of outrageous pardons, including the january 6th rioters, and they will point to this as somehow providing them with some cover. the everybody does it argument. so, i understand and i sympathize with joe biden as a father, but i think that this is an unfortunate precedent and i think it lets donald trump a little bit off the hook. look, i also understand how frustrated democrats have gotten with the asymmetry that we are supposed to defend all of these norms when trump is trashing all the norms. i think this is unfortunate. i think it was a mistake. >> that's a good point on the asymmetry. odds trump is trashing trash ing norms but i think this was a mistake. >> trump would issue these pardons regardless but now he has a talking point. charlie, we will talk to you soon. thanks for getting up "way too

early" with this on this monday morning. "morning joe" starts right now. >> it doesn't surprise me that he will pick people that he believes are very loyal to himself and that has been a part of the process. every president wants people that are loyal to themselves. but i'll share you with that chris wray who the president nominated the first time around. i think the president picked a very good man to be the director of the fbi when he did that in his first term. when we meet with him behind closed doors i have no objections how he handled himself so i have no complaint about the way he has done his job right now. >> republican senator reich rounds of south dakota -- mike rounds of south dakota expressing his support for christopher wray after donald trump announced over the weekend he will nominate loyalist kash

patel for that position. we will have more from the controversial selection from the president-elect. we will dig into newly surfaced allegations against trump's pick for defense secretary pete hegseth. as reports of whistleblowers have surfaced detailing years of troubling behavior. we will go through president biden's pardon of his son hunter who was set to be sentenced later this month on federal tax evasion and gun charges. good morning! welcome to "morning joe." it is monday, december 2nd. with us we have the host of "way too early" jonathan lemire. and richard haass of the "the weekly newsletter." >> we have a lot of great guests ahead to talk about the two big stories this morning. one, kash patel and the breaking news over night regarding pete hegseth. more information. we will also get to the hunter

biden pardon later. first, jonathan lemire, this is one of these moments. we hear what people talk about flooding the zone and a lot of information coming at you all at once and not being able to sort through things. there are two picks right now that, if you talk to people in washington, d.c., they will, this morning, tell you two of the most dangerous selections they have seen, number one, pete hegseth. simply because he is unqualified to run the no complicated and most powerful bureaucracy, not only in america, but in the world. and number two now, kash patel. he is a person who infamously said he was going to jail reporters and journalists and news people who did not go along with the 2020 election conspiracy theory.

and we are going to be talking in a little bit to elena plot cabrera who wrote a story about six months ago on kash patel. let me read you just a little bit from that. when patel was installed as chief of staff to the acting secretary of defense after the 2020 election, mark miley who was the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, advised him to not break the law. quote, life looks really shitty from behind bars, milly reportedly told patel. when trump talked about naming patel for the director of the fbi, bill barr confronted the white house chief of staff and said, quote, over my dead body." when in the nal weeks of the administration, trump planned to name pat did el as director of

the cia, the head of the cia threatened to resign. trump relented only after an intervention from mike pence and why did so many top officials fear him. we will go through. certainly because he is not an expert in any of these fields and not even because he is an idea log. focus on exacting revenge on people who did not carry through donald trump's threats of retribution. he promises to arrest journalists and reporters and news people who refused to go along with the 2020 stop the steal conspiracy theories.

i mean, this -- again, we will be talking about pete hegseth in a second, exploding information from two whistleblowers coming up. and along with a letter from his mother that was published this past weekend. again, let's keep everything in perspective and let's start with the man that was not selected yet because he would have to fire chris wray first, but the person that he floated out there to serve as fbi director kash patel. >> did he have to fire chris wray? he fired jim comey that almost brought his administration down in 2017. republicans in a flurry and now talking about firing chris wray. most of the people in the golf go along it and this is donald trump's new washington, they believe. the man trump wants to put in

for wray is kash patel. he has as you note no qualifications for this job. many of trump's former aides said as much four years ago. i'm talking to people in orbit the last couple of days. there is no ideology and no agenda other than retribution. patel's one defining character he is simply loyal to donald trump. even inner circle trump members the last few years have been startled by patel's willingness to do whatever trump wants. >> let me stop you right there, jonathan. we need to talk more about this. kash patel is not just controversial among media outlets or democrats. he is not just controversial among republican senators.

he is controversial inside trump's own orbit. you go inside trump's own orbit and it is split down the middle with half the people thinking he is going to be a disaster for any donald trump administration and they never wanted this nomination to see the light of day because, again, that divide goes straight through maga world for those around donald trump. >> yeah. people i talked to say this pick was a nod to the extreme right wing portions of trump base. the steve bannon ultra maga sector here who had been disappointed by trump's convention picks like treasury secretary and secretary of state. this is trump throwing them red meat because he knows he needs to keep them happy but other people in trump world deeply worried about this pick that patel is not only not qualified but dangerous. that he will not think twice or

hesitate in carrying out whatever trump wants people say even for people breaking the law. we will talk about if he can be confirmed much like matt gaetz. that seemed trouble and this seems hardly a sure thing but if he were to fire wray, patel could step if for a interim way 200 or so days. even if he can't be confirmed will enough to carry out some of trump's agenda. >> let's into the man donald trump said he will nominate for patel to serve as fbi director. than ultra pump loyalist saying that the lies were told to steal the 2020 election. federal bureaucrats tried to overthrow the former president. at the end of trump's first term, patel served briefly as an adviser to the acting director

of national intelligence and as chief of staff to acting defense secretary chris miller. during that time, trump proposed that patel run the fbi which bill barr vehemently objected to. barr wrote in his memoir, he told them white house staff of staff mark meadows that patel would get the deputy job, quote, over my dead body. barr wrote that patel had virtually no experience to qualify him to serve at the highest level of the world's preeminent law enforcement agency. the very idea of moving matel -- patel in a role like this showed a shocking detachment from reality. >> that is bill barr's quote, not npr. >> trump also suggested that patel serve as deputy cia

director. then cia director gina threatened to design if patel was installed. in an interview last year, patel vowed to go after judges and journalists and loyalists who he viewed as enemies of donald trump. take a listen. >> kash, i know you probably will be head of the cia but do you believe that you can deliver the goods on this in a pretty short order the first couple of months so we can get rolling on pros kugs? progression prosecutions? yes. we got their names so the fbi can terrorize them. we learned we have to put in all american patriots top-to-bottom and we get them for law enforcement and intel collection and we got them for offensive operations. we got them for dod, cia, everywhere. we will go out and find the conspirators not just in government but in the media. yes, we are coming after the

people who lied about american citizens who helped joe biden rig presidential election. yeah, we will figure it out and we are putting you on notice. >> could you play that again? can we do a, cc to republican senators? hey. mitch mcconnell and chuck grassley. let's see. mike rounds is a great patriot. i'm sure he is already deeply disturbed by this. he said pretty much just that. susan collins, lisa murkowski who certainly stood up to the atrocious election of matt gaetz. this is a long distance dedication from casey to you.

>> kash, i know you probably will be head of the cia but do you believe that you can deliver the goods on this in a pretty short order the first couple of months so we can get rolling on prosecutions? >> yes. we got the bench of the names right now so the fbi can terrorize them. we learned we have to put in all american patriots top-to-bottom and we got them for law enforcement and intel collection and we got them for offensive operations. we got them for dod, cia, everywhere. we will go out and find the conspirators not just in government but in the media. yes, we are going to come after the people who lied about american citizens who helped joe biden rig presidential elections. we will come after you. whether criminally or civilly, yes. yeah, we will figure it out and we are putting you on notice. >> i would love to also play this one more time for all of those wall street billionaires. oh, come on.

he will never put kash patel as fbi director. maybe they have written about it this morning. they certainly have. i'd love to play this for other people who would not want him nominated. republican senators who stood up when their advise and consent power was tested, when it came to matt gaetz. well, this is not a question of either/or. i keep hearing people go, maybe if he says -- they say no to matt gaetz. no, no, no. if somebody threatens the constitution, if somebody

threatens the first amendment. if somebody threatens a basic bill of rights. it does not matter whether you say no to one or two or three of those. you know, the founders did not write that the senate had the advise and consent power for maybe one, one and a half dangerous selections. no. you got for that as many as you need. by the way, this is not uniformly vote no against everybody that donald trump puts up. i think everybody agrees that marco rubio, although not a democrat selection, certainly is within the framework of somebody who could be secretary of state, who knows the issues, who works with people on both sides, who may be an effective secretary of state. same thing with the treasury director. same thing with the treasury director. but not this. play it again.

