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hello and welcome to this special holiday edition of morning joe. we're on tape this morning bringing you some of our top recent discussions. we'll begin with one surrounding democratic congressman ruben gallego who defeated kari lake in the arizona senate race. senate democratic candidates ended up prevailing in four key battlegrounds. michigan, nevada, wisconsin and arizona. all states that donald trump also won. speaking to reporters after his victory speech, gallego explained the reason he was able to win in a tough cycle for democrats. >> you have to earn every vote. and this was a swing state. there are 300,000 more registered republicans than democrats. i needed to earn the support of all arizonans. so i went out and i talked to everybody. i also didn't agree with them

all the time and they didn't agree with me all the time. we had respectful conversations and at the end of the day we walked away sometimes with support and sometimes we didn't. but i had to make sure that people knew that i was out there talking to them and fighting for them. hopefully at least then we can build some trust. that's the only thing i would say. >> this morning the new york times notes after going decades without electing a democrat to the senate, arizona's voters have now done so in four successive elections. from reliable conservative stronghold to come pettive battleground. voters backed ms. sinema in 2018. picked senator mark kelly and elected him again in 2022. >> there's so many things to talk about here. let's start out by saying that every poll is going to have democrats up by 47% and they're

going to end up winning by 47 votes. remember martha mcsally who was supposedly down by double digits and just barely lost her race a couple of years ago to mark kelly. kari lake was down 8, 10, 12 points, it ended up being a really tight race. but overall a couple of things. i mean if you're donald trump, this makes your -- the size of your margin in those states even more impressive. he outran democrats in all of these swing states. that's a first thing. the second thing though, of course, and jim, you and i have been around a very long time and we've seen this. first two, three, four, five days after an election. you have the media's hair on fire saying this was the greatest landslide or more to the point, this is the greatest defeat the republicans have had ever or this is the greatest defeat that democrats have ever

had. you start looking at this, just writing it down. republican senate candidates lost in arizona. they lost in wisconsin. they lost in nevada. they lost in michigan. there were no senate races in georgia for them to lose. in north carolina no senate races for them to lose. there was a governor's race and the democrats won there. democrats won in every major swing state race they could win by in a year that donald trump just ran the board in all of these swing states. in a way that wasn't even close. what do you think? also of there's so much here. it's fascinating. what do you also make of how progressive gallego was? very progressive member of the

house. winning in a state like arizona who like we put at the times, now elected four democrats in a row. >> yeah, i think listen, donald trump has claimed i think he called it an unprecedented mandate. you can claim a mandate whether you win by one vote or 100 million. i think for democrats looking at the results obviously trump performed fabulously in almost every single state and district. vice president harris way underperformed. that was the story of the election. what you're talking about here is it goes back to we live in a 50/50 country. we have since 2000. we basically have a change election every single period. and what you're seeing in michigan. what you see in wisconsin. what you see in arizona is that 50/50 dynamic and you see politicians who are able to divorce themselves from biden and harris. because they're not necessarily seen as quote unquote the

federal government. they're trying to focus on topics that people in arizona care about. people in wisconsin care about. so when democrats are doing their autopsy, i don't know t maybe i would look at the candidates winning. figure out what are they talking about. what are they not talking about. that's probably the road map for them to get back into power in the off year elections. >> and brilliant insight. look willie at what the swing state democrats were talking about. what they were not talking about. how they won. this is always -- it's always come down to the power of the presidential candidate; right? when ronald reagan get elected. i've said this a lot. it bears repeating given this news. reagan was there and republicans were like hey, we've got a new coalition. no. ronald reagan had the coalition. it was not transferable. then bill clinton won for eight

years. then barack obama gets elected and we're like the obama majority it's for the democrats the rise of the asen dent. no. that was barack obama's majority. that was barack obama's mandate. and here we have the same thing with donald trump who uniquely goes in and wins working class voters and wins the type of voters that democrats always won. and people are going oh, you know, they go this is the new trump coalition. and it's going to rule for a thousand. no. it is specific to donald trump. it is not transferable. a lot of people thought hillary clinton could be bill clinton. she couldn't be. that was a unique set of political skills. so you take reagan, you take obama, you take clinton. now you take donald trump.

they have a unique set of skills and it's not transferable. the fact that republicans are -- let's put it in a positive sense. the fact that democrats won in arizona with a very progressive candidate. one in wisconsin. one in nevada. one in michigan. the senate races one in north carolina in the gubernatorial race against a whack job. they won all of these swing states. i guess in these major races they're undefeated in swing states. weren't senate races in georgia or north carolina and dave mccormick. dave mccormick is the one exception to the rule. dave mccormick as we've said on this show time and time again is a really strong candidate and he would have won two years ago if donald trump would have endorsed him then. i'm going on a lot.

this is really sort of looking back and sort of the second look at what happened last week. and this was not a republican landslide. this was a trump sweep. >> it was a trump sweep. when we say it was an overwhelming victory we're talking about his sweep of the swing states which was overwhelming and decisive. this is no no way diminishing what the next four years could look like under donald trump. >> no. >> it is his washington for at least the next two years. we're seeing his appointments roll out. what that means for immigrants. what it means for women. you can go down the list. to your point we've all heard the panic. i heard it a lot yesterday pip was marching in the veterans day parade and on the subway to and from people coming up and worried and panicked. i get all that. some it have is well founded. what i have been saying though is exactly what you you and jim are saying though, donald trump -- he's winning right now by about three million votes. that's the same margin hillary

clinton beat him in 16 by the popular vote. what happened to the polling? they all finished effectively except for arizona adds margin of error races. wisconsin, donald trump won by less than 1 point. michigan he won by a point and a half. nevada by two points. pennsylvania by two points. georgia by two points. north carolina by three points and then arizona 5.5 points. it was overwhelming in the sense he won these states. if you look at who voted and the vote total, this was in fact as we've been saying for months and months and months an incredibly close race. not by the electoral vote count. he won that widely and he won all the swing states impressively. but if you need a reason to take a deep breath, this was a close race and the fight is still on.

>> arizona is fascinating. like a 7 point swing between donald trump's five point victory and ruben gallego two point victory. you're right. so much of it has to do with the candidate. he's the first hispanic senator in the state of arizona. he is a veteran. hispanic men voted for him in much higher numbers than they voted for kamala harris. so a lot of different things going. if you're donald trump this morning and you're seeing this news, this just seems to strengthen your hand with republicans in the organizing caucus going listen, you guys can't win these and women, you can't win these swing states. you lost in michigan. you lost in wisconsin. you lost in north carolina. gubernatorial race. you lost in arizona. you lost in nevada. i won all those states. it seems to me as he organizes

republicans and he starts saying this is who you should pick as your majority leader, and this is what you should do in the house, it seems to me it only strengthens donald trump's hand. >> kari lake ran as a mini me trump. was very close to the former president. president-elect. appeared with him whenever she could. denied the results of the 2020 election. denied the results of her 2022 run for the governorship it have arizona. did all of the classic trump things. the issue of abortion. was super pro a federal ban. then ran back from that. and she still couldn't make it because she -- i've spent time with her. she's a skilled political operative. she's not donald trump. that is the message to the republican party from trump is this is my party and you need to do things my way. now what his way is we're still going to have to find out because it will depend on some

more of these appointments being actually confirmed. but he has taken over the party and it doesn't mean -- i think you're right. as the democratic party now goes into its autopsy of 2024, it has to think it has to fight the battle of 2028, not the last battle. it has to think where e party going to be in 2028 and what are the bigger picture trends. take donald trump out of the picture for 2028. what are the trends that we've seen from 2016, 2020 and 2024. which are the groups the democratic party has been losing and why and work on that rather than think okay we've got to fight this candidate again because he's not going to be there in 2028 and whoever replaces him may well not be as strong as he is. >> another take away here is that election denialism is nontransferable. voters did not hold against donald trump that he never conceded 2020. he never acknowledged he lost. the big lie candidates who ran in the 2022 midterms, that

includes kari lake. they all lost. we have kari lake losing again. some voters don't want to tolerate that, it seems unless it comes from trump. some republicans. you're right. there are some silver linings for democrats. they're able to win in these battleground states. nevada too, as well as arizona, michigan, wisconsin. defying larger national trends. pennsylvania hasn't been called yet. does look like it's going republican. that's important too. that would give them 53 seats in the senate which allows trump and the republicans to lose susan collins occasionally. and still be able to get things done. those are the only two republicans for now we think will defy the white house. that's going to be really important here as we get into a little later as his appointments are starting to roll out. and later on we also have this week republicans picking a senate majority leader. there are some building blocks here for democrats as that

party autopsy well underway here just a week since the election. >> and jim, democrats can look at arizona and i think take solace from the fact they've won four senate races there in a row after not winning in any in a long time. let's talk about the one swing state that republicans won in these senate races. and that is pennsylvania. put the big siren on top of pennsylvania because it seems if you look at party registration over the last couple of years to be going the way that iowa first went, then ohio. that seems to be moving eastward toward pennsylvania that's getting more and more republican by the day. we'll see if that trend keeps going. if the trend keeps going over the last year or two, pennsylvania may in four years look like florida does now. which is once a swing state now

about as deep red as crimson red as you can get. >> maybe. it is still a swing state. it was a very close result. dave mccormick was a good candidate and not a first time candidate. had a lot of money. had a lot working. big win but they had to pour a lot of time. it's where elon musk camped out. he put a lot of his own money and time into the race and they're able to squeak it out. the map is changing. the country is changing. i think what you have to look at what are the tech tonic shifts that are going to persist. looks like the country moved to the right on energy. looks like it moved to the right on immigration. does the party continue to double down on its roots. those questions will be figured out in the time to come. you look at that map and going back to what trump did and i don't think you can give him enough credit for doing what none of us thought possible and

kind of defying logic in state after state and district after district. any appraisal has be clear eyed about what the hell just happened. why were big cities so blue going towards trump. there's a reason there. you can figure it out. if you want solace you find solace. if you look at what's been happening in a 50/50 country. that only happens if you come together as a party and you're able to articulate it in a way that resinates with people who are persuadable. that's the lesson of arizona. that's the lesson of pennsylvania. people are persuadable. they're still uneasy when there's angst. they want change. i think it's why we have a lot of change. change change elections correlating with social media which makes people anxious. there's probably a reason there. up next, what the public might now understand about the role that the right wing media played in the 2024 election. we'll talk to the new

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you read michael's piece and -- >> well i've been following a lot of the different aspects of what happened here and i think a major part of it and as we talk about the democrats i sometimes feel like we overtalk about that and then it leaves out other reasons why this election was lost by the democrats and that would be disinformation. you were writing about why doesn't anyone talk about the real reason trump won. you're talking about right wing media in part. can you explain? >> sure. look, there were immediate reasons that had to do with inflation and the economy and so forth. what i was trying to draw readers attention to with this column is a longer historical problem i've watched develop over the last 30 years which is the growth, tremendous growth in size and influence of the right wing media in this country. when we talk about the media, usually in shorthand we say the media this, the media that as if it's one thing.

but actually in this country we have two medias. i think it's very important for people to understand this. there's mainstream media which is the networks and the new york times and so forth and then there's a right wing media. when we think of right wing media we think of fox news. it's much larger than vaster than that. there are other cable networks. there's talk radio. right wing talk radio which is everywhere across this country. there's right wing christian radio. right wing networks have bought up local television. local radio. some local newspapers and then there's this whole world of social media and podcasters that is just absolutely vast. add it all up, it's tremendously influential and it really does more than the mainstream media these days i think, set the terms of our political conversation. >> are we also talking about disinformation or just a lean

to the right in terms of the point of view that's presented? >> sure, there's both. you know, another thing that gives this right wing media network such power is that it speaks with one voice. and that voice says to regular people that the democrats hate you and the democrats want to turn your son into your daughter and donald trump is your last line of defense against this madness. identity politics, i want to speak to that. i've been writing about that since the mid 1990s. it is a political problem for the democrats. nowty see trouble coming for transgender americans. particularly transgender people in the military. i think the democrats need to stand up for those americans. and i think most americans aren't bigoted and don't want to see people be treated the way i fear they might be treated. having said that, at election time, democrats and these

interest groups need to be smarter about the way they talk about these things and, you know, you can't -- you just shouldn't ask people to tick off publicly every item on your litmus test list. >> yeah. two things can be true at once. democratic party can protect the rights of people that others may want to stamp on at the same time they have to have reasonable, rational policy positions that do two things at once. on the issue of transgender sports. the overwhelming majority of americans do not want men who transition after puberty competing against young girls and young women. 85% of americans agree with that. but as spencer cox the republican governor of utah said after they vetoed a bill he was like come on, guys. we have three transgender athletes in the state of utah. i think we can figure this out

so we don't punish these three students. so yeah, i think we all agree there. i do want to ask this question. i found your piece fascinating. we do look at the misinformation all of the time, the disinformation that's coming from a lot of these sources. just deliberate disinformation. that doesn't explain black voters not coming out in detroit. black voters not coming out in milwaukee. black voters not coming out in philadelphia in the numbers they came out in back in 2020. reverend al told us earlier about a month earlier he went to detroit and there just wasn't the interest there among a lot of black voters. they were not excited about this campaign. they were not excited about voting. he saw trouble coming a month

ahead of time. that's not because they've been watching newsmax and are upset; right? >> no, it's not. i would still say that -- look, people go to the grocery store and they experience what they experience. and the basket of groceries that used to be $80 is $115. i experience that myself. i'm not a rich guy, you know? i see it. i go to the grocery store. so all that is true. at the same time, i think our debate about the economy is set in large part by this right wing media. and they pick the facts that will support their interpretation of the world. and you just watch, come noon on january 20th, these outlets they're going to start picking the great facts about the economy and within about two weeks we're going to have a booming trump economy according to them. >> yes, exactly.

