at the white house. barely a dry eye.

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shop a sleep number store near you. this play is called "our tow ." the name of the town is grover's corners once in a thousand times, it's interesting. >> . >> people are meant to go through life two by two. isn't natural to be lonesome. >> you have to have life to love life and love like to have life. it is what we call a vicious circle. >> that is a look at the new

broadway revival of a timeless classic, "our town" written by thornton wilder first premiering on broadway in 1938. this iteration of the all american classic takes the audience back to grovers corners new hampshire but with a modern twist. and a star-studded cast featuring katy holmes in one of our next guests. tony nominated any golden globe winning actor jim parsons and the tony award winning director of our town, kenny leon. so great to have you here. welcome. >> can i start with you and the cast you assembled? i'm sure they were drawn to because of your incredible track record on broadway but what a group group. >> i'm the luckiest director in america. we say this all the time but we had five weeks of rehearsal before we get into the theater. which is coming to work every day.com and work every day with 28 wonderful actors but better human beings, it does not get

much better than that for me but we would spend the first 30 minutes of every rehearsal talking about what happened in the world and what did you see? what was it like with your wife last night? did you talk to your daughter? because as actors, we are talking about human behavior a lot of artists don't spend time thinking about human behavior, human life, human politics. so i am the luckiest guy in the world. >> and building chemistry probably in the process. you have done so much in your career on screen and on stage. i have to imagine for any actor, you jumped right on it. >> i knew i was going to say yes before i would knew i would be any good at it. i said i don't know what people will think of me but i'm going to do it. if somebody asks you to do "our town" you just get on board and do it. i wanted to work with kenny. i admire his work and him. i don't know single other person in this cast of 28.

i had met katy in an elevator at one point i think but i never worked with any of them. what kenny describing that morning where we would talk about what you observed in your own little town, it is so amazing. it did make you look at the world in a way that was applicable for the play but it also gave me the chance to hear people's interpretations of what they see around them and that is a very special thing. it is different than having a conversation with them. you get to hear how they see the world and what they think about it and it created a very close knit group of people. it created our own little town and you could feel that. >> and i always loved the play. growing up in florida, i did not see myself in that play, you know what i mean? but this allowed me to see it through my eyes. i remember my first ever rehearsal, my mother, who lives in tampa, florida, she called me on the phone and i put her

on speaker phone and she said a prayer for us, for the country, for the play and said, just trust god. this production has been touched since my mother blew life into it. zoe and katy. john boy from the waltons. >> you can't lose. >> and a blessing from your mother on top of it all all. >> let's take another look at some of the play. this is where jim's character, the stage manager, introduces the audience to the town where the play is set. >> the name of the town is grovers corners, new hampshire. just across the massachusetts line. latitude 42 degrees, 40 minutes. longitude, 70, 37 minutes. the first act shows a day and our town. the day is may 7th, 1901. the time is just before dawn. the sky is beginning to show streaks of light

over in the east there behind our mountain. the morningstar always gets wonderful bright the minute before it has to go, doesn't it ? >> jim, the role of the stage manager is truly an iconic role. this character was played by paul newman, henry fonda. what was it like to bring your own spin to the stage manager? >> pretty thrilling to be honest with you. i did a lot of research about thornton wilder, the author, because i felt like if any character was speaking for an author, the stage manager of "our town" probably is it. and in doing that, i realized i get kind of his frame of reference may be but i also realized that anybody that plays a stage manager, it is crucial to bring your own self to it. you are the one for sure honest broker, or you need to be, between the characters in the scenes on stage and audience.

it is a direct address all night to them. and if there is anything i feel that is false about that that whatever off put the audience, you can't tell the story properly. but that has been a really exciting challenge to be honest with you, to go out there and bravely look in the face of the people and try not to lie. >> if the audience doesn't know, i want to let them and that you won the tony for "raisin in the sun" sun" and a soldiers play and fences. you started to get at this. how do you take something that is so iconic and so well-known to so many people and modernize it while preserving what is really about? >> i'm always interested in what 100 years ago looks like running into 2024, creating a fantastic place called now. i do that with every production. i'm getting ready to do old fellow and i will approach at the same i. what i want to say