we will go out and find the conspirators not just in government but in the media. yes, we are coming after the people in the media who lied about american citizens who helped joe biden rig presidential election. we are coming after you. whether it's criminally or civilly, we are ing it out. yeah, we will figure it out and we are putting you on notice. >> this is not only bad for the men and women who run the fbi. this is not only bad for the rule of law. this is not only bad for the first amendment. this is not only bad for the united states of america. this is bad for donald trump. this is bad for the donald trump administration. this is not going to end well. so i think the best-case scenario for everybody is that kash patel and this talk of kash patel ends like the matt gaetz

nomination ended, because this will not go well for anybody. and i believe -- i still believe that there will be four republican senators who will not vote to confirm somebody who says he is going to throw judges in jail, he is going to throw bureaucrats in jail and throw people in jail who does not stop the 2020 conspiracy theory. i got word "the wall street journal" did write about this. >> we will get to that. >> they didn't like it. >> no. let's bring in david rhode and ken delainian, and congressional reporter for "the hill, michael snell. great to have you on board this morning. >> david, how dangerous is this election? let's get this straight, right?

since christopher wray is the fbi director. not like he nominated matt gaetz to be a.g. he put this on truth social. he has to fire chris wray first, a fbi director he appointed himself. if he fires chris wray, which many republicans senators have already expressed concern about and then he moves on to someone like kash patel or say kash patel specifically, how dangerous is that for the united states law? >> it's an unprecedented to politicize the fbi. i've been reading kash patel's memoir. the memoir is very black. he worked as a public defender in florida. he talks about federal prosecutors conspiring against hem and his clients and he works for the justice department in the national security division. again, there are people in the justice department and judges who are ruling against him.

over and over, it's this dark simplistic vision of conspiracies. he is nominated now to be the head of the most powerful law enforcement organization in the united states. and it's just a critical moment. he endlessly talks about deep state conspiracies. again, just to go back. there was nearly a four-year investigation by special counsel john durham during the trump administration. the biden administration allowed it to continue. they looked at all of the deep stake conspiracy theories about the fbi and trump in 2016. no senior official were charged and mistakes were made by the fbi and lower level lawyer pled guilty to changing a document to people throughout the trial and they were acquitted by john durham. these conspiracy theories aren't true and this is a very dangerous moment, i think. >> let's get reaction from people you've talked to, ken, about this potential selection. let's be clear what patel said

he will do if he were to get this job. he would target trump's political opponents, including members of the media. he also said he would shut down fbi headquarters, turn it in to a museum of the deep state in his words. and also purge the roles of those in the preeminent law enforcement agency in this country. what is the initial response to what patel's vision would look like? >> no one would be surprised to know people at the justice department and the fbi, current and former, are horrified. people of will political persuasions by this idea, by the way. the proposal that bill barr amounted to a shocking detachment from reality was to make kash patel the deputy director under chris wray in the prior administration. now wanting him to lead the most powerful law enforcement in the country but one of the most powerful national security agencies. a lot of people don't really

understand the fbi does. the fbi director ields incredible power in the united states. if you don't know about that, ride a biography of jay edgar hoover. they have people can break in your home and plant a bug and you will never know about it and they can get secret search warrants to do that and nobody will find out. they can obtain the phone records of news media and never heard about it including a set of guidelines on that if it is overturned. this is an incredible powerful job and at a basic level, patel is not qualified for it by objective standards. the past three fbi directors have all been very senior officials in the justice department with long experience as prosecutors. then you had louie freeh who is a career fbi agent. these are significant figures in american life. kash patel spent public years as

a public defender. he spent three years in the justice department's national security division. he went to say he was the lead prosecutor in order to bring the benghazi terrorists to prosecution and that is just not true. by objective standards he is not qualified for this job. it's worth remembering how he came to donald trump's attention. this thing called the nunez memo he co-wrote in 2018 that was looking at how the fbi obtained warrants on carter page and the russia investigation. it's worth saying a lot of things in that memo were actually vindicated by the justice department inspector general. the fbi did make mistakes as david said but the fundamental notion that the russia investigation was a hoax, that is just wrong. that is a conspiracy theory. if you don't believe me, go read the senate intelligence report released in 2000 that was cosigned by marco rubio.

i hope he is asked about this at his confirmation hearing. it's a remarkable document that most people don't know what it says or seen. it was signed off by the republican senators on the intelligence committee saying russia interfered in the election and trump campaign was open to those efforts and use that to get re-elected and it called it a massive counterintelligence threat that is patel's foundational beliefs and, the russia hoax is just not right. >> here is a look. the report's language starts -- chairman paul -- to russian oligart. that comes from republicans on the intel committee led at the time by marco rubio.

>> we are not shocked about this because we were warned about this all along. i wonder what a conversation like this would look like in the world of kash patel as fbi director. keep that in mind. everything will be looked at as perhaps an assault on him and perhaps he takes it out on members of the media talking about him using free speech, real information and facts. he said it. we got the warning. many warnings. >> breaking news last night from "the new yorker." i heard the pete hegseth investigation was in grave danger from my insights in the senate before a letter dropped this weekend and before the whistleblower news came out last night from "the new yorker." a fact check about his behavior and now penelope hegseth, the mother of pete hegseth, told her

son he should, quote, get some help. and accused him of abusing multiple women in a newly unearthed email from her back in 2018. the email was obtained by "the new york times" from another person with ties to the family. in it, penelope wrote, in part, you are an abuser of women. that is the ugly truth and i have no respect for any man that belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around, and uses women for his own power and ego. nbc news has not independently obtained the email. the message was sent in the midst of an acrimonious divorce from hegseth's second wife samantha. their marriage ended after trump's choice to lead the department of defense impregnated a fox news coworker with whom he was having an affair. in the letter on friday,

penelope hegseth defended her son and told the paper it's not true. it has never been true. adding i know my son. he is a good father, husband. we will read the full original email in a moment. hegseth's lawyer declined to respond. trump's transition team provided a statement saying it was shameful but not surprising that "the new york times" is publishing a story about one out of context snippet. the entire purpose of this exercise is to malign mr. hegseth. the email comes as seniors weigh the impact of a 2016 sexual assault against him comes to light and no charges were filed in the investigation and hegseth has maintained the encounter was consensual. in 2023, he paid his accuser an undisclosed sum as part of a settlement agreement.

meanwhile, a new piece on pete hegseth was just punished in bl "the new yorker" suggest ug that trump's nominee to run the pentagon was forced out of a previous leadership position for financial mismanagement and -- behavior and being repeatedly intoxicated on the job. it reads, in part, a trail of documents, corroborated by the accounts of former colleagues, indicates that hegseth was forced to step down by both of the two nonprofit advocacy groups that he ran, veterans for freedom and concerned veterans for america. in the face of serious allegations of financial mismanagement, sexual impropriety.

a previously undisclosed whistleblower report on hegseth's tenure as president of the concerned veterans for america describes him as repeatedly intoxicated while acting in his official capacity to the point of needing to be carried out of the organization's events. the detailed seven page report which was compiled by multiple former cva employees and sent to the organization's senior management in february, 2015, states that at one point he had to be restrained while drunk from joining the dancers on the stage louisiana strip club where he had brought his team. they say he was married at the time and other members of his management team sexually pursued the organization's female staffers whom they divide into two groups. the party girls and the not party girls. the new yorker continues saying, quote.

. response to questions from "the new yorker" a lawyer for hegseth replied with the following statement he said came from an adviser to hegseth read in part we are not commenting on outlandish claims through "the new yorker" by a former disgruntled former employee of mr. hegseth. they say hegseth is acknowledging to alcohol in a period of his life when he returned to the u.s. from active military duty and felt loss. nbc news has not seen the

article quoted by "the new yorker." >> quote, a fox news contributor with the rank of captain in the national guard and the ceo of the veterans organization in a strip club trying to dance with strippers which, of course, as the whistleblower report say from 2015 he had to be drag f stage. let's bring from stavridis. mika is going to read the letter from pete hegseth's mother, which aligns with much of what is written here. she wrote that in 2018. he, of course, had an incident that was reported about another event he went to which led to accusations of rape, but also,

again, reported drunken behavior and screaming out in the courtyard of this event. there is so much to ask, but we have been talking about pete hegseth for a few weeks now. that even if he were at a -- he is a -- he would not have the abilities to run the most complicated biggest and most powerful bureaucracy in the world and doing a disservice as i always say, not only to america and the men and women in uniform, but to the president he is supposed to serve. here we find he got booted, according to this "the new yorker" booting heading to two vet groups because of the same drunken behavior and same unfortunate behavior that his mother wrote about and that we reported on this past week. i just got to ask you, admiral, how in the world does any united

states senator confirm pete hegseth to be secretary of defense? >> we don't have audio. >> hold on one second. there we go. let's try that again. >> my fault. my bad. >> the question is given everything, how does any united states senator, republican or democrat, or independent, vote for pete hegseth to run the department of defense? >> i don't see it. let's break it down in to three items. one is this package of character issues and it's the fire parts that you've talked about. there is just too many there for any ration observer to say, oh, that is a disgruntled employee or that is somebody who he worked with a long time ago. these are recent. they are fresh. his mother's comments.