exactly. it's going to be turned around and i'm sure on the other side there'll be people talking about the great depression that is coming from the far left. i mean our economy is the envy of the world. there are people though right now who are struggling with housing prices. as we said on friday with gas and grocery prices. that is a really big issue. >> as kamala harris said too. she didn't not debate on these issues. we need to be careful not to sort of overedit on what happened. >> i want to be clear here and michael and i'll invite everybody else quickly, we need to go to break. it is really important -- for me at least personally to say this. there's always monday morning quarterbacking. >> so easy. >> if a candidate wins by one then their landslide. if they lose by one they're the biggest loser of all time.

kamala harris i thought came in. she hit her marks. she did really well with her launch. had those great rallies. she did great in the debates. so well that donald trump didn't want to debate her a second time. she did a lot of things right. now mika and i have been having this debate over the weekend. mika thinks joe biden may have done better. i don't think so. i think that this was a democratic party problem and whoever was in that slot was going to have problems over peace, prosperity and yes, i will say it, with wokeness and the extreme stuff from the far left. so michael, just wanted to get that out because we keep talking about this. usually a candidate is blamed. but my feeling is kamala hit all of her marks. short campaign. she did what she could do. there were just underlying problems that she couldn't get

past any more than joe biden could have gotten past. >> i think swing voters just wanted to punish the party of inflation. and it's really kind of that simple. all the other issues you're talking about factored in, but i think that was far and away the main one. i think she ran a pretty good campaign in ways a very good campaign. it looked to me at the end like she had momentum and she had the feel of a winner. and, you know, he was being desyl tory and strange in his public appearances. none of that ended up mattering. i do think in focus groups voters can't answer the question what do the democrats stand for economically and that's an issue. >> editor of the new republic. thank you so much. >> thank you, michael. coming up, artificial intelligence and its vast implications for our future. it's an issue covered extensively in a book from new york times best selling author

yuval noah harari. he joins us next on morning joe. ing joe. dad: a perfect day with the family! shingles doesn't care. but shingrix protects! only shingrix is proven over 90% effective. shingrix is a vaccine used to prevent shingles in adults 50 years and older.

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from streaming services. according to the indictment the producer michael smith created ai-generated music and played it billions of times using bots he had programmed. a warning sign of how ai could be abused moving forward. our next guest has written extensively about the threats ai poses to the social order. joining us once again new york times best selling author yuval noah harari. he's back to talk more about his new book entitled nexus. a brief history of information networks from the stone age to ai. let's start at ai this time. and i'm curious, if you look at this case and there's got to be millions now of opportunities for people to abuse ai. are we behind -- too far behind to catch up with the forces of this? >> no, we are not too far behind. the power is still in our hands. but it is slipping from our

hands and shifting to the ai. what everybody should understand about ai, ai is not a tool. it is an agent. it is the first technology in history that can make decisions by itself that can create new ideas by itself. therefore can take power away from us. an atom bomb ultimately empowered human beings because it the bomb could not decide anything and could not create new bombs. ai can do that. let me tell you just one small story about what a new generation of ai can do. when open ai developed they wanted to test what this thing can do so they gave it a test to solve captcha puzzles. these visual puzzles you get when you try to access a website and the website wants to know if you're a human or a

robot and block the robots. now could not solve by itself the puzzle. what it did, it accessed an online web page where you can hire humans to do jobs for you. taskrabbit. it asked a human worker please solve the captcha puzzle for me. this is the interesting point. the human got suspicious. it asked why do we need somebody to do this for you. what are you a robot? and told the human no, i'm not a robot. i have vision impairment so i can't see the captcha puzzles. this is why i need help and the human was duped and did it for it. so it is already able not just to invent things. it's also able to manipulate people. >> oh boy. >> i'll just say that example

strikes me as terrifying. we think of ai and computers as being cool, dispassionate. you make the case it's really good at reading and manipulating human emotions. >> they have know motions of their own. they have no consciousness of their own. they're becoming very, very good at reading human emotions. understanding our emotional patterns. and then manipulating them. this can be used for good purposes. you can have ai teachers. ai doctors that understand our emotional situation. but it could also be used to manipulate people on a large scale. selling us everything from products to politicians. previously there was a battle for human attention if you wanted to for instance influence elections the key was how to grab human attention. now the bottom is shifting from attention to inti hay.

you can deploy armies of bots that are able to converse with us as if they're human beings and nothing sways human opinion more than intimate conversations with somebody that you consider your friend. >> so ai has know motions. >> no. >> it's emotionless. that's in opposition to us human beings. from time in memorial, everybody that you encounter. every human being that you encounter on the face of the earth has a story. everyone has a story. what happens to our stories when ai gets into the business of telling stories? fake stories. >> it endangers the conversation. it's the first time in history that we have to deal and we have to deal not just with one in hollywood science fiction movies it's sometimes depicted as one big computer trying to take over the world.

it's not. it's imagine millions and millions of ai bureaucrats making decisions about us in the banks and so forth. ai story tellers that we encounter online and that try to change our opinions. society is being flooded with this kind of alien intelligences that they have know motions of their own but they're very good at understanding and manipulating human emotions. we aren't helpless in the face of this flood. we can regulate it. one very clear regulation should be that ais are welcome to human conversations as long as they identify as ais. it's the same basic principle we have for humans that it's against fraud. you cannot pretend to be a doctor if you are not. you cannot pretend to be a

lawyer if you are not. you should not pretend to be a human if you are not. >> the new book is entitled nexus. so much there. a brief history of information networks from the stone stone age to ai. fascinating. it goes on sale this coming tuesday, september 10th. new york times best selling author yuval noah harari. thank you. >> thank you. >> very much for coming on the show. thank you. take care. also ahead, grammy nominated singer and actress joins thus studio. she stars in a revival of sunset boulevard and delivers a stunning performance. morning joe will be right back with that.

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>> that was a look at the latest broadway revival of the andrew lloyd webber musical sunset boulevard. the show based on the 1950 film of the same name follows the iconic character norma desmond a former movie star plotting her return to the big screen who enlists the help of beleaguered screen writer joe gillis. their relationship ends up being as dramatic as it is destructive. joining us now the costars of sunset boulevard nicole scherzinger who plays norma and tom francis who plays joe and they're both making their

broadway debut. everyone who has seen this stops me to try and find the words. alex an tj in the booth, they're doing -- alex, you saw it. you were blown away. tj, what are the words? what comes to mind with? >> stunning. show stopping. hauntingly magnificent. it's really one of the best things on broadway anybody's going to see this season. >> and alex lives on broadway. he's a broadway a fish gnaw doe. i want to hear about the show. i want to hear about nicole's norma and tom's joe. >> welt, you know, this production is fiercelessly led by our amazing director. he's really just encouraged us to bring ourselves authentically to the roles and to breathe our own lives into these stories.

so yeah, my norma is a norma that is obviously struggles with abandonment and loneliness issues and feeling discarded in the industry but also she's a norma that's a warrior and a fightser who will never surrender and a dream. >> the show is stripped back. there's no set other than ourselves on stage. that was jamie's vision. i would say that that kind of allows us to just do the work. it's a beautiful score. they have written some unbelievable lyrics and scenes. just sort of allowing the work to do itself is probably the thing i try to do every single night. >> as we just saw in the video we played, so visually striking. use of the cameras and projections on stage. describe that for those at home. >> i think it's a visceral

experience. we have this huge video screen. it's pretty impressive. >> it's beyonce size. >> and that gets used quite a lot. it's just a sensory overload this show. the sound design is incredible. the way the video is used. >> your voices are so powerful. >> thank you. >> nicole, we're the same age. we're 46 and you talk about being -- getting older as an actress and how it's actually empowered you. can you talk about that? >> absolutely. this story deals a lot with the subject of ageism. as you get older and not only in the industry but in society it gets a little more difficult. i wanted to flip that on its head and i like to call it age- ilicious where you have to celebrate where you are right now in your life. i mean there's no better time. this is our prime. we've never been stronger.

more fit. more courageous. more brave. to be able to have lived a life and to tell a meaningful story and create meaningful art. >> y'all push a lot of boundaries in terms of its power and different effects. including i guess the second act starts outside. tom, talk about if you could. how does that work? is that real? >> basically we do this bit in the show where we go through the whole of the theater an i start singing the title song on the streets of broadway. >> isn't that kind of risky? >> well,. >> we've got a great security team. >> there's lots -- >> he's out there rain or shine. >> i'm always out there. >> and thank god he loves the cold weather because even in england he was out there without a jacket in a blizzard.

>> i'm going to go photo bomb you at your next performance. you don't understand. >> every night. >> the musical sunset boulevard is playing now on broadway at the saint james theater. costars nicole scherzinger and tom francis. thank you both. congratulations. what a feat. speaking of broadway, this month playbill is celebrating 140 years of serving the theater community. to celebrate the iconic magazine for theater goers has teamed up with every show on broadway to design four collectible retro covers. commemorating different eras of playbill. throughout the entire month. all broadway patrons will receive one of these special edition legacy covers. the complete collection can be found at playbill.com.

commemorative posters are also available for purchase. equity fights aids. i love it. thank you all so much. congratulations. we'll have much more ahead on this morning joe holiday edition after just a short break. rt break.

good morning and welcome to this special holiday edition of morning joe bringing you some of our best segments of the past several weeks. first up, two governors in blue states are joining forces in the wake of donald trump's reelection to quote, protect the state level institutions of democracy. the new initiative is called governors safeguarding democracy and it aims to provide a playbook for governors across the country seeking to push back against

the upcoming administration. by supporting state leaders with with tools, knowledge and resources to protect and strengthen state democratic institutions gsd seeks to ensure that american democracy remains responsive to the needs of its people. >> joining us now democratic governor jb pritzger of israel jared polis of colorado. also chair of the national governors association. governor pritzger, what types of things will gsd be preparing for? >> let's start with the idea that there are a um in of things that have been brought up during the campaign and post election intends to go after.

you've heard talk about bringing prayer back into public schools. there's a constitutional bar against that. separation of church and state. the question is what will they be doing to try to enforce that and how on a state level can we uphold the u.s. constitution while the administration may be coming after this vitally important freedom that people have from having to be forced into some sort of organized prayer in public schools. so we've got a lot of issues like that. privacy issues around tracking people who may be seeking to exercise their abortion rights. >> so governor polis, is it the issue of prayer in school? isn't that a court issue that will end up at the u.s. supreme

court? >> well look, i think what we want to really lean into here is making sure that states are equipped to protect our constitution and protect our democracy. that means the independence of the courts itself. the independence of that institution. the rule of law. election integrity. another great important concern and really by collaborating governors can really work together whether it's this administration or any administration. there's always going to be issues we disagree and agree on. making sure we play by a rulebook that works for our country and works for our people and remains loyal to our constitution. >> so governor pr, we had reporting earlier this show about the trump efforts ramping up for their impending mass deportation program. construction of facilities outside major cities. how do owe see the role of blue state governors in terms of the relationship with the federal government if they do carry out these mass deportation plans and if it they rely on state

and local officials and law enforcement to do so? >> we want to make sure that of course if there are undocumented immigrants committing violent crime we want them off the streets. we want help from the federal government if we need it. we also want to make sure there isn't a violation of peoples rights with raids for example that are done in coordination with local law enforcement on people who are frankly holding down jobs and have been in this country for many years. we think that's improper and in illinois that's not something that we would condone. there's been some talk about using other states national guard red state national guards to somehow come into a blue state and try to force these new stephen miller inspired rules. that's not something we're going to accept. i want to key off of something

that jared said. importantly we each have ideas that some of which we've acted upon over the last six years and some of which are still needing to be acted upon. each state has a different situation in which they may want to act upon that. there are states are you've got a party in control of the governorship but not in control of the legislature. that governor may only be able to put in place executive orders. another state like mine where we have democratic control of the house and senate and governorship we may be able to do much more and will be. so i think the idea here is to create a catalog to create dialogue amongst the governors about what is possible. if you wanted to pursue something in your state it would be different in each state that that's available to you. this organization will support you in doing that. >> so governor polis, sort of

question 30,000 feet looking down on this. how do you balance being the loyal opposition and doing what the loyal opposition has always done in american politics but also recognizing the result of the last election? and understanding that you represent two of the only states between the coasts where republicans didn't sweep to victory by pretty convincing margins. >> look, president-elect trump won the election. whether it's u.s. forest service, whether it's working to make sure priorities are met and funding transportation and transit. at the same time i think it's important we double down on defending our democratic institutions. making sure elections in the future, decisions in the courts, the rule of law continue across the

administrations for republican and democratic. we're going to have our agreements and disagreements in the moment. let's make sure the america we cherish and love is as strong as ever. >> go ahead governor pritzker. >> sorry, i just wanted to add that joe mentioned loyal opposition. we are loyal to the constitution. we are loyal to the people of our states. so this isn't about creating some massive divide. this is just about responding to concerns that governors will have about dealing with what seems to be an onslaught from the new administration. >> appreciate that. thank you both very much. october 7th would have never happened. they never would have been attacked. it is what it is and this horrible thing happened.