about jim parsons is there is none better. what makes them different from the other guys that have played this role is like he cares. he leans in with joy. he leans in with love. 's psyche has the entire 1200 people in the audience sitting in the palm of his hand. it's like a beautiful heartbeat pumping saying, we can do better. our town is metaphorical to our world, our time, our country and our people. he makes me love america all over again every night. >> that is very nice. >> high praise. >> when he talks about he did like the play or think you like to play, it wasn't about him, i had misconceptions also about the play. i thought it was about a very specific time and place and it is, and the setting, but the tail is so -- i think the whole point of it is actually that it doesn't have a date on it. we had to pick a date to do a play and thornton picked the

state. the message seems to be that there is a line that things don't change much around here. and he is not talking about the props. he is talking about our interactions with one another. and then i did not realize was in there until we really dug in. the way you work as way that came to resonate. >> the praise you just gave jim, jim was watching himself and you are slightly critical of your own performance. you can't help it, right. >> you can't help it. >> "our town" is in performances now for a limited run at the barrymore theater on broadway. it is outstanding. jim parsons and kenny leon, congratulations and thank you for being here. >> now for something completely different. >> camelot. >> it's only a model. >> i bid you welcome to your new home. let us ride to camelot. >> actor and grammy award-

winning singer-songwriter, eric idle, joins us with the inside story of what it took to bring monty python and the holy grail to broadway. that is next on morning joe. m may occur. treatment, get checked for infections and tb. tell your doctor about any flu-like symptoms, or vaccines. liver problems leading to hospitalization

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things can transform. slipping out of balance into freefall. (the stock market is now down 23%). this is happening people. where there are so few certainties... (laughing) look around you. you deserve to know. as we navigate a future unknown. i'm glad i found stability amidst it all. gold. standing the test of time. new reaction now as the results of the presidential election reverberate throughout the country. we are getting a picture of what a donald trump cap and like. >> president-elect trump's return to the white house has shaken nato allies. >> president-elect trump will likely inherit a chaotic situation. >> the federal reserve is

widely expected to lower interest rates. >> in philadelphia, new hampshire, israel, from msnbc world headquarters.

that was a look at the fx limited series "say nothing" ." the show follows a group of young members of the irish republican army in northern ireland focusing on two sisters as they navigate their way through the troubles and patrick joins us now. he serves as an executive producer on the series and is also an award-winning staff writer at the new yorker. a brilliant book. the best i have read in a very long time. talk to us about translating it to the screen. >> the book came out in 2019. at the time, i did not even know that it could translate possibly but i knew a producer, a guy named brad simpson, who had done a series, the people

versus oj simpson which i thought was really great. and a very vaccine issue of race. the pitch to me was, come on board and he will work with us and it will be a partnership. i spent the last five years getting this thing made and i'm really delighted for the results. >> it is so fascinating. to sing that clip, reminds me of a dear friend that was raised in northern ireland, irish catholic. she said, her brothers were all members of the ira and they never told her 4-foot 11 mother because they feared her more than the ira. >> say nothing. >> it was a way of life. it was a battle for what they believe was their very soul. >> and i think part of what we are trying to do in the series is show, what with the circumstances be like for you if you are a young person in your teens or early 20s and living in a system where you think there is a lot of oppression and injustice and a very deeply divided society and

suddenly it flips over into violence and what you do? and to take the long view of that. it starts as a thriller and it will end is a tragedy and we are trying to reckon with the cost of that kind of radical politics. >> can you give us a little bit of a sense of what this means in history and sort of the lessons from this? >> you have this interesting situation in northern ireland. six counties on the island of ireland which are still part of the uk today and there was a lot of discrimination and oppression of catholics living there during the 1950s and 1960s and it all kind of boiled over in the 60s and 70s and suddenly there is a huge amount of violence. in some ways, these images will be familiar to us in america today. you have peaceful protests and tear gas and militarized police on the streets. and a lot of people asking themselves, what is the best way to get from this place we are today to a better future for the country? sometimes making good decisions

and sometimes making bad ones. what we want to do is tell a very dramatic story that looked at the whole kind of spectrum of choices people made under that pressure. >> the reviews are extraordinary. joining a band of brothers and historical adaptations but not a higher complement as far as i'm concerned. and i also inch talk about, because we were fortunate enough to be at the 24th anniversary of peace in ireland which nobody thought would happen. talk about how far from that to 25 years ago and how just seemed unimaginable. and again, talking to my friend , she was angry. part of her was angry that martin mcginnis had shaken hands with the queen and then she goes, we have to move on. it is crazy, isn't it? >> it is. here's the thing. the 1998 good friday agreement. ending the troubles, this