my mom is watching today. your mom is a pretty good source on most of us. i think all of that is almost in and of itself a character issue that is significant. secondly, you haven't mentioned it, but his comments about women being unqualified to serve in combat. i've commanded women in combat. a lot of them, including as young captain of a ship with a mix gender crew that went in to combat to aircraft carrier strike groups and nato, itself. women are 20% of the department of defense and they have performed well in combat. those comments alone, i think, would be pretty close to disqualifying and that is kind of a policy piece. and then, third and finally, you mentioned it, joe and meek, it's the management responsibilities. i spent two and a half years as secretary of defense don rumsfeld's senior military assistant as a three-star

admiral. i've seen that job up close and personal. you look at the people who have held it. i worked directly for bob gates who led the cia and leon panetta, chief of staff in the white house and led the cia. that is the kind of level of experience and management you need to have. when you put all of that together, i'll just close with two words -- nuclear codes. this is a job that goes beyond the range of anything else in the cabinet in its power and its impact, the number of people, the complexity, and the need to model appropriate behavior. >> richard, you're well acquainted with the federal government with the pentagon. give us your sense as to hegseth's qualifications for this job but also consider all of the allegations that are being put forth here, how would this be perceived by the rest of the world were hegseth to get this job?

>> well, look. he is unqualified for this. the one thung in ing he served military and that is significant but from the character issues to the lack of management issues and experience and so forth is disqualifying. this is not a close call. the rest of the world, particularly our allies who depend on us, they see this. this is the sort of thing that is unnerving. look. donald trump is 340 million americans to choose from. we have already been through kash patel and pete hegseth and haven't gotten to tulsi gabbard or rfk jr. people who are ideologically attuned to him. these are people who are probably couldn't get security clearances in some cases, jonathan. the idea that they would then have this enormous responsibility. the other part, by the way, the other thing a secretary of defense does besides manage, he

is also the the president's adviser. this is often the last person in the oval office with the president talking about things when we are about to commit american troops to combat. again, the question you'd have to ask here, have to ask about kash patel or tulsi gabbard are these the people at the end of the day giving advice to the president and you have to trust their judgment. i think the answer is pretty obvious. >> here is the text of the email that pete heghegseth's mother s to him in 2018. it is rough. son, i have tried to keep quiet about your character and behavior but after listening to the way you made samantha feel today and i cannot stay silent. as a woman and your mother i feel i must speak out. you are an abuser of women. that is the ugly truth and i have no respect for any man that belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around, and uses women for his own power and ego.

you are that man, and have been for years, and as your mother, it pains me and embarrasses me to say that, but it is the sad, sad truth. i'm not a saint, far from it. so don't throw that in my face. but your abuse over the years to women, dishonesty, sleeping around, betrayal, debasing, belittling, needs to be called out. sam is a good mother and a good person under the circumstances that you created and i know deep down that you know that. for you to try to label her as unstable for your own advantage is despicable and abusive. is there any sense of decency left in you? she did not ask for or deserve any of what has to her by your hand. neither did meredith. i know you think this is one big competition and that we have taken her side. bunk.

we are on the side of good and that is not you. go ahead and call me self-righteous, i don't care. don't you dare run to her and cry foul that we shared with us and that is what babies do and it's sometime for someone, i wish it was a strong man, to stand up to your abusive behavior and call it out, especially against women. we still love you but we are broken by your behavior and lack of character. i don't want to write emails like this and never thought i would. if it damages our relationship further, then so be it, but at least i have said my piece. and, yes, we are praying for you. and you don't deserve to know how we are praying, so skip the snarky reply. i don't want an answer to this. i don't want a debate with you. you twist and abuse everything i say anyone. but on bhalve of the women and i know it's many, you have abused

in some say, i say, get some help and take an honest look at yourself. mom. >> admiral, i'll have you respond. repeatedly, the mother -- his mother -- it is an extraordinarily painful letter. the mother repeatedly talks about about him being an abuser of women which lines up with the whistleblower report that came out last night, which lines up with the charges that i believe came out about this same time. of course, the mother, as we said at the top, later recanted. but as lawyers would say, the fact patterns line up from the actions "the new yorker" reports this morning that the

whistleblower of these two vet organizations talked about before. then the letter. then the llegations of rape and drunken behavior after that. admiral, again, i go back to the question of how does anybody, when his own mother continually called him an abuser of women, how does anybody in the senate have this man run the pentagon? run the armed services of the united states of america? >> first, that is a heartbreaking letter. >> yes. >> i think we ought to just take a beat here and think of penelope, the mother, and what she must be feeling as she writes a letter like that. then has to troo y to recant itt cetera. my heart goes out to that family. let's part that and now back to the united states of america. that is an important and vital thing.

richard just outlined how this kind of selection hurts us with our allies. think about how this is being received in moscow, in beijing, in tehran, in havana and damascus and caracas. this is not who we want to entrust our national security to. again, character, we have unpackaged, i think, pretty thoroughly at this point to inability to model the behavior and to lead at least 20% of the force, the women. i keep coming back to the management of the size and scale. 3 million people, $800 billion budget. these are enormous burdens we pace on people like robert gates, leon panetta. i don't see how someone like pete hegseth is ready for those

kind of burdens on any of these accounts. >> michael, we had already heard last week, before the thanksgiving holiday, that hegseth's nomination was in trouble now that gaetz had bowed out. he was the one that republican senators were starting to feel leery about. >> sure. >> in the wake of these new allegations, this new reporting, where do things stand now? do you see at least four republican senators who would say no? >> i suspect that this letter in the new reporting from "the new yorker" will make that possibility greater. as you said before this wasn't looking for pete hegseth before the thanksgiving break. senators were giving him the benefit of the doubt saying we will allow him to come sit for his hearing and we will have those conversations but there was a lot of the skepticism, right? he was receiving a lot of that scrutiny and we are hearing from senators they wanted to see more information and i suspect this will put that in overdrive. senators don't have to come in on something if it drops over the weekend if they don't want to but they are coming back to the capitol today and in the

building and i'm sure peppered with questions about this. joni ertz who is a strong proponent against sexual assault until the military has already asked for information on the 2017 against pete hegseth. i suspect we will hear from from more people on a more vocal level. let's look ahead a little bit. if the nomination makes its was i to a potential confirmation hearing. it's an if right now. we saw matt gaetz withdraw before we got do that point. if pete hegseth gets there we will hear about these in stark detail. i suspect we will hear that memo read from senators during that hearing over and over again. it's not the narrative that the trump transition team wants in these waning days of the biden administration as they prepare to head into their first 100 days. but this is ing up a lot of oxygen in the room and seems the trickle allegations against hegseth continue to come out. >> all right.

retired four star navy admiral james stavridis, thank you for coming on this morning and we appreciate your insight. still ahead on "morning joe," we are going to get to president biden's controversial decision to issue a full and unconditional pardon for his son hunter and the swift reaction from capitol hill. we are back in 90 seconds! plans available in your area, you may be eligible to get extra benefits with a humana medicare advantage dual-eligible special needs plan. most plans include the humana healthy options allowance. a monthly allowance to help pay for eligible groceries, utilities, rent, and over-the-counter items. the healthy options allowance is loaded onto a prepaid card each month. and whatever you don't spend, carries over from each month. plus, your doctor, hospital and pharmacy may already be part of our large humana networks. so, call the number on your screen now, and ask about a humana

medicare advantage dual-eligible special needs plan. and remember, annual enrollment ends on december 7th. humana. a more human way to healthcare.

welcome back to "morning joe." a beautiful shot of washington, d.c. is today december? >> it is december, guys. get ready for christmas. >> the first day of december. what an -- >> second! >> is today december 1st? >> are we in january yet? >> no! >> thank you for being with us on december 2nd. i want to really, quickly, richard haass, give us a final word on pete hegseth. you heard what the admiral had to say. your concerns, given all of the information that broke overnight and over the weekend. >> well, i thought the admiral about got it right, joe. there is all of the character issues and they are piling up. and even if every single, you know, no single charge brings him down, the combination becomes really, really difficult for him to surmount. and then there is just simply the scale of this job.