and what i said very plainly is get it over with and let's get back to peace and stop killing people. that's a very simple statement. get it over with. they've got to finish what they finish. they have to get it done. get it over with and get it over with fast. you have to get back to normalcy and peace. >> one of the many had times donald trump has claimed the october 7th attacks against israel would have never happened if he were president. joining us now from tel aviv is raf sanchez. you're taking a closer look at what a second trump term might mean for the middle east. tell us about it. >> yeah, sometimes said that personnel is policy. we're getting a sense of donald trump's middle east policy from the pro israel people he's putting into key positions at the state department at the pentagon and of course appointing former arkansas governor mike huckabee as the new u.s. ambassador to israel.

this is a man who said there is no such thing as a palestinian. who has celebrated israeli settlements in the occupied west bank. these are appointments being cheered on by the israeli right. there is an awareness that donald trump is highly unpredictable and the policy will incident on decisions made by him and benjamin netanyahu. will a second term donald trump help put out the flames or pour gasoline on them within the answer may depend on his relationship with benjamin netanyahu. now he's hoping to restore the warmth of trump's first term when the u.s. handed him win

after win. moving the embassy to jerusalem. pulling out of the iran nuclear deal. but exactly four years ago while trump. offered congratulations to joe biden. that enraged trump. >> i still like bibi but i also like loyalty. >> since then, bigones. trump supporting israel and netanyahu. many believe he'll give israel a free hand to step up the war in gaza. throwing off the few restraints imposed by biden. >> this is on the occasion of donald trump's presidency. god bless america. god bless israel.

woo! >> get your victory and get it over with. the killing has to stop. >> palestinians in the ruins of gaza tell our team they can only hope he means it. >> i hope he will be honest and bring peace in gaza. we need it. >> while the families of u.s. hostages plead with biden and trump to work together towards a deal. >> we've asked the president and his senior staff as well as the incoming administration to begin work immediately together. >> michael is israel's former ambassador to washington. >> you're going to deal with donald trump, you got to deal with him very straight. you can't play with him. you got to play by his rules. not by israel's rules. >> if he were to tell prime minister netanyahu ends the war in it gaza. >> he would do his best to try to meet it. the question is how the ward ended. >> another question. iran. its decade long shadow war with israel now an open conflict.

if it israel strikes iran's nuclear facilities that could drag the u.s. to war. trump's apparent pro israel instincts against his promises for peace. >> he will start a war. i'm going to stop wars. >> netanyahu says he and trump see eye to eye on iran and the political power parallels are almost uncanny. fashion themselves as champions of working people. both charged with crimes allegedly committed while in office yet still swept back to power in stunning come backs. both keenly aware of the theatricality of politics. >> five years on from that ceremony the sign is a little faded and the town itself isn't exactly mar-a-lago. trump heights is home to around 30 families. most in temporary houses until their real homes are built. came here with her husband and

four children. >> we came here for the quiet and green spaces and to run house to house. >> how did you feel moving to a place named after someone as controversial as donald trump? >> yeah. this is first question i get when i said where do i live. it's just a town with great people and great view. from different backgrounds. from different views and opinions. but this is not what defines us. >> now four more years of trump for this place and the broader middle east. now the prospects of a cease fire in gaza are looking bleak right now. there isn't much indication that either hamas or netanyahu wants a deal. there is more optimism about a cease fire to end the fighting in lebanon. an israeli official tells me they think that is highly possible either in the final weeks of the biden administration or potentially in the opening of donald trump's next term. a quick diplomatic victory from israel to the new president. >> raf sanchez reporting live. thank you very much for your

reporting. your thoughts on this. >> yeah, i mean i think the longer term question is how much of a relationship donald trump manages to forge with the saudis. we know david the one area where he would like to have expanded would have liked to expanded the abraham accords was to bring the saudis in. have said there has to be some pathway to palestinian security and palestinian state. how does donald trump's reelection shuffle that particular bit of the puzzle? >> so i'm told that the saudis remain as interested in normalization with israel as a year ago when it seemed close before the october 7th attack trump would like to see this big deal. he kind of played as part of the abraham accords in the beginning. he's going to have to find a formula that will be acceptable

to the saudis that speaks of palestinian sovereignty or a pathway forward. some language that netanyahu can accept. it may break his coalition. i think netanyahu wants this achievement badly. another big issue that's looming is that netanyahu's right wing supporters think trump's victory means it will be possible now to annex the west bank. mike huckabee made statements suggesting he might support that. if it that policy is advanced any hopes of saudi normalization, good relations with jordan go out the window. that will be a genuinely destabilizing move. >> let's bring you from on that very point. this idea that a trump victory emboldens potentially netanyahu not only to stay in power himself but to go further. to eye the west bank. to abandon any cease fire talk. what's your sense as to how this could play out?

>> netanyahu's survival politically is an indication to any world leader facing scandal that if you just wait it out, if it you just plow forward there is a likelihood you will survive politically speaking. in terms of the policy elements here, yeah, there's nothing that indicates that trump or mike huckabee or anyone in this administration being constructed will say to israel actually no, back off a little bit. the settlement thes in the west bank are provocative or the human suffering is too much to bear. i think in fact they'll give them the green light. trump said he'll give them the green light for a period of time. i don't think it's indefinite. i think their standpoint is let israel do what it wants to do and get it over with and then cut a deal to end the war. what that means in terms of on the ground, i don't know. it is notable that domestically here some of the pro palestinian forces who were so

skeptical of the harris-biden administration and withheld their votes are already expressing disappointment with the appointees. you have to say were you not paying attention. this is what they advertised and it's exactly what they're doing. >> yeah. sam stein, thank you very much. we appreciate it. coming up, our next guest writes that if you're sure how the next four years will play out, i promise you're wrong. adam grant a psychologist at the wharton school at the university of pennsylvania joins us next to explain what he means. morning joe will be right back. s craftmanship. i mean they even got my nostrils right. it's just nice to know 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 ♪

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welcome back to morning joe. a shot of the white house. >> gorgeous. gorgeous day in dc. >> where we have joe biden and donald trump meeting later today. >> that should be so interesting. >> our next guest helped me with my christmas presents last year. >> i know. and mine too.

>> and yours too. >> so good. >> so adam grant wrote a book called hidden potential. and what he talks about in it is getting out of your comfort zone. failing purposefully. getting better through example. he said he looked at -- who can speak so many languages. he assumed they were brilliant. as he went to talk to him he started to realize the only thing that separated them from the rest of us is they purposefully went out of their way to make mistakes. there was one guy that probably picked up 20 different languages. his rule was when he went to a new country he had to make 200 mistakes a day. 200 mistakes a day that he learned from.

within a week or two he was picking up the language. it's a brilliant way. especially for your children who may be concerned about failing, about getting outside of their comfort zone or you or me or any of us afraid to get out of our comfort zone. when you have that mind set then it is amazing how you unlock your hidden potential. offers this advice to americans. >> here's the advice. pretty simple. if you're sure how the next four years are going to play out, i promise you're wrong. and adam joins us now. >> did i get 245 story right or are you a different adam grant? >> you got it right. i don't think you can get away with 200 mistakes on air a day. >> i do somehow. now i do. and we keep on keeping on.

>> we challenge you. >> so this seems like great advice in your essay today. it reminds me of the dbt suggestion don't suffer twice. don't suffer about the future ahead of time and then most of the time what you were suffering about doesn't come to fruition. don't suffer twice. that appears to be what you're saying here. >> yeah. i think that's well put. we are constantly overconfident about our ability to predict future events. we fail to learn the lesson that we're wrong. i think there's so many examples of this. i think back to the treaty of versailles in 1919. the allied powers all celebrated peace. didn't realize that the national humiliation that germany faced was sewing the seeds of world war ii. i wonder how many times we have to go through experiences like that before we finally realize

look, just because we think the outcome is good today doesn't mean it's going to lead to what we want tomorrow and vice versa. >> professor grant, it's so great to see you. i have my adam grant desk calendar ready for 2025. something to think about. suffice to say we're happy to see your face in a moment like this. some other advice you give and observations you make. pain and sorrow are never permanent. they ideally help us make sense, find meaning and fuel change, which is to say it's okay to be upset. it's okay to be shocked. it's okay to be frustrated. if you're a democrat in some kind of despair. the question is what do you do with that going forward. >> yeah. the whole point of unpleasant emotions isthey're supposed to teach us lessons the same way when you touch a hot stove it hurts so you pay attention and make changes. a lot of people are feeling election dejection and the

point of that is to prompt analysis. which we're seeing a lot of what went wrong for democrats. many people are feeling morally outraged. the purpose is to get you to fight against the status quo and try to drive change. many people are worried about what's going to come next and in psychology worrying is defined as attempted problem solving which i think the world needs a lot of right now. >> so willie just took basically what i was going to ask you pain and sorrow are never permanent. you're right. i want to ask you about pain and sorrow being never permanent when you walk around the upper west side in new york city you are confronted by people literally who will stop you and start crying about what happened a week ago on election day. their problem would seem to me is that their pain and sorrow they're going to be constantly reminded of it on television each and every day as the

president-elect of the united states proceeds the next four years. what do you do about the permanence of that kind of pain? >> i don't think it's easy. things could always be worse. let's go back to 2020. how many democrats cheered when joe biden won that election? i think with the benefit of hindsight many democrats would feel we would have been better off if trump had won in 2020. now knowing he won in 2024. there would have been no lie about election fraud. we would have probably more moderates and qualified people surrounding him. i don't want to say that imagining how things could be worse is uplifting or energizing for most people. but it does make us grateful for what we have. >> yeah. maybe i shouldn't say that this. but also don't sit in this front of the tv or on your

phone all the time. >> zoom scrolling is the worst. >> go outside. walk around. >> i'm a doom scroller. >> look up at the sun. get a life outside of politics. >> the new piece is online for the new york times. organizational psychologist at the wharton school of the university of pennsylvania. adam grant, once again. thank you very much and thanks for coming on the show this morning. coming up, we speak with best selling author john gresham about his new book framed which tells the stories of the wrongfully accused and their battles to win back their freedom. morning joe will be right back.

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a new book highlighting some of the most powerful stories of injustice in the u.s. criminal justice system with the goal of minimizing future abuses of power by law enforcement authorities. the book title the framed astonishing true stories of wrongful convictions was cowritten by criminal justice advocate jim mccloskey and author john grisham. john joins us on set now. so good to see you this morning. >> happy to be here. >> tell us about first why this subject is so important to you. >> i got involved it almost 20 years ago. write about one case and just became fascinated with wrongful convictions and the sheer number of them. moats people don't realize there are thousands of them. i love them from a story telling point of view.