grinding 30 year couplet. it was kind of a diplomatic miracle. a conflict that nobody thought would end. and the fact that it ended is extraordinary and should be celebrated. you can also acknowledge that it is kind of a cold peace. even today, kind of a cold peace. you have very divided communities in northern ireland . and they are not killing each other in the street which is something to celebrate. what we wanted to look at was, what is the perspective of these young people that joined the ira and the early 1970s and did awful things in the name of united ireland. you have the good friday agreement but you don't have the united ireland. how to they evaluate looking back the choices they made as young people and say, wait a second i did these things. killing people and planting bombs in public places because i thought we would get united ireland but we didn't pick hadaway reckon those choices and make sense of the morally today? >> this is extraordinary. and i have heard incredible things about it and i cannot wait to see it. thank you for being with us. i hope you come back. all episodes of the fx limited

series "say nothing" are streaming now on hulu. executive brewster new york times best-selling author, thank you for being here. >> thank you. >> [ singing ] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪. >> that is a look at the cast of spam a lot forming the timeless monty python classic, always look on the bright side of life. luster's revival of the a tony

award winning musical brought rave reviews following its nearly 15 year break from broadway. now, the behind-the-scenes story of how the show first came to be as being told in the new book entitled "the spamalot diaries." we have eric idle, he wrote and created the musical and is of course a founding member of monty python. it is an honor to have you on the show. i would love to start by asking you about the bag you brought with you. >> i brought the holy grail with me. i found it under my bed. it is spam. very nice. the only one in the world. she made it for me for the opening on broadway last year. >> very nice. >> there are so many questions that i could ask you.

we are all such huge fans. i always loved you talking about your relationship with george harrison. you do it in the diaries and and what a wonderful and lovely man he was and how supportive he was of you and how you initially were afraid to meet him. but after that, you talked 24 hours straight. >> it was a wonderful thing. we just met in la. it was a screening of the holy grail actually and we just talked and talked. it was funny. he said, how is your group quickly said, how is your group ? and it was good fun. >> let's talk about the book. the spamelot diaries. tell us exactly what they are and when you found them. >> they are diaries i kept

with mike nichols and all the other people and the cast and everything. i found them two years ago when i was moving house. and we were moving to a smaller house. i call it downsize abby. that is what happens at my age. and then i found these diaries. and i showed them to my wife and she read them and enjoyed them. the clown's life really loved it. there interesting. they tell the story before you even know you have a hit. so every day, anxiety and fear and arguments arouse. and the show doesn't just come together. it is a lot of creative forces clashing. >> speaking of creative forces , a lot of people of a certain age think of mike nichols and they think of elaine may. and

they think of what comedic team they were. they were great. but my goodness mike nichols became huge with screenwriting and making great films and other elements of theater. how was your relationship with him? >> i was a friend with him for 15 years. we got together to work on spamelot and we had the blazing wow and i kept that in the dark. and you can have arousal people if you carry on working together. i loved him and adored him. it is really a love letter to mike nichols. it shows our e-mail exchanges. just not sure how to turn the film into a play musical. and he was the best person i ever worked with. the most brilliant man i have ever met really. >> i'm so glad i got a chance to see spamelot on broadway in

its last iteration. you know humor, eric. you have been doing humor your whole life. you know that it is innocence for us as human beings beings. what is the advice you would give someone who is trying to bring humor to broadway quick sometimes that is a tough bridge to cross getting humor and fused into a broadway production. a somebody is trying to do that right now, what is the best piece of advice you would give them? >> we always did it for ourselves. the job was, if we could make ourselves laugh, it was in the show. if not, we would sell it. and if you don't laugh, why would they laugh? that was my advice. if you don't take it seriously, why should the audience? it is a serious business trying to make people laugh but it is a fun one. >> it is a serious business. it is a fun one and nobody is better at it than you are. >> nobody.

>> you are welcome back anytime. i could talk to you for three hours. >> i don't think he wants to do that. >> thank you so much. final thoughts. >> bring the guitar next time. >> definitely will. >> the new book, "the spamelot diaries" is available now. comedy legend, eric idle, thank you for being on this morning. we appreciate it. >> that is it for the special edition of morning joe. thank you for watching. we hope you have a great thanksgiving! the news continues right now here on msnbc. right now on a special two