my first job in '79 was in the pentagon. you see the scale of what you've got to deal with and now it's, what, close to 3 million people, civilian and military. the budget -- plus, this is a moment we got real problems with the military, how we are spending the money. we don't have a force that is capable enough. in some ways, we haven't absorbed the new technologies and integrated them. we don't have defense industrial base. so as big as this job traditionally has been, it's going to be bigger than ever now because we are also facing actual conflicts in two geographies and a potential one and a third. so the sheer demands of this job have never been bigger. the idea that we would take a chance at this moment on something so big and so important just seems to me rules this individual out. >> well, there is far more than a chance. this is -- talk about just an extraordinarily dangerous time for somebody ill suited for the

position, just based on his lack of experience. you just start there. david rhode, you add on top of that, again, you add on top of that the constitutional dimensions, the concerns that the military could be used against its own people, david. your concerns, given everything that you heard from the new yorker, that you saw in the letter that was published this week, the information before, the lack of experience. >> the united states, i think, for american democracy to work, there has to be some nonpartisan public service. the military and modern american military is a model of nonpartisanship and one of the strongest policies that exist there. i think by our hyper partisanship, this nomination is sort of an example of that. again, a loyalist, very pro-trump, but lacking the qualifications' it's a broader pattern and talk about the pentagon and fbi.

it's dangerous when you have politics playing a major role in the u.s. military where american lives are at stake and when you have politics and political loyalty, again, playing a role potentially at the fbi, which is, again, an enormously powerful agency that protects americans, but if the fbi comes at you unfairly, it also can ruin your life. >> speaking of the fbi. let me circle back to you, quickly. you were asked about the possibility of pete hegseth getting through actually the senate which, again, based on my reports, even before this weekend, he was already in serious trouble. let's talk about -- we haven't spoken to you about kash patel yet. how comfortable are senators going to be? first of all, getting rid of christopher wray which i would guess the majority of senators right now think he did a good job since donald trump appointed him in 2017.

how comfortable are republican senators going to be agreeing to kash patel as fbi director as he promised to jail reporters, journalists, editors, judges, and others that didn't go around the 2020 conspiracy? >> joe, you present it perfectly there. the conversation surrounding kash patel is split up in two different discussions. a, his background and some of the things you mentioned. taking away security clearances of these career officials who investigated trump during the 2016 election and shutting down the fbi headquarters. there is the background and doesn't get into him serving during the trump administration, some questions he got from the january 6th committee and so forth. then you have the conversation about firing christopher wray. that dynamic was presented, you know, by two republican senators so far over the weekend and again, same situation. news drops over the ekend.

you have only a few reactions and definitely discussions in this in the cal populates on today. he said kash patel has to prove he deserves confirmation in the situation. the other side of the heard from mike rounds the republican from south dakota. he thinks christopher wray has done a good job so far. he was nominated to the fbi director in 2017 and his term is not set to conspire until 2027 and mike rounds is stopping short of a full endorsement of kash patel. the lukewarm responses saying he deserves confirmation are notable because we heard from a lot of trump loyalists in the capitol and hard line republicans saying kash patel is a great pick and get confirmed like ted cruz and blackburn. the cautious and lukewarm approach is notable and the

people to watch who we say are three or four republicans who would take that vote to tank one of trump's nominations. >> well, it is notable and it reminds me of what we were hearing after matt gaetz was selected as attorney general. that, of course, ended up with pam bondi as the selection. >> let's move on. president biden has issued a full and unconditional pardon for his son hunter. biden announced the controversial decision last night after previously saying he would not use his presidential powers to do so. in a statement, biden argues hunter has been selectively and unfairly prosecuted and wrote, in part, there has been an effort to break hunter who has been five and a half years sober even in the face of unreleapting attacks and selective progression. in trying to break hunter, they have tried to break me. and there is no reason to believe it will stop here. enough is enough.

hunter biden would have faced sentencing on december 12th for his conviction on federal gun charges and a separate sentencing on december 16th for federal tax evasion charges which he pled guilty to in september. >> with us now is former u.s. attorney to msnbc and legal analyst joyce vance, co-host of the sisters in law podcast and we will get to you about this important news plus your reaction to the iron bowl on saturday night. first, let's go to ken at the justice department. ken, curious. what is the reaction in and around the justice department on this decision by joe biden to pardon hunter? >> sadness, joe, and some disquiet. not so much about the pardon but about the rational that president biden gave. if he stopped saying president biden is my son and any father would do this is one thing but

he asserted the prosecution of hunter biden was political and selective and officials balk at that. no official that that is true. we should remember that david weiss, the special counsel in this case was the u.s. attorney in delaware under donald trump and joe biden and the biden white house made the decision to keep him on to continue the hunter biden investigation and long before merrick garland was confirmed as attorney general. that was a biden white house decision. david weiss was the prosecutor. they investigated the case. the reason hunter biden is facing prison time, by some accounts he was looking at three years in prison based on the tax and the gun convictions, is because he and his lawyers walked away from a no jail time plea deal and they didn't like it because it didn't give them immunity from different kinds of conduct and they were concerned that he could still be prosecuted under trump administration. so he went to trial. he lost. he pled guilty and he was in a

serious predicament which is probably one of the reasons that joe biden felt compelled to pardon him and spare him from prison. people are very concerned that what this does is it normalized donald trump's world view that the doj is not on the level, that it's politicized, that it's not nonpartisan. that is the big concern that m hearing from my sources. >> yeah. nbc ken, thank you for your reporting. joyce vance, your thoughts on hunter biden being pardoned by his father. >> so i hate to disagree with my friend ken delainian, but look. the reality here is if this was anyone other than joe biden's son, no one would object to a pardon on these facts. the pardon process is meant to do mercy. it's meant to do justice. it's often used for people, most frequently used for people who are guilty of the crimes that they have committed where they are extenuating factors are at

work. and as i say if this was not joe biden's son, no one would object. but we are clearly here because of this as joe biden's son. while judges maim not have seen fit to dismiss the cases under high level standards for selective and vindictive prosecution a clear feeling the cases would not have in the indicted if anyone but joe biden's son was on trial and you can see how this makes since under the circumstances. >> i have been reporting for a better part of a year now about the weight, the personal toll this took on president biden. the concern he had about his son and the guilt he would feel. he would tell his closest allies hunter wouldn't have got that plea deal were he not president and republicans tried to use hunter biden as a weapon here.

i think the outcry president biden and the white house repeatedly said over and over they would not do this and i think that is fueling some of the anger. many people like father, of course, would do this for his son. let's talk about the trump reaction, though, including, i think we should be clear, he probably was going to do pardons any way that he has seized upon this as a talking point that he could do the same, particularly for january 6th -- >> that is the scary dynamic here. you have donald trump saying, you know, he is equating january 6th with these other acts by hunter biden that and that is the difference here. the danger that were normalizing january 6th and what happened there was not unusual and those were just political pros prosecutions. i do somewhat agree with ken the problem they will see the justice department and the whole judicial system is corrupt and that presidents pardon their sons, trump pardoned the charles

kushner, the ambassador to france. so this is this pattern it seems of corruption in washington that americans are so frustrated with. >> charles kushner was convicted of crimes and pardoned by donald trump in 2020. over the weekend, named ambassador of france. we should be clear this is far from the first time that a president has used the pardon power for a family member, for a close ally but this is one with hunter biden who has been such flash point for republicans for years now. we should note congressional investigations in to hunter biden about wrongdoing of father and son went nowhere but it's no surprise they are going to grab on this now. >> of course. joyce, before we let you go, i do want to ask you about your concern about kash patel possibly being the fbi director. a possibility that donald trump would have to fire christopher

wray first that he wants to do but he is talking about putting somebody who has promised to jail judges and journalists and go after people inside the justice department who did not go along with the 2020 conspiracy theories about stolen elections. what are the angers putting in somebody he promised he is going to jail journalists if they didn't go along with the stop the steal conspiracy theory? >> so kash patel doesn't have the experience nor the temperament to ed look the fbi and it's exactly -- to lead the fbi and it's what you're referencing that demonstrates the fact that it's dangerous to put someone like this in charge. the director of the fbi has an enormous amount of power, enormous resources at his disposal. if donald trump is hell bent on engaging in revenge

prosecutions, patel is the one you go to enforce those policies. i have a lot of confidence in the men and women of the fbi, one of the four component law enforcement agencies that the justice department. these are people who understand that they are only supposed to follow lawful orders. these are people who have a way to stand up and push back if they are asked to engage in prosecutions that aren't appropriate. i would hate to see democracy rest on the backs of these people but i have confidence that if it comes down to that, they will push back. this is not a good pick for director of the fbi. of the fbi -- i'm talking to joyce here, can we see joyce? the men and women of the fbi, you believe, the men and women of the justice department, will stand up and be counted and do their jobs. you can say the same about not only generals and admirals but rank and file men and women, the

united states armed forces will medo the same. we have already seen republican senators stand up and say no to sathe possibility of matt gaetz. i've heard reporting they're about to do the same thing on pete hegseth that even before this weekend, we have seen that. and i just -- before we go, i want you to follow up on that, too. we saw it with federal judges and federalist society members who became federal dges doing the same thing over four years.i the message you're bringing here is, even in the face of these terrible challenges and terribly dangerous selection, you believe that there will be people that will stand up for the constitution, for constitutional norms onand freedoms? >> i absolutely do.