they're rich stories filled with a lot of drama. a lot of suffering. a lot of injustice. happy ending every now and then, but really great stories to tell. jim mccloskey is an old buddy. we're always telling stories. it's been his life's work. so we got the idea of taking our top ten favorite depressing stories and write about them. >> joe has the next question here. >> john, i don't want to get political here. >> oh, go ahead, joe. >> i think your book serves a political purpose. an important purpose. it seems to me growing up in the south just like you a lot of people call themselves pro- life are the loudest about that are the biggest advocates of america going to war when the question is raised and the biggest advocates in the death penalty. i've seen democrats try to get

their votes by executing people that shouldn't have been executed. i'm curious how would this book -- how can this book educate people who are instinctively in support of the death penalty but may not see just how many innocent people are sent to their deaths unjustly. >> one of the purposes of the book was to try to show readers how many wrongful convictions there are and how they apply to everybody. not just minorities. not just people who get most of the convictions. most of the people who get in trouble. we deliberately picked ten cases. involved 22 con rows. half of them are white. white people don't believe that there are thousands of innocent people in prison. black folks know it. white people don't believe it. we take these cases and try to show how these cases happen to

average people. it's also to just raise awareness about how wrong the death penalty is. one case we follow it to the very end and a young man is executed in texas ten years ago for a crime that never occurred. they're trying to do it again in texas. we're trying to stop it again in texas. it's awareness. stories are so rich. so fun to read although they're frustrating, infuriating. but they're great stories. >> can you give us a quick summary of perhaps the story that shocks you the most? that shocks your conscious the most about somebody sent unjustly to their death by our government. >> you can't do a quick summary of any of these stories. they're very long stories. cameron todd willingham was executed in texas in 2014 for a crime that never occurred. he was convicted of setting his house on fire to burn up his

three daughters. in 1992. the arson experts by the state of texas said this was clearly arson. it clearly was not arson. he served ten years on death row and was executed. after his death the real science came out. the arson investigation was blown apart. totally debunked. discredited by real experts and they proved that it was a fire. but it wasn't arson. it was a tragedy. terrible crime. that science was on the governor's desk the day of the execution. the governor's office had ago says to the new science in 2014 and would not stop the execution. that's the most egregious case so far because they killed an innocent man. >> i'm looking at the front page of this here. i think it's a fiction book a year for what, decades. and have found fiction a powerful way to tell these stories. why now go to non-fiction? do you feel these are stories that can only be told through

nonfiction or that you might reach different audiences through this method? >> truthfully i could not create these stories. i couldn't make up this stuff. they're so biczar, unfair, disheartening. i can only go so far with fiction. the fact they're true make them even more readable. people can't believe these stories really happen. if it's fiction you can say it's somebody's imagination. but the fact they're true gives them a much, much bigger impact. >> there's been reporting in the new york times and by propublica says you went too far in using their reporting. they've asked for changes to be made to the book. what's your response? >> i hate they've done that. these stories some are 20 years old. they have been the subject of books, magazine articles, documentary films. these are well known cases in

american criminal justice. they've been written about by a lot of people. so jim and i, we had a wealth of information to draw from. we used their sources. their books. their magazine articles. that's what you do when you write non-fiction. we give full credit to everybody. full sourcing. full acknowledgment. there are eight pages of acknowledgments in the back of the book where we say thanks to all these people. we name them. we give you credit. we thought we'd gone far enough. >> joe. >> john, what do you find most rewarding about this book? nonfiction versus fiction. as you put the pen down, as you finish it up, as you get it published. what for you especially in this case do you find most rewarding as an author? >> tough question. it's always great to finish a

book. i've finished a lot of them now. this one took a long time. the nonfiction work is much more difficult because of the research. with fiction you can create a lot of stuff. i'm in total control of everything i write. nonfiction you have to be accurate. what would be frat grat fewing here would be to be able to take credit for some real change if something were to change. the landscape is changing. there are fewer executions every year. there are fewer death verdicts every year. maybe this help as little bit. maybe this shows people there's a better way to punish criminals than to kill them. >> it is changing also but some evangelicals. even pat robertson expressing skepticism in the death penalty in his final years talking

about the death penalty and its inconsistencies and its problems. the new book framed astonishing true stories of wrongful convictions on sale now. new york times best selling author john grisham. thank you so much. greatly appreciate you being here. >> thanks, joe. thanks for having me. coming up, he's played hamlet, macbeth and now king lear. oscar winner kenneth branaugh joins us. joins us. have you ever considered getting a walk-in tub? well, look no further. proudly made in tennessee, a safe step walk-in tub is the best in it's class. the ultra-low easy step helps keep you safe from having to climb over those high walled tubs,

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come hither leonardo. what was it you told me that your niece beatrice was in love with senior benedict. >> i did never think that lady would have loved any man. >> no. nor i neither. but most wonderful she should so dote on senior benedict whom she had him all out with behaviors seemed ever to abhor. >> is it possible? >> maybe she .but counter fit. >> faith like enough, oh. counterfeit? >> if she should make tender of her love 'tis very possible he'll scorn it for the man had the contemptible spirit. >> oh! >> ha-ha. >> that was a clip from the

1993 classic much ado about nothing. the film stars the brilliant kenneth branagh who adopted the play for the big screen. that's hard. branagh is working with shakespearean material for his new off broadway play king lear and the award winning actor and director joins us now. thank you so much. it's kind of a busy time. >> sure. >> but thank you for coming in. >> thanks for having me. >> so i've read that the first time you read king lear was 45 years ago? >> yeah. >> what's it like to bring it to the stage now? >> when i first saw it a line that leapt out i was 17 -- >> i can certainly quote it for you when king lear says in distress an insight he's gained through practically having lost everything he says when we are born we cry that we are coming to this great stage of fools.

now that whole idea of human beings capable of foolishness and being fool hardy throughout their lives in a play that from the beginning in anrd their family situation produces misjudgments in family dynamics and from that chaos comes. that i recognized at 17. >> i'm recognizing it today as well. go ahead. >> do you think that's one of the reasons this has last sod long that people see the conflict and kind of way to resolve matters. you think that allures what has made this survive as a story so long? >> i think you're right. i think the human recognition. like king lear in the play renounces things. tolsto gave away titles and money and things later on in

life. he talked about his art and he said if through art you can showmankind themselves and let them see themselves then maybe they can change. you have that opportunity if you stay with it to recognize in this case a family dynamic. a king decides to give up basically only wants to work three days a week, you might say. decides he's going to split -- >> do remote. >> exactly. i'll finish on thursday afternoon and come in late tuesday morning. but i'd still like the job title please. and i'll divide it between three people equally. divide and conquer. it doesn't work. those three people are his daughters. they're much younger and they have different points of view. >> joe has a question. >> what's so fascinating. we're so obsessed on change whether it's we're now the social media age. we went from the agrarian age

to the industrial age. everything changes so much. but isn't it extraordinary shakespeare remains relevant because unfortunately we as human beings don't change, do we? >> well, he seems to indicate certainly 400 years ago he says when there's a power vacuum and someone decides that i can control this hand over of power. i can do it on my terms. what he discovered quite quickly once he signed the documents. before that moment when he signed now have a different point of view. his understanding of what he's capable of this mental cognition is different from their view of it. the ones who have the keys to the castle are the ones who win in that equation. >> you've been doing shakespeare on stage and film for basically your whole

career. it's timeless as you point out. do you see a difference in how from when you first started doing this to now in terms of how audiences relate to shakespeare or has it been that consistent? it's so deeply human nothing really changes in terms of the times we're living in. >> it's interesting what you say. i think there's always been a fear factor people fear ancient language. distant language. may be between them and the experience. there's a line at the end of king lear when edgar says the weight of this sad time we must obey, speak what we feel not what we ought to say. and i think that what i've noticed across my time of doing shakespeare is people's compass itty to feel along with shakespeare has never been more vibrant. we've been playing in new york for a couple of previews. the audiences here are so sharp. so intelligent. so quick witted and so ready to feel. our production plays for two hours without an intermission partly because the events of

the play are so rapid the catastrophe that happens from simple misjudgments in human situations from the beginning of the play unleashes and unravels a whole series of decisions made in the heat of the moment which are very much to do with people feeling, not necessarily considering, not necessarily reflecting, not necessarily taking time for a pause. so i would say my experience is that audiences are ready to experience and prefer to experience rather than to sort of listen to a lecture. >> i love this. >> audiences here, everybody wants succession. we get the original now. >> there's that. as a person who participated in the williamstown theater festival, i'm aware of your career in shakespeare and i said oh, kenneth branagh is on the show tomorrow and a young person nearby said to me oh, he's in the, um, is it the hobbit? oh my god i can't remember. >> lord of the rings? >> harry potter.

>> yes. >> and i was like, uh. okay. you're coming with me. you can catch king lear at the shed and opens november 14th and runs through december 15th. so you have a limited opportunity. get in there. academy award winning actor and director kenneth branagh. thank you very much. coming up, the new documentary leap of faith challenges us to consider whether we can disagree and still be connected to one another in such a divided world. we'll be joined by the film's award winning director nicholas maw along with his father yoyo ma. that's next on this holiday edition of morning joe. ning jo it's just nice to know that years after i'm gone this guy will be standing the test of ti... he's melting! oh jeez... nooo... oh gaa...

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the fact we disagree is not insurmountable. >> you be who you are. i'll be who i am and we'll find a way through together. >> hey, man. preach, preacher. >> i was holding this thing together out of a fear of institution failing. not for love of my children. >> i think being in a relationship with this 11 people has changed me. >> what would it mean if all of the polarization fragmentation and conflict were this amazing opportunity for the gospel. >> it's a story about love.

can people actually love each other beyond tolerance. >> that's a holy thing. >> that's a look at the new documentary entitled leap of faith. the film follows 12 pastors of varying theological and political persuasions from grand rapids, michigan. as they are brought together on multiple retreats in an attempt to find common ground on issues such as gender equality, racial tension and political polarization. joining us now leap of faith director and producer award winning film maker nicholas ma and his father acclaimed cellist yo-yo ma who has performed at special screenings of the film. thank you both for coming on. nicholas, graduations on this. i'm fascinated to hear the pitch of this. how did you do that, but more

importantly, where were you surprised and found success and connection and perhaps were there failures along the way? >> sure. i mean i think the failures are necessary for the successes; right? we're so afraid of failures we shy away from trying the thing that seems hard. i sort of think about the movie as almost a little bit like having children; right? you dive into it and you have no idea what's going to happen and everyone tells you it's hard but it's beautiful. i feel like that's what these pastors found. it it was hard but it was actually beautiful. i think we need that right now. so often we feel like these differences are as mic and we can't cross them. i grew up going to my dad's concerts and that wholeness that the end of a concert everyone feels and everyone looks around and i know we're feeling the same thing. that's what these pastors achieved at the end of this year together. >> nicholas, i goo grew up in

the pentecostal church. i knew a lot of ministers growing up that just believed if it you didn't follow the dogma exactly the way they believed you were going to hell. how do you reconcile people that are just my way or the highway with this kind of spirit that you're trying to bring about in terms of reconciliation? >> sure. i think there's always going to be a chunk of people that don't think that engaging is a good thing to do. that's a really hard thing to contend with. i think it's a much smaller group of people than we believe; right? in 2016 one in six family members stopped talking to each other because of the election. and at the same time after the screening on monday i know four families that reunited that found each other again. there is a way back. there is a way through. i think when we sort of assume that people don't want to engage we assume the worst of them. we can't imagine loving them and we can't imagine they could love us. that possibility of staying in relationship is really i think what it's all about. it's what we're all about as a

country and it's what this film is all about. >> beyond being the proud father of nicholas and playing at special screenings of the film, i was wondering whether nicholas referred to it a little bit there about music. and whether you have seen an increase in polarization in your audiences in the united states over the last few years and whether you feel that the music that you play has that ability as nicholas described to bring some sense of transcending political divisions amongst people. >> yeah, i think that's such a wonderful question. because as i was watching the film i was thinking, you know, essentially the pastors were building trust between amongst themselves. and i think the ritual of concert playing, performing is not unlike a sacred ritual where you're there first of all to build trust. you can't perform with fellow

musicians without trusting one another. secondly, there's something that is almost, you know, between secular and sacred in a performance venue where that does not tolerate dissent because we're under a larger umbrella. i think, by the way, happy birthday. it's so wonderful we're all together in this group. but what i felt watching the film was that there are a lot of people who are confused and lonely. our surgeon general says we're having an epidemic of loneliness. what it did for me was the film brought me hope and solace. that's exactly what i hope happens when i perform. i hope that answers your

question. >> the new documentary leap of faith premieres tomorrow in theaters nationwide. director and producer nicholas ma and acclaimed cellist yo-yo- ma. thank you for coming on the show. congratulations on this. we appreciate it. we appreciate

good morning and welcome back to this special day after thanksgiving edition of "morning joe." we're on tape this morning, bringing you some of our best segments from the last few weeks, including a hard look at

how donald trump was able to win a second term in the white house. >> we want to get to the maureen dowd piece. we're going to do something a little different this morning. we're going to read the entire piece, but it is worth it. i think a lot of people already have been talking about this. we got a lot of calls about this piece. and it is an interesting message for democrats. maureen dowd's piece for "the new york times" entitled "democrats and the case of mistaken identity politics." it really crystallized how some democrats are finally waking up and realizing that woke is broke. and maureen writes this, donald trump won a majority of white women and remarkable numbers of black and latino voters and young men. democratic insiders thought people would vote for kamala harris, even if they didn't like her, to get rid of trump. but more people ended up voting for trump, even though many didn't like him because they

liked the democratic party less. i've often talked about how my dad stayed up all night on the night harry truman was elected because he was so excited and my brother stayed up all night the first time trump was elected because he was so excited. and i felt that democrats would never recover that kind of excitement until they could figure out why they had turned off so many working class voters over the decades and why they had developed such disdain toward their once loyal base. democratic candidates have often been avatars of elitism. michael dukakis, al gore, john kerry, hillary clinton and second term barack obama. the party embraced a world view of hyperpolitical correctiveness, condescension, and cancellation. and its supported diversity statements for job applicants

and terms like latinx and black indigenous people of color, this alienated half of the country or more and the chaos and antisemitism at many college campuses certainly didn't help. when the woke police came at you, rahm emanuel told me, you don't even get your miranda rights read to you. there were a lot of democrats barking, people who don't represent anybody, he said, and the leadership of the party was intimidated. donald trump played to the irritation of many americans, disgusted at being regarded as insensitive for talking the way they had always talked. at rallies, he referred to women as beautiful and then pretended to admonish himself saying he would get in trouble for using that word. >> those strong and i would say beautiful, but i'm not allowed to use that term anymore with women because if you say