there's a strong history, a strong tradition of speaking truth to power side of the justice department. career employees are not political. there's a saying i would use in my office. we are bees. we will be here when they come, we will be here when they go. your job is to set the politics aside and to do the right things for the right reasons in the right way. i think we can count on the career ranks across government to do that. and joe, i think their point here is that we are a constitutional democracy. we have a system [ inaudible ] standing up and doing their job refusing to confirm facially unfit nominallies, whether the courts holding the line, executive branch employees checking power. that's the heart of our system, and donald trump and his followers seek to increase the power of the presidency. they're looking for an all

powerful unitary executive, the battle of the next ufour years the battle for the heart and soul tof democracy, will be se if the guardrails, these very real guardrails, that are set up in the constitution, the three branches, if they will hold against donald trump's abuses. >> former u.s. attorney joyce vance, nbc news national security editor david roids and the hill's mychael schnell, thank you for being on this morning. still ahead, the atlantic will join us with the recent piece on why kash patel's choice to head the fbi is exactly the kind of person who would aide in the president-elect's effort to upend law enforcement. we'll dig into michael tamasky's article warning the law went light on trump and america will pay the price. also ahead, the buffalo bills e ice out the san francisco 49e in a snowy sunday night football

matchup. paul finebaum and pablo tori will join us. 13 action in the nfl. plus the fresh fines for michigan and ohio stits following a fight on the college football field. we're back in 90 seconds.gh backs s make complex trading less complicated. custom scans help you find new trading opportunities, while an earnings tool helps you plan your trades and stay on top of the market. e*trade from morgan stanley ♪ ♪ and stay on top of the market. ♪ something has changed within me ♪ ♪ it's time to try defying gravity ♪

♪ ♪

welcome back. it is monday, december 2nd. let's get that right, joe. the second day of december. december is here. jonathan lemire and richard haass are still with us. let's get back to the top story of the morning when the president-elect takes office he is expected to fire fbi director christopher wray, whom he appointed in 2017 to a ten-year term, and trump says he will nominate former national security council official kash patel for that post. patel is an ultra loyalist who has vowed to dismantle the deep state and to go after judges, lawyers, and journalists whom he viewed as enemies of donald trump. he's even written a series of children's books about the deep

state entitled "the plot against the king." one book is about the russia investigation. another is about a conspiracyist film 2,000 mules which pushed the debunked claims of stuffed ballot boxes during the 2020 election. back in september patel was asked about his plans for the fbi if he was a part of the next trump administration. >> the fbi's footprint has got son freakin' big and the biggest problem the fbi has has come out of its intel shops. i would shut down the fbi hoover building on day one and reopening the next day as a museum of the deep state and take the 7,000 employees that work in that building and send them across america to chase down criminals. be cops. you're cops. go be cops. chase down murderers and rapist and drug dealers and violent offenders. what do you need 7,000 there? same with doj?

what are these people doing here? joining us elaina plott calabro and also with us editor of "the new republic" michael tomasky. good to have you both. elaina, your article from "the atlantic" august of this year entitled "the man who will do anything for trump." will you explain why kash patel is exactly the kind of person who would serve in a second trump administration? i'll read a little more from it because it's very compelling, and it really crystallizes everything. in part you say this, most americans had no idea patel existed yet rarely a day passed when administration leaders weren't reminded that he did. in a year and eight months, they had watched patel leapfrog from the national security council where he became senior counterterrorism director, to the office of the director of national intelligence where he was principal deputy to the

acting director, to the department of defense, where his influence rivaled that of the acting secretary himself. but in the official warnings about the various catastrophic ways the rise of an inexperienced lackey to the highest levels of government might end, all patel seemed to detect was the panic of a deep state about to be exposed. such officials understood that he wouldn't sit quietly to stonewall direct orders from the president. patel was denied a role at the pinnacle of the national security establishment, but trump has promised to learn from his mistakes. should he return to the white house, there will be no milleys, haspels or barrs to restrain him as he seeks revenge against his political enemies.

instead, there will be patels, those whose true faith and allegiance belong not to the nation, but to one man. get ready, kash, trump said before a gala of young republicans, this past december, get ready. >> well, i want to -- a couple things. first of all, i want to -- before we get to you -- i want to play the clip where kash patel talks about going after judges and lawyers and journalists and actually says that he is -- he would arrest journalists and reporters that refused to go along with the 2020 conspiracy theory about the stolen election. take a look at this. >> kash, i know you're probably going to be head of the cia, but do you believe you can deliver the goods on this in a pretty short order the first couple

months so we can get rolling on prosecutions? >> yes. we got the bench for it bannon and you know those guys. i'm not going to say those names so the radical left media can terrorize them. the one thing we learned in the trump administration the first go-round we have to put in all-american patriots top to bottom for law enforcement, for intel collection, we got them for offensive operations, we got them for d.o.d., cia, everywhere. we will -- [ inaudible ] the media, we're going to come after the people in the media who lied about american citizens, helped joe biden rig elections. whether it's criminally or civilly we'll figure that out but we're putting you on notice. >> we're coming after you, we don't know how or why, might be criminally or civilly, but jail journalists. it's very interesting, i read off the top of the show from

your article where mark milley warned him not to do some of the things he was thinking about doing life, quote, looks pretty -- from behind bars. bill barr saying he would be elevated, quote, over my dead body. gina has kel threatened to quit. talk about how these people and trump loyalists like bill barr, what they saw in kash patel and what people -- this is important to say also -- what people inside donald trump's own orbit right now are saying in a very divided sort of incoming trump administration, very divided over whether he's bad for the president or not. what is it that concerned even people inside of donald trump's own inner circle? >> so i think it's first

important to remember how kash patel came to be in the white house to begin with. you'll recall, joe and, mika, that he was one of devin nunes's top staffers on the intel committee and played a lead role writing the republican majority on that report trying to debunk the russian investigation. kash patel essentially became an overnight celebrity through his work on that and even though the inspector general never corroborate the his claims as a multiagency sort of conspiracy to take down trump for political reasons related to the russia collusion investigation, he was really able to elevate that to the next stage and had devin nunes press his case to donald trump to bring him on to the national security council. i think it's also important to note that based on my reporting speaking to kash patel's colleagues in those early days on the nsc, they were quite open

to working with him. they didn't know much about him, other than what little they had read in the news, but when i spoke to people those immediate colleagues who oversaw him, they said they were astonished to the degree by which he seemed entirely uninterested in kind of learning the ropes of the national security council. actually establishing himself and learning more about the role itself, versus just wanting to get face time with donald trump. to me i think that's emblematic of what you would see of his career going forward. kash patel has never been really an ideologue as we traditionally understand it like stephen miller who has a vision of what the national security apparatus should look like. i've always said that his kind of modus operandi is to do whatever it is that donald trump wants him to do that day. joe, as you're tallying off names like milley and haskell and barr, as i spoke to people,

what was it you objected to strenuously, what did you think he was going to do? the response i got was, it's not about what we thought he would do, it's about what we thought he wouldn't do. because when there is no kind of underlying philosophy animating your actions as a government official, that's where i think people were right to be alarmed in terms of, you know, what donald trump might want tomorrow might change the next day, but kash patel would be there with him every step of the way. >> so "the wall street journal" brings up your point that you made earlier. it has a new piece out about kash patel, the fbi and retribution, reads in part this, the main concern is mr. patel's stated desire to use power in a second trump term to seek revenge against mr. trump's opponents. does mr. patel still want to unleash the fbi on democrats and media critics. down that road lies no end of

political trouble for republicans and the trump presidency. >> let me stop there. down that road lies no end of political trouble for republicans and the trump presidency, as the effort is sure to backfire. these efforts always backfire. voters did not reelect mr. trump to practice this the way his opponents act. the country wants a bureau it can trust, not a republican version of comey's fbi. presidents deserve deference on the advisors they want, but the senate plays a crucial role in weeding out bad ones. laumtsz and security posts with vast powers deserve particular scrutiny. mr. patel included.

and jonathan lemire, again, we have talked about -- we talked about how republican senators pushed back on matt gaetz and if you talk to people close to donald trump, they will tell you they believe in pam bondi. they get somebody than matt gaetz. somebody who, again, said some concerning things, but also as florida's a.g. worked with democrats for eight years. you're now seeing it with pete hegseth who we talked about last hour. a lot of breaking news overnight of -- that, obviously, are going to have more republican senators concerned about that and here comes kash patel again. [ inaudible ] republican senators won't be deeply disturbed by for the reasons the "wall street journal" editorial page talks about, and he has promised to go after judges and to jail journalists. >> yeah. the problematic selections of

rfk jr. and tulsi gabbard overshadowed because of all the attention given to pete hegseth and now kash patel where we have heard republicans, not just democrats, but some republicans, express real queasiness about the lack of qualifications. as we mentioned last hour, members of trump's inner circle don't believe that kash patel is right for this job. there's no ideology there as elaina said, just someone who is a yes man and can do dangerous things. michael tomasky we were talking about the numbers game. it only takes four republicans senators to say no, and certainly hegseth and patel seem, at least possible if not probable, enough senators will do that. let's talk about what trump is trying to do here. this is yet another pick that he knows is going to stir a lot of reservation. he knows is going to test senate. at least potentially the point

here, it feels like he's trying to bring the upper chambers to its knees and do his bidding. >> that's correct. i think he has felt that he can do anything he wants. he can metaphorically shoot somebody in the middle of fifth avenue and the senate will applaud. now we've seen maybe that isn't always going to be the case. i personally admit i was surprised that the senators stood up to the gaetz nomination in the way they did and made it clear he wasn't going to pass. i just wonder at this point, jonathan, how many of those cards the republican senate is willing to play. so we have hegseth, we have tulsi gabbard, we have rfk jr. and now we have patel. that's four highly objectionable nominees. those are the first tier. there are the others like the public health people below kennedy are foxes guarding the hen house. let's stick to the four. how men are the republicans in the senate really going to say

no, mr. president, we've supported everything you've done, we've stood with you every step of the way for ten years, and now we're going to get in your way here? maybe one more, maybe two. i would be surprised. >> you know, what's interesting, though, here is it may not be the same that opposed these picks. there may be those who opposed the selection -- each selection for different reasons. you look at pete hegseth, you're going to have people who have committed their adult life to threatening the armed services of the united states of america who are not going to want pete hegseth in a position with nuclear codes, especially after all of the breaking news this weekend. you look at tulsi gabbard, republicans, may not be the same, that would vote against pete hegseth. there are republicans who have spent their entire adult lives trying to strengthen america's intel community.

that is their life's work. i suspect there are going to be enough republicans that say we are not going to turn it over to somebody who continues to excuse assad's worst behaviors or is hailed i think even by some people in the russian media as being someone that spouts russian talking points. rfk jr., those who have committed themselves to health and making america a healthier place. obviously, there may be one or two that have concerns that go with mitch mcconnell, a polio survivor and perhaps susan collins, who is up in a state that went for joe biden and then went again for kamala harris. i mean, so it's not -- it's not just the same saying no. when you're talking about four, chances are very good, are they not, that these senators that have committed their lives to america's national defense, or

the intel community or the health of americans, likely when just playing with those numbers, stand up and just say no? >> i think you're exactly right. in part also because each one of these people if they get to that point are going to have a hearing and so then each committee is going to be able to grab the attention of the american people and the media and we'll see how this plays out. right now none of these people are in the spotlight or in the full glare of the spotlight. i think each committee will then have its own political dynamics and so forth. i can see different coalitions raising questions. also, what's come out about these people for all we know is 10% of what there to come out. let me say one other thing, "the wall street journal" was getting at it and you were getting at it, if some of these people were rejected it helps the trump administration. i would take all of these nominees together and say, this is a real example of overreach. not one of these people ought to get in the job and if they do, i think they'll create problems for the 47th president. not one of them has the judgment

or the experience to be in the job. take tulsi gabbard, for example, we haven't talk about her, given what's going on in syria, the idea we would want someone pro-bashar al assad in that position you may be kidding. trump may be projected if the senate does its constitutional job. >> michael tomasky, thank you so much. his new piece titled "the law went light on trump and now america will pay the price." "the atlantic's" elaina plott calabro, thank you as well. check out her definitive piece and predicative piece on kash patel titled "the man who will do anything for donald trump." available online. mika, i want to underline what richard said what the "wall street journal" has said and i've been saying, these are selections not only bad for the individual agencies or the people they will represent, bad for america, and ultimately bad for the 47th president as richard said and as "the wall street journal" said, these sort

of selections, especially the kash patel selection, will backfire on donald trump. it will hurt donald trump. it will hurt republicans in off year elections. any of niece will do that. just like matt gaetz would have done. so, perhaps, this is him pushing the boundaries. how far can i push the senate? it is up to the senate to actually in this case protect the best interests of the agencies, of the united states of america, and, yes, selfishly, themselves and the 47th president. >> we'll see how they manage through this. >> we'll see if they manage through it. >> if they can. still ahead on "morning joe" some of the biggest highlights from across the nfl yesterday including last knight's game in buffalo where the bills secured another division title. we'll be right back.

with dexcom g7, managing your diabetes just got easier. so, what's your glucose number right now? good thing you don't need to fingerstick. how's all that food affect your glucose? oh, the answers on your phone. what if you're heading low at night? [phone beeps] wow, it can alert you?! and you can even track your goals. manage your diabetes with confidence with dexcom g7. the most accurate cgm. ♪♪ learn more at dexcom.com how easy is it to play the lottery with jackpocket? step one grab your phone.

step two download jackpocket and start ordering tickets for your favorite state themselves and the 47th buffalo where the bills secured themselves and the 47th buffalo where the bills secured jackpocket is so easy to use from home or on the go, and there have been over $500m in total prizes won. so now the easiest way to enjoy the lottery is right in your pocket. jackpocket. download america's number one lottery app today. themselves and the 47th buffalo where the bills secured themselves and the 47th buffalo where the bills secured known for pursuing your passions. no one wants to be known for cancer

but a treatment can be. keytruda is known to treat cancer. fda-approved for 17 types of cancer, including certain early-stage and advanced cancers. one of those cancers is early-stage non—small cell lung cancer. keytruda may be used with certain chemotherapies before surgery when you have early-stage lung cancer, which can be removed by surgery, and then continued alone after surgery to help prevent your lung cancer from coming back. keytruda can cause your immune system to attack healthy parts of your body during or after treatment. this may be severe and lead to death. see your doctor right away if you have cough, shortness of breath, chest pain, diarrhea, severe stomach pain, severe nausea or vomiting, headache, light sensitivity, eye problems, irregular heartbeat, extreme tiredness, constipation, dizziness or fainting, changes in appetite, thirst, or urine, confusion, memory problems, persistent or severe muscle pain or weakness, muscle cramps, fever, rash, itching, or flushing. there may be other side effects. tell your doctor about all medical conditions, including immune system problems, such as crohn's disease, ulcerative colitis, or lupus, if you've had

or plan to have an organ, tissue, or stem cell transplant, received chest radiation, or have a nervous system condition, such as myasthenia gravis or guillain-barré syndrome. keytruda is an immunotherapy and is also being studied in hundreds of clinical trials exploring ways to treat even more types of cancer. it's tru. keytruda from merck. see all the types of cancer keytruda is known for at keytruda.com and ask your doctor if keytruda could be right for you.

trying to get in early rhythm for daniels. robinson on second and one, got the first down and more at the 20, 10, 5, touchdown! >> seahawks load the line and bring pressure. rodgers has it picked off by leonard williams. just the second interception of the big cat's career. is he going to take it to the

house? his own house? he sure is. a pick six. >> from the 40, fourth and 5. cousins. and intercepted. this could go all the way. it's gone! you can kiss him goodbye! >> three tight ends. baker mayfield end zone, high, one handed. that's a touchdown for mike evans. >> it's aaron jones who had the fumbling problems. darnold will look to throw for it. pressure from behind. hits jones out of the backfield, redemption for aaron jones. >> third and eight. >> motion man. knocked away. steelers have done it again! scooped up by wilson, and he takes it in for the touchdown! >> first day. saquon. here he goes, barclay at the 10, 5, touchdown. >> 85% of the targets this year

completed. cooper, back to allen who is going to go to the goal line and get in. >> oh, no! >> some of the biggest touchdowns across the nfl yesterday including the snow bowl in buffalo, josh allen getting credit for a passing and receiving score on that play. the bills secure their fifth consecutive afc title with a 35-10 win over the lowly, i would say this, the lowly 49ers. bring in host of pablo torres, msnbc contributor, pablo torres, and espn commentator paul finebaum. we see barclay and what he's doing for the eagles. >> yeah. >> we see my main man what he's doing for the steelers. it's incredible. >> wilson, sure. >> bill russ. the stupid, the stupid decisions that were made this year. but i want to talk about two games specifically. one, the bills. >> yeah. >> blowing out the niners and,