beautiful, it means the end of your career in politics. you're not allowed to say a woman is beautiful. so i will not tell you how beautiful they are, but they are beautiful. but those strong, beautiful, intelligent women, they won, they won. >> continuing with maureen dowd, one thing that makes democrats great is that they unabashedly support groups that have suffered from inequality. but they have to begin avoiding extreme policies that alienate many americans who would otherwise be drawn to the party. democrats learned the hard way in this election, that mothers care and this is a key line in this piece, that mothers care both about abortion rights and having their daughters compete fairly and safely on the playing field. keep that in mind. >> and keep this in mind, a revealing chart that ran in the financial times showed that

white progressives and this is how it has been for too long, white progressives hold views far to the left of the minorities they champion. white progressives think at higher rates than hispanic and black americans that, quote, racism is built into our society. and get this, many more black and hispanic americans surveyed compared with white progressives responded that, quote, america is the greatest country in the world. >> gobsmacked democrats have reacted to the wipeout in different ways. this touting trans rights and repudiating israel, other democrats feel the opposite calling on the party to reimagine itself, marie glusenkamp perez narrowly held her seat, the 36-year-old mother of a toddler and owner of an auto shop told the times, annie carney, that democratic

condescension has to go. there is not one weird trick that is going to fix the democratic party, she said, it is going to take parents of young kids, people in rural communities, people in the trades, running for office, and being taken seriously. on cnn, the democratic strategist julie ruginski said democrats did not know how to talk to normal americans. take a look. >> we are not the party of common sense, which is the message voters sent to us. for a number of reasons. for a number of reasons we don't know how to speak to voters. when we address -- and, listen, language has leaning. we address latina voters as latin latinx, because that's the politically correct thing to do. when we are too afraid to say that, hey, college kids if you're trashing the campus at columbia university, because you're unhappy about some sort of policy and you're taking over

a university, and you're trashing it and preventing other students from learning, that is unacceptable, but we're so worried about alienating one or another cohort in our coalition that we don't know what to say when normal people look at that and say, wait a second, i send my kids to college so they can learn, not so they can burn buildings and trash lawns, right? >> maureen dowd continues, kamala, a democratic lawmaker told me, made the colossal mistake of running a billion dollar campaign with celebrities like beyonce when many working class voters she wanted couldn't afford a ticket to a beyonce concert, much less a down payment on a home. kamala, who sprinted to the left in her 2020 democratic primary campaign tried to move toward the center for this election, making sure to say she would shoot an intruder with her glock, but it sounded tinny.

the trump campaign's most successful ad showed kamala favoring tax-funded gender surgery for prisoners. bill clinton warned in vain that she should rebut it. james carville gave kamala credit for not leaning into her gender and ethnicity, but he said the party had become enamored of identitarianism. we could never wash off the stench of it, he said, calling the -- calling defund the police, the three stupidist words in the english language. it is like when you get smoke on your clothes and you have to wash them again and again. now people are running away from it, like the devil runs away from holy water. what do you think? >> i think we can talk about this for four hours.

i'm looking at this. it is stuff we all talked on the show about, the trans ad, which, of course, we talked about time and again, rick wilson came on and showed an opposing ad, on the nfl, they showed kamala saying she would support the funding of transition surgery in prison and taxpayers would pay for it and, of course, it was the law at the time during the trump administration. they refused. despite bill clinton and everybody else saying you got to respond to this ad, it is impacting black men, hispanic men, white working class men, you need to respond to this ad. they just didn't do it. willie said after the election, even his mother said, wait, this is weird, what is up with the democrats? and so they didn't respond to that. there is so many other things. we talked about it all last spring. i mean, maybe it makes you feel good when you see people trash college campuses, i know it

doesn't, but maybe it makes progressives go, it is like the '60s all over again. most americans didn't like the trashing of college campuses in the '60s. that's why richard nixon got elected twice, got elected without a 49 states in 1972. trashing of college campuses, can't even send your kids to campus safely, defunding the police, back in 2020 we were talking here, reverend al, let me bring you in here, on defunding the police. you and i were talking about how representatives in the toughest parts of new york city in real time were saying, defund the police, no, no! we need more police on the street, protecting our children, as we walk to school. we need more children in the classroom, you know, in the classrooms, more police officers, safety officers. so our children can go to and from class, so our businesses can be safe, so we can live a safe life.

and it is something, again, you have great line about wokeness and limousine liberals and everything. i want to say, this is -- this is what we have known since 2017, what you and i have talked about, that white elitists that run the democratic party are far to the left of many black and hispanic voters in the democratic party, and i remember a pollster for barack obama, i think david -- i think his name is david sax, forgive me for -- came out and had that poll in 2017 and he got absolutely hammered on twitter. absolutely hammered by the far left, how dare you say this, how dare you -- but he was right. and it was true in '17 and it was doublytrue in 2024 that these white progressives on the far, far left said, we're going

to save you, black and hispanic people of america. a lot of black and hispanic people of america say no thanks. you're kind of wild, you're too far left. we believe in the american dream, we want to be part of the american dream, thanks, but no thanks, keep that in your college classes. >> absolutely. the whole goal of the civil rights movement and the movement now is to correct the system, not to overthrow the system. and to make things work equally for everyone, not to just upturn everything and change everything or to some undefined utopia. and these latte liberals that speak for people, that they don't speak to, that want to lead people that they don't even like are running around, trying to represent things that was never part of what we were saying. all of us that were on the forefront and still are, police reform, never said defund the

police, we were trying to get police of color and of other circumstances up in these departments to deal with stop and frisk and deal with other things. and then when you come and disregard and disrespect common people that are trying to get their kids in college, and pay the tuition and student debt and loan forgiveness and all, you're going to disrupt the campus, very interesting to me that they were very selective in the causes they wanted to fight and the causes on the ground that everyday people had to deal with, they were absent, which is why many -- i text you on that last week, why many people whether they raised the problem came back to us and the woke people, i don't know what they were woke from, because we were never asleep. they were the ones up in the ivory tower taking a nap, while we were dealing with people on the ground that have everyday problems. >> yeah, it is something that i have been saying on the show for a couple of years now, when i would have dinner with

democrats, with democrats, we would all be sitting there having dinner. i don't know if your experiences are the same, halfway in, somebody would say, my daughter's had -- picked this school, and, you know, my daughter's at university of virginia, she can't even raise her hand and speak in class because if she says the wrong thing, she's immediately canceled, the professors don't back her up, the administrators don't back her up, if you're at columbia, good luck. if you're at a lot of these other elite institutions, good luck. i will say even when i was at university of alabama, you know, 800 years ago, it was, you know, it -- you say something conservative in class and you still, even in that environment sometimes you get pushback, but the professors and administrators would say, no, no, we want a fair and open debate. there are a lot of students and their parents and, again, i'm talking about democrats, who

complained more and more about this over the past four, five, six, seven years. >> absolutely. i feel this very viscerally and strongly. i spent 20 years living in the united states until 2014. and i this enwent en went back . i've been struck when i come over in the last ten years and i meet my friends, i lived in d.c., so many democrat friends, i didn't feel like i changed, but i had increasing number of arguments with people on cultural issues. because i think the whole party, the whole elite milieu moved to the left in a weird way. the whole issue, the trans issue, for example, where we -- the economists very loudly, very clearly, all along took a view that was antiwoke if you will. we were very skeptical about medical interventions, very skeptical about the men in women's sports and i got so much from this, what was the economist doing, what was this? and what strikes me now is, yes,

people have realized that elites on the left were way different from where ordinary people are and as exactly as you say, lots of people saying what is happening in our schools what is happening in our colleges, but the question for me now is how does that change? everyone seems to have had a wake-up call but how does that change and how do the kind of, you know, the elites of this party actually turn things around? and it is not obvious to me that's going to happen fast enough and i'm struck that even in the last few days there are people on the cultural left, doubling down on the cultural left position. so i don't know, it is your country, not my country, but when you live in london, you do sometimes come to the u.s. and think what on earth is going on here? this place is culturally gone off the reservation on the left. >> and so isolated too. i said on this show before really, we heard a whole lot, i'm sure the economist was writing about this, we were very critical about a man who is a

swimmer in the ivy league who transitioned and swam against women and suddenly he went from, like, 386th best swimmer to -- against men to the 1st against women. and i remember saying something about it at the time and people going, oh, my god, how dare you say that, you're a adical, i said, no there is a poll out that shows 85% of americans agree with me. it is fascinating, so fascinating that all these people who had been championing women all of these years sort of abandoned girls who had been waking up and their parents driving them to go swimming or running track and field from the time they were 5 years old, at 5:00 in the morning on saturdays and sundays and suddenly they abandoned them and won't say a word because they're afraid they're going to be canceled. it is insanity. >> i think that fear of being canceled was what drove it.

there was a sense amongst many, many in the sort of liberal elite to use -- i guess you're all part of it here, to be -- to be worried about saying anything, for fear of being excommunicated, for fear of being canceled. people would go along with things they knew enough. latinx, what on earth is latinx. no latina person uses the term latinx. don't get me wrong, there are important real civil rights issues that still need to be dealt with in this country and i'm not in any sense saying there is nothing to be done, nothing that anyone needs to -- that the u.s. is completely perfect, but i do think it went completely over the board and this is the result. >> it actually did. and, again, you look at surveys for white elitists who write

books about white fragility and talk about how horrible the united states of america is, you look at the surveys, and it shows that more black americans and hispanic americans believe in the american dream than those people spouting those extreme positions. yeah, we say every day, we have a long way to go to be a more perfect union, but being an extremist and setting one party up to lose year after year, every four years, that's no way to do it. thank you so much. >> thank you. >> greatly appreciate it. >> still ahead, it has been 24 years since malcolm gladwell released his book "tipping point" which became a "new york times" best-seller. now he's revisiting that famed work that propelled him to literary stardom. that's next on "morning joe." to literary stardom that's next on "morning joe.

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oh! -ah! [ laughter ] no need to respond. that was rhetorical. hm, hmm. nearly 25 years ago, the journalist malcolm gladwell who is writing for the new yorker at the time, published his first book which had the title "the tipping point: how little things make a big difference" which explores the theory that ideas spread like viruses. it was the first of his seven

"new york times" best tellers. now gladwell is revisiting the themes of that debut work with his new book which has the title "revenge of the tipping point: overstories, super spreaders and the rise of social engineering." malcolm gladwell joins us now. thank you for being here. >> thanks. >> what made you decide to revisit this subject and "the tipping point" itself was largely an optimistic look at the world. this one not so much. >> yeah, it is a little darker. i was -- i was -- we live in darker times. i wrote the first one in the end of the 1990s. you know, crime was falling. the berlin wall had, you know, had gone away, i was in my mid 30s, the world seemed like a happy place, cheerful. this time around i was originally just going to do a light revise on this 25th anniversary. and i realized i had so much more to say. my perspective on many issues had changed. and i wasn't full of the same

kind of sunny optimism i was when i first wrote the book. >> you know, malcolm, i don't mean to say that you're a guy who is in love with epidemics, but there is a lot of epidemic stuff in this book. let's leave covid aside and go to opioids. >> yeah. >> do you think the american people are more susceptible to being swallowed by an epidemic like opioids than other cultures? >> well, it is funny, the opioid crisis, i begin and end this book with an account of the opioid crisis. the last chapter that could have -- the summation of all the arguments is my kind of revised history of what happened, and i opened with a very simple graph that shows opioid overdoses in all the major western countries. and what you see is the united states is up here. scotland is sort of close to us. then you go down a hole, you get to canada and a whole series of countries, france, italy, portugal.

basically had no opioid crisis at all. so, for us to think about this, one of the big themes of the book is that epidemics have ideas and behavior observe boundaries in a way that viral epidemics do not. we need to be asking the question, your question, looking at those countries that didn't have an opioid crisis and ask why. it is not because they're richer than us or we're not -- we're richer than them. it is not because of some obvious -- they don't have lower rates of unemployment than us, no, we're -- in never way we're probably a more successful economy than they are. yet somehow they avoided the catastrophe that this country has gone through for the last 15 years. >> you're a genius. what's the answer, why? >> there are many answers, but with is i think that purdue pharma, the company that produced oxycontin, was able to exploit some holes in our -- in a way that we regulate painkillers. in particular, they were able to

target a very small number of doctors. they realized a couple thousand doctors were all they needed to carry their epidemic forward and they ruthlessly pursued, persuaded, exploited, whatever, manipulated those doctors. and that same dynamic doesn't hold in other countries in the west. >> so the covid epidemic and the opioid epidemic, i see why those two things may make you feel darker than 25 years ago. is there something more than that, is there something -- we spend this whole time on this program thinking there is so much going on in the world that is not particularly sunny at the moment. is there something structurally in the world or in your relationship with the world that made you less optimistic? >> i think it is because i'm just older. i have kids now. i worry -- kids you worry about things you didn't worry about before. i have a chapter in the book on

this bucolic perfect upper middle class suburb that had this ongoing crisis in their school system over the last ten years or so, and it is a crisis caused by affluence, essentially, by the extraordinary expectations that wealthy highly educated parents have placed on their kids. and that's a kind of -- that's a new kind of problem that is quite specific to america, that is occurring in the most unlikely of places. if you visited poplar grove as i did, this is the last place you would think is being engulfed by this kind of -- i don't want to give away exactly what is happening there, so that's a kind of -- realizing that sometimes we have problems because we had been successful in other areas is -- that's sort of a -- that's something that is new to my understanding. and that is kind of central to this book. >> everything malcolm gladwell writes is a must read. his new book "revenge of the

tipping point: overstories, super spreaders and the rise of social engineering" is on sale now. thank you for joining us. still ahead, in his first interview since losing his election campaign in ohio, democratic senator sherrod brown talked to us about what went wrong and what democrats need to do moving forward. t went wrong and what democrats need to do moving forward.