two, the chiefs. once again, once again, getting by the hair on their chinny chin chin they say, the reason i bring those two things up, i think we will see these two face off and the winner will go to the super bowl and right now, again, again, i always say mahomes always wins the big game, i think this year, though, the bills are in the best position -- >> yeah. >> i think the bills are in the best position -- oh, like -- i'm not always right on this football stuff. >> it's just -- we are gaslighting ourselves on some level, joe. >> all i'm saying is, this is the year inning the bills can beat the chiefs. >> okay. >> write it down. >> there is a case for that. i want to make the case premised on the bills' game, the niners

learned the lesson, napoleon 1812, who learned a lesson about invading buffalo in winter. >> never. >> josh allen has the comfort of, you know, a sherpa in nepal navigating the snow. it's ridiculous how the mvp of the league is a guy 6'5", 250 or so, and he also can move around in conditions beyond inclement. unfair how good the bills are. if the bills can get home-field advantage in the afc, they won the afc east with this game which was not close at all, he also basically clinched mvp it looks like at this rate, if they can get the path to the super bowl to run through buffalo, then the odds given the weather can really, really seem like a realistic case. >> that play, the play, joe, how do you catch and throw a touchdown, just at home, just know this will come up in a trivia contest in the back of your mind remember my voice telling you, know this is how you can do that. i don't know how it's possible,

but we saw it. but if you want to go now, it's ridiculous play. it's a tsh. he's a quarterback. he's a machine. like it's -- you feel like rocky, like crying out. >> yeah. bring it in for a landing, baby. >> i'm sorry. >> tell me how bad the jets are. the jets were bad without -- >> a landing. i see what you did there. >> without aaron rodgers. they're worse with aaron rodgers. is he going to be back next year? >> oh, my. >> yes. what's so funny about this. the jets, just for people who don't remember, they were 7-10 last year. they're 3-9 already. with aaron rodgers. you sort of played at the beginning of this montage to start the segment leonard williams with the pick six and this was a 21-7 game when this happened and this is history, another trivia answer for you,

no one this big, 300 plus pounds has ever run a touchdown back on defense this long. this is a thick six as they call them in football parlance. the thickest of sixes and aaron rodgers is humiliated. i will keep it brief here. you're familiar with the chorus i'm going to sing. the most powerful quarterback in the history of the nfl, the gm of his choice, offensive coordinator, wide receivers and it's this. >> terrible. absolutely terrible. speaking of terrible, i'm wondering, paul finebaum, when is ryan day going to be fired? it's one thing -- i'm serious -- it's lost to michigan four years in a row. there's no reason why he should have lost on saturday to a terrible michigan team, but he did. i'm just curious, how long are the ohio state supporters going to keep this guy on if he can't

beat michigan? >> joe, what's interesting, because of the 12-team playoff he still has a chance to win the national championship. he has the most talented team, but what i think is going to happen is, he must win -- i think he needs to get to the championship game or the heat is going to come down. two things to remember, he has a new boss, ross bjork. he was at texas a&m and fired jimbo fisher, paid $76 million to him to go away. he knows how to pull a trigger. the worst thing ryan day said, this is another conversation, after the game you saw this all over college football, the flag planting, the fights, pepper gas, he said, i don't blame my team for trying to defend the field. you had three and a half hours to do this. it was such an utterly stupid comment by a guy who is one of the worst in-game coaches i've ever seen in big games. it's a conundrum, but it's a real conversation of one of the

winningest coaches in college football could lose his job because he has lost to his biggest rival in the biggest game of the year four straight times. >> again, pablo, i agree. i mean the game was bad. the press conference afterwards worse. yes. my players are -- it's okay for my players to start a riot at midfield because they tried to symbolically put a flag like on top of astro turf. >> yeah. it's the embodiment of college football, and its glory and stupidity. paul knows this. when you can't get a win on the field you get a win in the fight after the game. the ryan day question, it feels obvious to me, because the other embodiment of college football, you can be the number two in the nation, michigan won with 62 passing yards. they did not cover themselves in glory either, but ryan day, if you don't win the game, capital t, capital g, it is a losing season even though they might make a run in the playoff. it's just that embarrassing.

that's college football in a nutshell. >> yeah. that's horrible. paul, georgia, seven, eight overtimes. >> eight. >> two things here. two things here. georgia came through and won in the end. still questions about this team who i think could still win the national championship. but man, i've seen georgia tech and one gutsy performance after another this year. i know they're 7-5. for me from what i've seen this is a special georgia tech team. >> it is. the coach who played at georgia tech and worked for nick saban a couple years ago as you know, joe, was one of the most amazing games of the year, didn't end until after midnight friday night on black friday, and it exposed georgia for really a team that has been exposed all year long and has gotten by --

remember, georgia started the season number one in the country, but can you imagine pablo and joe if we end up with georgia and ohio state, two flawed teams, but that's what this tournament does. doesn't work quite like this in the nfl but in college football everybody now has a path and georgia has the sec championship game saturday and they lost this game a year ago as an undefeated team and didn't go to the playoffs. this year they can use and still in and it would be their third loss of the year. >> so you know, pablo, let's talk about these losses, and i'm curious what your theory is. used to be if alabama would lose one game, it would be a horrible year but we would manage to win a national championship. we're seeing two lost teams. three lost teams. do they still have a shot in i'm wondering, like let's take oregon. i thought oregon was the best team in the nation and then i saw them get knocked around by wisconsin, just battered and

abused by wisconsin. they barely pulled it out. georgia, one half looks like the worst team in the s.e.c. the next half looks like the best team in the s.e.c. i'm curious, are we seeing -- is it the transfer portal and everything that is making this parody impossible to say, who is going to be the best team in the nation at the end of the year? >> yeah. the economy has changed. you can now spend your way into contention, democratization so to speak of the sport is in front of us. i know you are dancing around wondering is alabama still alive in the playoff picture? mika knows. like clemson -- >> i'm desperate to know. >> clemson loses. number six miami, speaking to the parody of all of this loses. they're right there. speaking of the parody. alabama might sneak in as a weird cinderella character after all of this, paul. >> might still have the conversation. >> paul, we're the little engine

that could. >> that's right. >> you know the thing is -- >> saban's picks. >> when miami got beaten by syracuse, obviously, you saw pollsters drop miami, you saw clemson lose, so you're not going to put south carolina in ahead of alabama because alabama beat south carolina head to head and miami has -- one of the weakest records in football, and i'm not making this pitch for alabama, the pollsters for the ap showed it yesterday. miami one of the weakest schedules in football. they still managed to lose two games and could have lost two or three more. there's no way they're going to put miami ahead of alabama. paul, whether we deserve it or not, it looks like after the iron bowl, it looks like alabama's probably going to get in there with three losses. doesn't it? >> alabama will be sitting on the very edge of the playoffs tomorrow night, joe, when the

next to the last reveal comes out and you're right, you know, the south carolina claim is interesting, but alabama south carolina. ole miss, also in contention, beat south carolina at home by about four touchdowns. but -- so -- whether alabama really deserving is no longer really the phrase because it doesn't matter, but alabama has a legitimate shot and lane kiffin said yesterday that alabama will get in because of the brand. you know what, he may be right. there's no more golden name in college football than alabama. only in the playoffs under saban and a flawed year, they have a legitimate shot. and they need maybe one more upset, which they'll pro probably get next weekend. >> we promised you that we would not ask you to discuss the giants, but the ex-giant say kwon barkley. another spectacular game.

the mvp the quarterback's only award. but saquon making a case, seems like the eagles might challenge the detroit lions as the best team in the nfc. if you've got kansas city on the other side against buffalo, the lions and i think the eagles, eagles -- can i say as a giants' fan, which you know i am -- >> [ inaudible ]. >> to watch saquon barkley get a chance to showcase his talents and why the giants drafted him as high as they did i'm happy for the guy. class athlete, elite, wonderful to see and it's actually -- xavier mckinney, same thing, good to see great athletes a good chance not to play on a third-rate team. >> okay. >> how about -- >> a third-rate team. >> thank you. >> all right. paul, good luck. >> host of pablo torres finds out, pablo. thank you.

coming up, back it news and politics with a look at the search for a new leader of the democratic national committee. we'll be joined by the latest person to enter the race, wisconsin democratic party chair bin wickher. "morning joe" is coming right back. "morning joe" is coming right back hundreds on car insurance with liberty mutual. customize and sa— (balloon doug pops & deflates) and then i wake up. and you have this dream every night? yeah, every night! hmm... i see. (limu squawks) only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ it's time to grow your business. create a website.