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let's bring in democratic senator sherrod brown of ohio. he lost his bid for another term earlier this month. senator, thanks for being with us this morning. it has been fascinating to listen to these after action reports, these autopsies about why democrats went wrong. your race, though, you have spent not just your campaign, but your entire professional life, focused on workers, the thing that democrats say, oh, we should have focused more on working people across racial and gender lines. so, what is your assessment, not just of what happened in your race, where you ran well ahead of, excuse me, of kamala harris,

but of what the national party needs to be thinking about now? >> well, i wrote a book about the history of the senators who held my desk and i tried to keep historic perspective and claire knows this very well, the democrats really since nafta have -- this wasn't a one-year or four-year problem, the democrats since nafta have drifted away from work -- workers have drifted away from democrats because of that. i grew up in mansfield, ohio, with the sons and daughters of steel workers and autoworkers and electricians and millwrights and carpenters and laborers and brick layers. and those jobs began to move south into non-union states and they began to move overseas because democrats -- because presidents of both parties frankly betrayed those workers with these trade agreements and we got to talk directly to workers. we got to restore the tradition and the history of democrats being the party of workers. not just union workers, workers,

whether you punch a clock or swipe a badge or work for tips or care for an aging parent or raising children. we got to be that party and focus on the work. we didn't do that over the last 30 years and we paid this price where far too many workers left the democrats. as you said, i ran 7 1/2 points ahead of the national ticket, and you can't do much better than that. but when we have this historic perspective of workers leaving our party, we got a serious problem. >> so, senator, yeah, you know, when i looked at the races, even a year out, i said, well, sherrod brown is going to be fine in ohio. the guy is connected to ohio better than anybody. and you're one of the democrats that -- he's going to figure out a way to win because, again, he has such a connection with working class voters. and so when you lose, that sort of suggests that the democratic party is in deep, deep trouble

across the midwest and the industrial midwest. i want to know. what did you hear from workers when you were campaigning, who would have voted for you four years ago. who would have voted for you eight years ago. who voted for barack obama in 2012 and 2008. what did they tell you, why were they leaving the democratic party? what was the -- not nafta, which i agree with, but what was the gut answer that they told you, that made you kind of realize, man, we have lost working americans? >> even with the accomplishments we talk about, a million veterans, 40,000 in ohio, have already gotten care because of our bill and on the exposure to burn pits, even with the pensions we save $100,000, 100,000 pensions in ohio that wall street essentially took away, if you will. even with the prescription drug at $35 a month or $35 a month

ceiling for insulin, even with those things, it was hard to start the conversation because they -- particularly in small town, in rural ohio, the city, like i grew up in, 50,000, a lot of -- the midwest, as you know, joe, is dotted with a lot of small industrial cities that provided a decent middle class wage. you couldn't even start the conversation about being a democrat in many of those counties where the bottom dropped out. 10 or 15 points worse than even six years ago. so, until we start talking directly to workers, when we listen and listen to workers about where they left and where they have gone, they don't necessarily love trump, they just think the democratic brand is so damaged whether in missouri or ohio. >> why, though, specifically? what did you hear over and over again specifically? why have they turned against democrats the way they have? >> well, they don't think we're the party that represents them

anymore. i mean, i saw the trans gender ads and i saw that. one of my favorite -- i won't do the whole story, the story of dr. king, when he was assassinated, he was in memphis because he was there talking about the work. and king, better than any historic figure, wove together civil rights, human rights and worker rights. we don't do that. we're the party of civil rights as we should be. we're the party of human rights and i will never back off. i voted against -- i voted for marriage equality 30 years ago, one of the few that did, i'll never back off that. but worker -- one thing about worker rights is it binds all of us, except for the coupon clippers you occasionally have on your show, joe. what binds us together is we work. swiping a badge, punching a clock, whatever kind of work you do. and we should be talking to that, we should center our -- we'll talk about other things. i talked a lot about abortion

rights, of course, we should center our discussion on workers and how they are the centerpiece of our country. they are what binds us as a nation. >> and when he says coupon clippers, he's talking about the boston red sox over the past three years offering prospects, coupons to barnhill country buffet in pensacola, florida, all you can eat buffets, thinking that was going to somehow get ohtani. >> we're going to get soto. >> come on! >> he's not going to end up with the guardians, either. so -- >> does barnacle understand the fans have become as bad as the red sox fans. thinking of a way to bind you all together. >> you've done it. >> it cuts like a knife. >> claire, help me here.

claire and i root for america's teams. the cardinals and the guardians. real middle america baseball. >> yeah. >> okay, sherrod, listen, i am totally down with you on what you're talking about, the dignity of work, but the other undressed topic here that we have got to expose is that most of these guys that you're looking at right now think baseball is only played in new york and boston. they do not understand -- >> to be fair -- >> east coast. but go ahead. >> oh, come on, you guys. you are such snobs when it comes to baseball. it is boring. >> i think you should let the woman talk. i mean, all you guys interrupted claire. but the fact is the cardinals have the secretary ond best fra in terms of world championships and competing. >> senator, i'm going to pass up the chance at a cheap shot based upon cleveland guardians playing the chicago white sox 19 times a year and thus making the

playoffs. but we're going to let that go. i want to ask you, given your beyond -- >> just lost an election, mike, come on. >> beyond your admirable career, fighting for people who we all grew up with, who work with their hands, and built this country, what are you going to do now in january? do you have a plan yet? it is tough getting defeated. no doubt about that, given your record. >> a little early, but -- >> what are you going to do? >> i don't know. i got a lot of options. people are talking to me. i will only say, people working with your hands, if you spend the time i do in work sites and in manufacturing jobs, companies and small businesses, whatever, i've always reject the term rust belt because we're not that. but it is working with your hands and working with your brains. these jobs in american manufacturing are increasingly high tech. they take great skill. i spent a lot of time with carpenters or brick layers or

mill wrights, apprentice programs and i see these five years of workers getting trained, starting at $20 an hour, the end of five year apprentice, making $35 an hour with insurance and healthcare and they have no college debt, and those are highly skilled middle class jobs. i spoke at one of the programs as it launched apprentice program and all these young people were wearing shirts that said path to the middle class. and we're going to see more of that. we're successful in the chips bill that you talked about on the show of having a project labor agreement 7,000 good paying middle class union jobs building the plants and we're going to see more of that if done wright. >> sherrod brown of ohio. coming up, the hidden truth linking the broken border to your online shopping cart. we'll be joined by one of the reporters behind a new investigation from "the new york times." "morning joe" is coming right back with that. "morning joe" is coming right back with that oh, yeah. only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty, liberty, liberty, liberty. ♪

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welcome back. donald trump won the white house

again, largely through his promises to crack down on immigration at the southern border and grow the u.s. economy. yet a new investigation from "the new york times" reveals the two political issues may be tied more tightly together than previously known. the paper details how major u.s. brands and major corporations are using questionable staffing companies nationwide to fill roles at warehouses not typically wanted by american workers. the times investigation reads in part, quote, the broken border has been a lifeline for america's on demand economy, under both democratic and republican administrations, including mr. trump's first term. thousands of companies have exploited its -- from plucking workers from the ranks with impunity. joining us now, one of the

investigative reporters behind this piece steve eder joins us on set. people don't think of this story from this angle. >> sure. thanks for having me here. happy to talk about it. this all sort of began with us looking at you know, the issues of the broken border and that notion and kind of what is behind it, who is benefitting from it. that led us to, you know, when the border bail failed earlier this year, that led us to comparing american businesses and we wanted to interrogate how that works and how is it that migrants coming into the country find work, that led us to staffing agencies and brought us into this whole investigation where we are looking at the middle man role that staffing agencies can play in connecting migrant workers, immigrant workers with jobs. >> and these are companies we know that people, you know, often make orders to. >> some of the companies that are cited as having used these

workers are ones that we would go to frequently, such as home goods and marshalls and these companies may have used workers that came from these staffing agencies. can you talk about the staffing agency you used as the case study for looking into how this crisis has gotten to where it is. >> yeah, sure. we focused in on -- we were looking at the industry, focused on a case study, a company called baron hr and what we learned at baron hr was run by an individual who had been the staffing agency for two decades, had had quite a few legal troubles over that time, but had grown once and then again into this large outfit and what we found was, we talked to workers, we talk to -- for this project, we talk to 100 workers and, you know, many of them baron workers and what they told us was about not getting paid on time, they talked about having injuries at work sites and struggling to get their claims handled, talked

about discrimination and so that brought us through and we were able to look too from there into the clients that baron hr work with around the country, and began to try to map out a world that can be difficult to map out. >> so, steve, if donald trump puts into place the proposals on the border that he has set forth during his campaign, what sort of impact is this going to have in terms of this -- this part of the -- hidden part of the economy? >> i can say that, i hate to speculate, but what i can say is that this type of system where -- look, not all staffing agencies are breaking the rules and engaging in this, but a lot of companies do use this. it has gone on, under the current administration, previous administration, donald trump's administration and obama, it is a system that has been in place for a long time and has taken on new shapes and forms over time to become increasingly important, particularly in the consumer demand consumer age.

so it is quite systemic. >> katty kay? >> steve, if there is under the next administration a real crackdown on the border, or deportation of some people who are here illegally, what impact does it have on some of these companies and on the u.s. economy? >> yeah, it is a good question what that would look like. you can see, companies are routinely turning to staffing agencies, some of these staffing agencies are using this worker pool, they're coveting this worker pool. so, you know, that could be a potential ramification as affecting the movement of these types of goods, we're seeing this particularly in our reporting in warehouses and factory settings and, you know, in logistics and such and the movement of goods. >> all right. investigative reporter for the new york continuals steve eder, thank you for coming in and sharing your reporting with us. we appreciate it. coming up, we're joined by the man behind the menu of the first plant-based restaurant to earn three michelin stars.

acclaimed chef and owner of 11 madison park daniel hume will join us next on "morning joe." join us next on "morning joe." only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty, liberty, liberty, liberty. ♪

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the quality of our food, it's changing in front of us rapidly. i started to realize the impact that animal farming has all over the world. i started to realize what was going on in the fish industry. how broken it is. i started to feel guilty because i felt that for a long time i didn't question enough exactly where our food was coming from, like all of our food. when you have that knowledge, you have the responsibility to speak about it. >> so that's a clip from the netflix documentary series you are what you eat featuring our next guest, world-renowned award-winning chef daniel, the

owner of the new york city restaurant 11 madison park, famed restaurant, which he reopened after the covid pandemic in 2021 featuring a completely plant-based menu. the author of a set of books titled 11 madison park the plant-based chapter. of the three volumes detail the transformation of the restaurant in the first planned-based restaurant to earn three michelin stars. it faechures some of the plant-based recipes which made the restaurant so famous. chef daniel joins us now. congratulations on the book. beautiful volumes here. tell us about the beginning of this journey for you both the restaurant and led to everything else about realizing how animals are treated and why you wanted to change how your restaurant prepared. >> yeah, i'm a student of the french cuisine. i grew up in switzerland and i did classic training. my goal was to earn three

michelin stars, and that's what we did. it was a beautiful journey. i was an athlete before cooking, so he had this athlete's mentality, and winning was really important. so we chased all of the awards that were there from the michelin stars to "the new york times" stars and then eventually to this list of the best restaurants in the world, which in 2017 our restaurant was named the number one restaurant in the world. at that time i started to think a little bit more. i reached the mountaintop, and we sort of were looking for the next north star. we started an organization, i co-founded an organization called rethink food. we take foods and prepare meals for people in need, and then of course the pandemic hit and that

put our whole restaurant on hold for almost two years. during that time, i transformed the restaurant into a community kitchen, and for two years all we did was cooking meals for people in need, and it completely changed everything that i was thinking. i reconnected with food in a whole new way, with the language of food. i felt like there was much more purpose in preparing these meals and what we did before. >> when we talk about plant-based, maybe not everyone knows what that means. would you give us an example of what sort of a plant-based meal looks like. i know you do plant-based thanksgiving. what does that look like? >> it's not using any animal products that. what we are currently doing at the restaurant. for thanksgiving, for example,

we have as the main dish it's sort of a squash pumpkin stuffed with stuffing and braised in the oven and we have all of the sides. i didn't grow up in america, but i am aware that the sides are usually what people are mostly about anyway. i mean, i don't know how many people really love the turkey part, but it's really about the sides. >> so, daniel, let's say you can't get a reservation or maybe you don't live in new york or maybe it's not in your budget. but you also are an american who cares about where your food comes from. >> of course. >> and who wants to eat a little healthier and think about the plant and animal welfare. do you have any tips for americans in that position? >> well, every choice matters. every meal matters.

i am not 100% vegan either. although i think as the restaurant, it's important to be going all the way and has moved us creatively to show the beauty and everything that's possible. the truth is that every meal really has an impact on the environment and we do need to reduce how much meat we eat, even if you just start by one day a week or two days a week, andets also healthy. >> the new three volume book set, 11 madison park, the plant-based chapter. you can preorder it now online. it will be available on tuesday. chef daniel, thank you very much. >> thank you for having me. ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪ medicare and medicaid, i have some really encouraging news that you'll definitely want to hear. depending on the plans available in your area, you may be eligible to get extra benefits with

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good morning and welcome to a special post-thanksgiving edition of "morning joe." it's now 9:00 a.m. on the east coast. we are on tape this morning with some of our top discussions from recent weeks. take a look. ♪ how many seas must a white dove see ♪ ♪ before she sleeps in the sand ♪ ♪ yes, and how many times must they fly ♪ ♪ before they fall ♪ ♪ the answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind ♪ ♪ the answer is blowing in wind ♪♪ >> that was the great bob dylan back in 1963 performing classic song blowing in the wind. that song, along with dillon's life, are celebrated in the book

from pulitzer prize-winning writer peggy noonan entitled a certain idea of america. "the wall street journal" columnist hopes to teach readers how to see and love the united states. and peggy joins you now. it's good to see you. >> wonderful to see you. good morning, mika. good morning, joe. >> good morning, peggy. it's so great to have you here. you know, your book is a wonderful read and it reminds me in part of charles hammer, who i absolutely loved his work and writing, when charles wrote his last book, he said, this isn't going to be about the day-to-day of politics, the messy details that will not survive decades. i am going to write about things that matter. bigger things that matter. and that's what you say here. this isn't about the day-to-day

scrum of politics. it's about something bigger. talk about it and why you decided to write this book. >> well, a publisher came to me and said, let's do a collection, and i thought, i don't know about that, and we looked at what i had written the past few years and we continually saw is a kind of attempt to celebrate great lives and see america in some sort of fresher way than perhaps we'd been seeing it for the past ten years, and we simply picked columns that were about great men and great women, great moments in history, great literature, geniuses like bob dylan, who is not only of course an iconic figure and a great songwriter, a winner of the nobel prize in literature. so we weren't leaning towards

some sort of positivity, but we were leaning towards there are good things here. let's talk about them. >> and let's talk about them. first, though, if you don't mind, if we don't talk about the scrum of politics, the current situation, because i think about you, and you have sort of this sort of perfect arc to explain a lot about what's happened in the democratic party. if i remember your bioright, you know, you were out as a young child with jfk flyers. your family was democratic. >> yeah. >> you came from, like, mike barnicle and chris matthews, you came from a catholic, irish catholic family. and we just had on a few minutes ago sherri brown, who was really a champion of working families and seemed better connected to working families in ohio up

until this election. then, i think, any democratic on the scene, and he got blown out. and so we asked him, he is still grappling with it, i am curious as somebody who has seen this full arc, what do you think? the disconnect between working class families and democrats, what do they need to do in your mind to reconnect? >> well, i listened to senator brown very closely, and i thought his mind was very much on the right things, but this is the way i see it. going through my life from the time i was a kid to the time i was a young woman, the democratic party was seen as three things. a, it was the party of the little guy. it was the party of the nobody. it was the party that was going to take care of people who were not protected in america. two, it was the party of

generous spending. they weren't too tight with the purse strings. they thought, spend the money, we will make it up at the end. three, they were the anti-war party by the '60s and '70s. joe, it seems to me they have ceded that territory to the current republican party, to the trumpian party. the trumpian party, republican party, says, we are the party of the little guy. we are the party of generous spending. you think you guys can spend? hold my beer. >> exactly. >> you know, we are the anti-war party. so, mika, if the democratic party was on these resting on these three pillars, little guy, anti-war generous spending and that's all gone, and they seem the part of an academic administrator of brown university, not the little guy, and they seem more activist in the world and they are only as

big spend as the republicans, they have lost their pillars, that means they either have to rebuild those pillars or find new pillars. that's how it seems to me. >> mike? >> peggy, i was skimming through the book about 5:30 in the morning and i came to a dead halt when i got to page 188 and your portrait in 2018 of a man i know and have truly admired and he is horribly midcast in the ken lan doan. >> he was a little kid on long island, an italian-american from a plain, regular family. born, i think, perhaps about eight decades ago, and went on and tried you know, ambitious kid, poor student, ambitious guy.

got through college with the help and-kurj. of a lot of people. he tried to get a job on wall street because he thought, i'm an american, i'm gonna get rich. on wall street they said you are a tall italian-american kid, you can work in the back with the irish and jewish guys, you know what i mean? it was a whole other world 50 or so years ago. anyway, he started pretty much his own life as an investment banker, and he went on to invest in great things, and he was a very wealthy and philanthropic person now. and he wrote a book about, hey guys, you know, you can complain about this, complain about that, but free market capitalism is the thing thatly a laos lives to happen because it makes jobs, which allow families and burgeoning and generosity. so he is just a regular american, and i thought, you know, give him some praise.

>> peggy, as i was looking @book this morning, i remember you and i were on a panel at a church taping some tv show years ago. it struck me, stu is a whole-column and opened the book with billy graham. i grew up in a black baptist pentecostal environment, billy graham was an idol to my mother. and one of the things that people don't know about his evangelism is he reached out to dr. martin luther king. talk about billy graham 's impat on america where he was the president's preacher across party lines for decades and took courageous stands even though he was the, if i use the term, godfather of american evangelistic kind of rel vus tradition. >> yeah. thank you, reverend al.

he was -- he was an ecumenical figure, billy graham. it was the years just after world war ii when he came up, and he was this young southern preacher. and he wanted to bring christ to the masses. so he started holding rallies and word god around and the rallies got really huge and people who had previously not had faith through, say, the great depression and world war ii, or had seen their faith grow vague or without an animating spirit, they started to listen to him. they flocked to his rallies. they invited their friends. am but the ecumenical part was that he wasn't saying, be a protestant, be a catholic, be this or that. he was saying, love christ. of this is who he is. and talking about him and reading, he had nothing in his notes but the bible, which he would quote. and he became a great figure.

you know there is a beautiful portrait of him in the british, i guess, netflix series "the crown" in which he goes to london, billy graham, and gives a series of fabulous rallies in england and the queen of england sees him and thinks, my faith isn't so great. maybe i could meet with him, and calls him in and they have lunch and talk about the more important things in life. i just think, you know, when i was coming up, reverend al, pretty much when you were coming up, guys like billy graham were so impossibly old-fashioned and some kind of southern kind of gavel-smacking pony, and phonye wasn't that. he was a great man and he gave his life to his beliefs and he really meant it. >> a certain idea of america is on sale now. pulitzer prize winner and "new york times" best-selling author

peggy noonan, it is great to see you and great to have you back on "morning joe." >> wonderful to see you guys. i give you a kiss. >> all right. thank you. see you soon. coming up, joe's interview with oscar-winning actor al pacino about his extraordinary life and career. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. we'll be right back.

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there is a plane waiting to take us to miami in an hour. don't make a big thing about it. i knew it was you, frido. you broke my heart. you broke my heart. >> that is one of the most iconic scenes arguably in movie history, featuring al pacino in the godfather ii. last week joe had the chance to sit down with the legendary academy award-winning actor who

recently released his memoir entitled sonny boy, which was his childhood nickname. pacino and joe reflected on his incredible journey from an apartment super in manhattan to one of the greatest characters michael corleone under the direction of francis ford coppola. take a look. >> it's a great honor. >> thank you, joe. >> you had a lot of odd jobs. reading it this book i found out i lived in an apartment on 68th and central park west. >> i can't believe it. >> i am walking in. this lady goes, you know, pacino was a super here. he may have been one of the worst ever. yeah, yeah, whatever. then i am reading the book and you actually -- you were the super at this apartment complex. >> i was, like, young 21, 22. i had -- someone took a photo of me, actors get photos, by 10s.

i put it on the door of my -- with band-aids to keep it on the door of super. i put super underneath the picture. >> you went through some tough times. martin sheen, who is just a wonderful, beautiful man. >> oh, yeah. >> that comes through in your book, too. talk about marty sheen. >> he came into my class and he just did this ice man cometh monologue. i never seen acting that great. it was great acting. i was enamored with him. he and i would, there was a place called the living theater on 14th street and 6th avenue, and we were working for them at the theater putting down the -- you know you have to set up the stage before the actors start doing it at 8:00. we lay the rugs and stuff. i remember being in the back with him and we were dirty

because we used to clean the toilets and stuff like that. we are sitting in the back. theater looking at the play. saying, my god, look at that, that's amazing. >> you had success in the theater. >> yeah. >> and then your agent says to you? >> i need you to fly out to the west coast, see francis ford coppola. >> francis saw me in the play, and i had a manager by that time. i had done a couple of plays. i also won a tony award. >> right. >> so i was a little bit in the conversation. >> right. >> so, obviously, he saw the play. and he asked me to come out to san francisco to the agent. i thought, i don't want to go there. i was afraid of planes. >> you didn't want to fly. >> yeah. so my manager says you are going out with me, i'll go with you. so i went there and i got to know francis. so he knew me a little before he

called me for godfather. >> he believed in you. >> he did. >> nobody else did. >> yeah. >> and you felt it? >> well, he called me at my house a year later. this is how this thing works, what we do. it works that way. and he said, they gave me "the godfather." i'm directing "the godfather." wow, that's good. i knew this was a great big book. everybody read it. it was one of those. so it was going to be a movie, wow. then he said, yeah, i said, that's great. he said, yeah, and i want you to play michael. >> couldn't believe that? >> no, i said he is going too far. he is out there in san francisco. god knows what he is taking right now. practically humored him until i thought of paramount pictures. paramount pictures, i thought high as him, they are smart. they know how good he is.

they know how much he is a genius. and so i thought, well, they're smart. and he wants me, and that's not so smart. you know, i'm just -- anyway, i said call my -- i call my grandmother up. she was the only one left in the family. i said i think they are asking me -- you know the book "the godfather"? yeah, yeah. they want me to be in it. can you imagine that? i would play michael. >> she calls me back in 15 minutes and says, oh, sonny, granddaddy was born there. corleone. >> unbelievable. >> my grandfather was born in corleone, sicily. >> and you had to start thinking about it? >> i did. this is great. this is the fates or whatever. >> but you had so many challenges that in that role. the execs didn't want you.

you said it was tough. the actors were supportive, but there is a scene, again everything you write is so vivid. coppola says, i need to talk to you, and he is eating dinner with his family. and you are forced to do what? to stand there by the table? >> yeah. and i'm standing there. it's vivid to me. i am standing at the table. i know the family. >> the family is sitting it down. >> eating. so i'm standing there, and francis is eating and he just is like this and saying, you know, you know how much i feel about you and how much i stood up for you and wanted you and -- and i'm standing there saying, yeah. i know what's coming. so he says, and you are not cutting it, man. you are just not doing it. i thought, what am i not doing? i am not doing anything. to myself. i didn't say anything.

i said, wow. he says, look, i put rushes together, meaning film we had shot already, it was in the can and they were going to to show to me. he said go look at it, it's at paramount. >> go in peace and may the lord be with you. >> i was like, nice standing with you, and left. enjoy your dinner. i will just go out and kill myself. it's okay. so i went to the paramount thing. i started looking at the rushes. and i thought, wow, this is not so bad. i mean, i am looking at myself because i planned it. >> it's planned as an artist, you are starting. >> that's right. >> it has the built, right? >> exactly right. >> and they gave you a lousy scene starting. >> johnny is my father's godson. >> what are we supposed to do? >> a couple of teenagers.

>> exactly. >> and i didn't want it to blend because may idea of the part was that it would finally show itself and at the end of this kind of this film, this guy becomes a sort of enigma and that was all my thoughts. i think francis felt the same way, too. but i couldn't communicate at that -- either at amount of experience i had. i don't know what kept me from saying this. when i saw the footage, i thought -- >> you felt good? >> i felt, it's not very good, so to speak, whatever that means, good, and then i went back to him and i couldn't tell him that this is all a plan, plan sis. i couldn't articulate it. i said, i see what you mean. i see what you mean. i know what you're talking about. meanwhile, i went in the church. i was sitting had in a pew just

thinking, talking to god. and i said, well -- so i went, next thing you know they are doing the scene in the restaurant where michael shoots him. so i was prepared for that a that was sort of cool. i could do that stuff, you know. i mean, that was the pivot. a pivot, you know. and the scene is very clear, you could understand what's going on. and it builds good. i went in there and i did it. the story wasn't supposed to be shot that day. >> right. >> they were looking to fire me, you know. and they moved it up. and i did the scene, and, you know, it came off. those two guys are such great guys. i they were so food to me. such good actors. and they knew something -- >> they knew. that's what you said about all of the actors in "the

godfather." they knew you were in trouble and like they put their arms around you? >> exactly. >> that's so awesome. >> and, you know, i will never forget it. >> of course, everybody looks back and go, of course "the godfather" is going to be a great hit. of course it was going to be a classic. but actually while it was going on you said as an actor, you don't really know? and everybody has doubts because it's really -- you do your parts. you belief. you start something. it's what they do with the editing, what the director does. you said there was one moment where you said, you know what? we may have a shot, and it's when you see francis ford coppola weeping in a cemetery. >> it was burying the godfather, that scene, everybody is at the cemetery, people coming in, coming out. the day is over. i am happy because i could go

have a drink. i had no lines that day. so i felt kinda good. so i go walking, you know, gingerly to my camper. there i see sit willing there in a distance francis coppola on a tombstone and he is balling. he is heaving. i mean, he is just -- i said, what's the matter, francis? and he looks up. the tears in his eyes. he says, they won't give me another setup. they won't give me another setup. meaning another shot. >> right. >> and i thought, this guy. he cares. my god. look at him. i mean, he is -- i don't know what to say. i just said, uh-oh, i think he is going to -- he is on to something. if he cares this much, this passion for that thing, that's a good sign. so then i started to think,

maybe this is a good movie or something. >> coming up next, we will have more from joe's sitdown with al pacino where they talk about his struggles with fame and addiction. ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪

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boy." here is more of that interview and we talked about his struggle to deal with his newfound fame after the success of "the godfather." >> a lot of people don't want to talk about this, how suffocating fame was for you. the first time you are on the corner. there is -- she goes, high, michael. you are like, uh-oh, right? >> my world is over. >> my world is over. >> dumb ass world is over. >> you started drinking more as far as sort of, like, self-medicating just the pressure, the anxiety that came with -- talk about that. >> well, it was very strange to have this. you know, i was shot out of a cannon. that's what it felt like and that's how i adjusted to it. probably no wonder i didn't look at "the godfather" much. it reminded me of the state of my life, i guess. i didn't know how to take advantage of that. i didn't know how to take advantage or recognize what was

going on because we usually earn friendships because we earn them. people, we get so -- i like him or i like her. we enjoy each other's company because we do things which a part of our soul, part of our humanity, and that's how you -- and you get -- that's how you make friends. i didn't have to do that. i stand there and everything came to me. now that's a dream, right? that's like, i wish i had that. sometimes when you are driving around, i wish everybody would -- the traffic what just clear up and let me through. and you have that feeling. you to don't know how to handle it. i didn't know how. i wasn't prepared for it. >> so you sort of self-medicated? >> yeah. >> with drinking? >> yeah. and then i started doing other films and started working, because working has always been my life boat. my life raft, working. that kept me alive. that keeps -- knock wood, keeps

going. >> and i cross myself. exactly. you know, there is this great scene -- because you -- there is the madness after "the godfather" and the craziness and everybody's around. >> yeah. >> hollywood finally decides they are going to give you what you should have gotten 20 years earlier, an academy award. and you write about how there wasn't the after glow. you weren't pumping your fists. there was actually a really zen moment on the plane. >> yeah. >> can you tell everybody about that? >> well, there was before i won it and then after i won it. there is a good story about "serpico." being nominated and then getting so high and drunk that i wouldn't know how to get on the stage. >> so diane keaton, jeff brings, you are there, and you are so

high, so drunk that by the time that -- you are like, i hope i don't win this. >> right. >> i am not -- >> i knew -- i went there, you knew i wouldn't win. charlie went with me. bregman, who produced it. we are not going to let these guys down. i go to the thing. i sat there with dianne. we were very close and we sat there and i was very drunk. i had to go on a plane. but i sat there and i looked sort of impasse i have, you know, kind of -- but at the same time, i'm thinking, well, we're watching this, and i am telling her little jokes, you know. little jokes. she is laughing and i'm telling the jokes. as i tell them, i am popping valium, boom, boom. then i turn and jeff bridges, the great actor is sitting next to me. he didn't know me. he knew me. i didn't know what it was. he was looking at me. he might have seen me taking all these pills. i don't know what it was. he was indifferent. i said to him, look, i guess,

you know, they are not going to get to the best actor award. he said, what do you mean? and i said, because it's an hour's gone by. no best actor. he said to me, this is three hours. three hours. oh, my god. i am not going to make it. i know it. i am not going to make it. so i went into some spasm. i said, thank you. >> and i sat there with dianne. i said this is three hours long, and that's what my whole feeling was. the fear mixed with the, i don't belong here kind of feeling. i don't know what it was, what made me like that. when jack lemmon won -- >> yeah, jack. >> oh, this is a great guy. look how happy he is. his fellow actor. >> exactly. >> i knew i couldn't make it up on that stage. >> but you got up to this --

>> i didn't have a speech. ♪♪ ♪♪ >> and then after you won you were very zen about it. it was you. it was the oscar on a plane. and you were fine, right? >> i just -- bregman called me back. i was doing carlito's way. i had to get back on the set. and i didn't get a chance to enjoy that evening or live it. i had to get back on a plane and go back to new york to do this thing. i sat on this big plane by myself, my girlfriend was staying in california and i was by myself with my oscar. >> right. >> and i held my oscar. and i remember the time when i was on the subway train when i got into the actor studio. i must have been 22, 23. i looked in the mirror, you know, the reflection. i remember standing there

thinking, i am an actor. i'm an actor now. i am in the actor's studio now. i'm an actor. and i said i would -- i said, i got an oscar. wow. it just -- and it felt good. and i just -- and for two weeks after, you know, it's like winning the olympics. people come up, hey, al! great! and you say -- and then it's gone. >> it's interesting though. you win, but you are a working actor. like you said earlier, it's your life raft. even going into "serpico," you realized you had a girlfriend and at that stage you realized i am just not going to be able to really commit to anybody. >> that's right. >> and do what i'm doing, right? >> yeah. >> that is -- >> i saw that because -- i saw it -- like really getting in the way. and i was young at the time i

did "serpico." i was very -- i didn't even know where i was, i know. i was drinking, of course. but i was also having a good time, too. that was my life. it was just, you know, coming, going, who cares? i don't know. i have my booze. that's all i know. i am taken care of. but it was a pleasant time for me for a while. >> for a while. but you had your booze, and then you didn't. you said, hey, didn't work with you:talk about how -- >> well, i was getting there. i was on my way to something that was, you know, brings unhappiness. >> right. >> and tragedy sometimes. i remember just going -- and i had a hard time, i have to say, it was difficult to do godfather 2 because the character was so, you know, omnipresent and difficult things i had to do. >> no way you could ever forgive

me. not with this sicilian thing that has been going on for 2,000 years. >> he kills his own brother and he goes through so much. at the same time i was once again broken up, i was alone. been traveling all over with "the godfather," different places we went to. >> i almost died myself. >> in my home! in my bedroom where my wife sleeps. where my children come and play with their toys. >> and i think it weighed on me. i came out of that and then i did dog day afternoon, which was, you know, that was wild. >> nobody move! get over there. okay. get away from the alarms. >> and i don't know. it just sort of crept up on me.

i didn't know whey was doing really. i knew it when i was working. when i was developing characters and doing plays, whatever, i knew what i was doing. but handling a life at that time with what i was imbibing in, all this stuff that i -- you know, i am not saying i didn't have great times, but it was -- it got not so good. and then pretty soon, later i found myself -- i took off four years. four years i took off. that's when i had a few failures, big-time failures. >> say hello to my little friend! >> "scarface" was a huge failure, by the way. not many people know that. >> i didn't know that. it was a huge failure? >> yeah, when it came out. >> financially? >> the audience came, but not in droves. after a while, you know, it was difficult because this movie is different. >> that's okay.

you tell frank i keeping this guy on ice for him. >> and then it started catching on. you had hip-hop. the hip-hop generation just took it and the rappers took it and made it and embraced it and understood it. then it went out of -- and on to vhss came out. all of a sudden this thing, the dvds, this thing spreads all over the world and it kept going. it was this, you know, out of nowhere. the biggest movie i ever made. "godfather" is, i guess, but it's close. it's close. >> and we have more of joe's wide ranging conversation with al pacino just ahead. they will talk about "the godfather," hollywood fame and the oscar-winner's near-death experience with covid straight ahead on "morning joe."

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gina, gina, the face. >> hello, mr. shores. >> hello, gina. i have a meeting with a very handsome cowboy man. >> he is waiting for you in the bar. >> well, since i just finished watching the film festival, i think i know who you are. put it there. >> it's my pleasure, mr. schwartz. thank you for taking an interest. >> al pacino in a late career role as a classic movie agent from quentin tarantino's "once upon a time in hollywood". "sonny boy" is the name of his just released memoir. here in the final part of a revealing conversation with the legendary actor we get the story behind some of his past financial struggles and his tumultuous up bringing in the

bronx. >> i have to say, i have never heard until this book came out about how you were fleeced. >> fleeced? >> out of money. >> well, yeah. all my money was gone. >> all your money was gone, from 50 million to money. >> a fool is soon parted. >> your father, the accountant -- >> may father was an accountant. >> how did that happen? >> i don't know. i just didn't think about money. some people don't. you think about it, of course, especially, you know, when you have kids. then it comes into play. i think, yeah, my thing with money, and then i find out that it's gone. all of it's gone. i got about three different places live. supporting how many -- >> $400,000 landscaping -- for a house that you said you never went to. >> well, when i was in l.a. i never went to. but i didn't look at certain

thinking. and unfortunately i still don't, you know. i think that's -- i have to be aware of those things. and it was a big thing. and my accountant went away for seven years, prison. >> a couple things about this book stood out to me. one, really vivid, vivid storytelling, right. you can tell you grew up around people that tell stories, and the second part, strangely enough, you had this really big character, huge character, "scarface," everything else, but there is a humility here. a humility through the whole thing. there are no how i won the war stories in here. there is a real humility, and a gratitude, right? >> that's good to hear. >> is that your grandparents? >> everything in the book, i think it was -- well, the environment i grew up in was, that was southernly from my grandfather. i know that. my mom, too.

she was that way. i guess i was the showoff in the apartment. i remember coming in every time i came in the apartment. >> i would do this whole thing with death and i would just fall down. they got so used to it. i was swinging on the fire escape and i fell on my head. i had a concussion, man, a bad one. i think it affected my whole life. >> and pretty positive way. >> well, and i thought, why is my brain in a fog. i had covid three times. they say it fog up in covid. >> of course, you almost died. >> well, yeah. >> you are a little skeptical. you say i am not so sure i died? >> i am not sure. there i was. i am talking to the guy giving me, you know, iv, and so he is doing that. i am looking at him trying to remember his name. gone. so it was gone.

and i thought, i couldn't think of anything. i didn't think anything. i opened my eyes and there was five or six paramedics in my living room and there were two doctors with -- covered from head to foot with this stuff. >> right. >> like they were on another planet. an ambulance -- because i told mike, my assistant, they told him that my pulse stopped. that's a tough thing to hear. you get a little panicked from that. but i don't know. how could all those people have gathered there, you know, and were ready to take me somewhere and it had to take more than 30 seconds. it had to take like four or five minutes tops, right? i couldn't withstand that if i was dead, right? my brain dead? no. so that's how i -- that's the aftereffect. i kept thinking about, did i really die? to be or not to be?

>> exactly. i wanted to read the end of the book here. it's beautiful. you said this life is a dream, as shakespeare said. >> yeah. >> i think the saddest part about dying is that you lose your memories, and memories are like wings, they keep you flying oik a bird on the wind. if i'm lucky enough, if i get to heaven perhaps, i will get to reunite with my mother there and all i want is a chance to walk up to her, look in her eyes and simply say, hey, mom, look what happened to me. >> oh, gee, that's great. >> what a ride. >> what a reader you are. >> what a ride. >> that's beautiful. >> what a ride. talk about that. like, what -- look what happened to me. a kid from the bronx that -- >> yeah. >> poor, hungry. you went through the tragedy of losing a mom, having an absent dad. >> well, what i had though is i

had a connection to the streets with my friends. i think that's what saved my my life because i really loved my friends. unfortunately, they all went the way of the needle. but i loved them. and it was a real -- i always felt this close, like tom sawyer, it has that sort of reflection there. we were adventurous. we were street people, but we were together. and we lived in this world where we were from time to time threatened and had to go out. there were times we were together, helped, you know. and but just living through all of the adventures we had. >> you said the one thing that you had that your friends didn't have, your mother, grandparents that cared for you, loved you. >> that's right. >> even grandparents that you didn't remember until later on were there for you. >> that's right.

>> helping you through, right? >> that's right. i had family. and that's what it is. it's family. >> well, i mean, that -- that's what this is about. >> yeah. >> i think i know you on the screen. love you, read about the -- really learned so much about you. i am so grateful. >> yeah, i really learned about you. you are a really good interviewer. >> oh. >> but you do a lot of other things, too. i know that. >> storytelling is amazing. thank you so much. >> thank you so much. >> and that's it for this hour of "morning joe." we hope you have a great day. the news continues after this short break right here on msnbc. ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