how? godaddy. coding... nah. but all that writing... nope. ai, done, built. let's get to work. create a beautiful website in minutes with godaddy. (intercom) t minus 10... create a beautiful website in minutes (janet) so much space! that open kitchen! (tanya) ...definitely the one! (ethan) but how can you sell your house when we're stuck on a space station for months???!!! (brian) opendoor gives you the flexibility to sell and buy on your timeline. (janet) nice! (intercom) flightdeck, see you at the house warming. say christmas. christmas! when you want gifts to express a lifetime of love - we've spent a lifetime crafting them. harry & david, 90 years and still sharing.

dexcom g7 is one of the easiest ways to take better control of your diabetes. this small wearable replaces fingersticks, lowers a1c, and it's covered by medicare. not managing your diabetes really affects your health for the future. the older you get, the more complications you're gonna see. i knew i couldn't ignore my diabetes anymore because it was causing my eyesight to go bad. for my patients, getting on dexcom g7 is the biggest eye opener they've ever had. i couldn't believe how easy it was. this small wearable sends my glucose numbers right to my phone or my receiver. with just a glance i can see if i'm going high, low, or steady. so, i can make quick decisions in the moment. now, i'm a superstar. my a1c is 5.7.

my a1c has never been lower. no other cgm system is more affordable for medicare patients than dexcom g7. don't wait! call now, and talk to a real person.

drop everything and get some magic of your own for medicare patients than dexcom g7. during the xfinity black friday sale. xfinity internet customers, our best deals of the year are back! switch to xfinity mobile and get your choice of a free 5g phone, plus your next unlimited line free for a year. get amazing savings and connect to wifi speeds up to a gig on the go with xfinity mobile. fly don't walk to get our best deals of the year. connect to the world of wicked this holiday, in theaters now. the race to lead the democratic national committee is beginning to take shape. four candidates have officially thrown their hats in the ring.

the chair of the minnesota democratic farmer labor party ken martin, former maryland governor martin o'malley and new york state senator james skofus. all putting their hats in the ripping. ring. with us ben wikler who joins us now, and ben, your hat is in the ring. i want to know, you came from a state that kamala harris lost, so what makes you the logical next step to lead the party and the biggest challenge for the party moving forward is? >> good morning. thanks for having me on today. we need a fighter who can unite the party, fight in every state and win even in tough conditions. wisconsin did go for trump by the smallest margin, the smallest twinge of any battleground state. we won 14 state legislative

seats we flipped from red to blue. the reason we could do that because we built a permanent campaign that organizes a red, purple and blue areas nonstop. trump and the maga republicans have taken over full control of the federal government. we know they're going to try to abuse their power and shred the budget to give trillions of dollars to billionaires at the expense of working people and seen this movie before in wisconsin. republicans took total control here and in a frenzy of handouts and right wing attacks, attacked unions, defunded public schools, gerrymandered maps and suppressed the vote. we figured out how to fight back by organizes a in rural and suburban areas and we need to do the same thing nationwide to defeat the threat of the maga extremists and the plutocracy trump wants to create. >> you're saying what happened in wisconsin needs to be done more? are you saying there are no ways the democratic party may need to

change strategy in order to start winning again? >> we need to adapt and change and to your question, what is the biggest challenge we have? we can see in all the data that came out of the last election there are working people across the country, across race and ethnicity, gender, gender, ideology in every part of the united states people who had taken it on the chin with inflation and felt the pandemic era supportes go away, and then had trouble being able to fulfill prescriptions and buy groceries and paying the least attention to politics because they were struggling with so much in their own lives, they're the folks we lost. they were not hearing our message at the volume and with the clarity we needed. if voters only hear about democrats from republicans, we're going to lose. we have to adapt how and where we communicate so we're reaching the people who are not thinking about politics every day, trying to make it through their own lives and make clear to them through our words and actions we are fighting for them against a

group of people trying to divide america in order to enrich themselves and that's what you see around trump and in donald trump in the trump administration. >> another group that democrats lost this time around from polling la tinos. an erosion of support there. they're not a mon listic group. but what would be the message to win back a block that broke in a surprising way for trump this time around? >> most latinos and most americans across ethnicity and race working class folks, folks not making hundreds of thousands or billions of dollars a year, trying to make sure they can take care of their families and build the kind of lives they need. and latinos and other americans are struggling with the price of housing. they're frustrated about the price of groceries. and their question, the question all voters have, who is on my side and fighting for me? i think for democrats, the central appeal is actually in making the case that we're

fighting for people to have better life. that starts at centers on the economy. it also means freedom and dignity and respect that shub the thread of every american and a core part of how we interact with each other in this country. if people don't think you're for them they're not interested in your position on any other issue. i think we're about to see, we know trump will try to give multitrillion dollar tax handouts to billionaires and a democratic party that spotlights, republicans talked a good game about other stuff, but the agenda is to sell off the country to the highest bidders and the people who funded donald trump's campaign and now about to reap the rewards. we need to fight back against that and win people to our side by fighting and that's how we unite the party. >> chair of the democratic party of wisconsin, ben wikler, thank you very much for coming on the show this morning. >> thanks so much for having me on. >> up next, donald trump's former fda commissioner is now

warning about rfk jr.'s appoint. how it could cost lives. we will speak with coronavirus coordinator dr. debra birx for her takes on the health agencies and the global health program she once led that has saved tens of millions of lives now in danger of losing funding. "morning joe" will be right back. "morning joe" will be right back or tired? with miebo, eyes can feel ♪ miebo ohh yeah ♪ miebo is the only prescription dry eye drop that forms a protective layer for the number one cause of dry eye: too much tear evaporation. for relief that's ♪ miebo ohh yeah ♪ remove contact lenses before using miebo. wait at least 30 minutes before putting them back in. eye redness and blurred vision may occur. what does treating dry eye differently feel like?

♪ miebo ohh yeah ♪ for relief that feels ♪ miebo ohh yeah ♪ ask your eye doctor about prescription miebo. on chewy, save up to 60% and get exclusive deals through cyber monday. like their favorite treats, toys and food. the best presents. at the best prices. for the best pets. for low prices for holidays with pets, there's chewy.

message nation and to the world we stand

united in the fight against the epidemic. >> that was president biden marking world aids days to honor those who have lost their lives to the disease and highlight the ongoing global fight to end it. the united states leading the charge with u.s. president's emergency aid relief pepfar, reporting the program is responsible for saving 26 million lives and enabling nearly 8 million babies to be born hiv-free. joining us senior fellow at the george w. bush institute dr. deborah birx who served as previous coronavirus coordinator and as the u.s. global aids coordinator where she oversaw pepfar. great to have you back on the show. is it possible to put into words -- good to have you -- possible to put into words the reach, the magnitude of what

pepfar has been able to accomplish and what would happen what it would mean if it lost its funding? >> well, thank you. it's great to be with you and it's great for you to highlight this program because i think there's a lot of lessons in this program of how we can do a job better really because when it was originally launched by president bush, it was focused on doing business differently, more effectively, more efficiently, but i think it represented the best of what america does, is we see something, we do something. we saw the crisis, we acted. we didn't just talk about it. we have a lot of crises now in the world and we're talking about them, but we need to really act. that's both back here in our country and overseas. pepfar was successful because from the very beginning it brought democrats and republicans together united in an american response, and i think that's why it's been

successful for 20 years and you see these great results. it's an extraordinary program, but very results oriented. >> and so i guess some might say okay, it's done such great work and the work is done. can you explain the impact of if it just all of a sudden stopped doing the work it does? >> i think you highlighted almost 8 million babies born hiv-free. we've been working now to keep the babies that are now 20, 21, 22, hiv-free. and so you have to constantly adjust your program based on the results and based on the needs and gaps. that's what pepfar has been able to do. in a flat budget since 2009, we've gone from less than 4 million people on treatment, to over 21 million, almost 21 million people on treatment in a flat budget. that shows you how you can build

efficiencies. i know so many people, they say, we need more money to do more. no. you need to focus your program and use data to make it more effective, and that's what pepfar shows us. we think that can be brought back domestically. it's a successful global program. it has really decreased the incidents and it will need less money in the future but needs to remain focused. those very lessons can be brought back to our big chronic disease crises. everybody said we couldn't change the course of the hiv pandemic without a vaccine. we did. and we can do that now domestically in the united states for many of our chronic diseases. >> so i want to ask you about something else, dr. scott gottlieb, former fda commissioner during trump's first term, he's raising alarms about the nomination of robert f. kennedy jr. as hhs secretary. here's what he said in an interview on friday. take a listen. >> i'm not so sure that people

really understand how kennedy's intentions are going to translate into policy and how serious he is. i think if rfk follows through on his intentions -- i believe he will and can it -- it will cost lives in this country. you will see measles, mumps and ra bella vaccination rates go down. if we lose another 5%, which could happen in the next year or two, we will see large measles outbreaks. for every 1,000 measles that occurs in children there will be one death. we are not good at diagnosing and treating measles. >> dr. birx, what do you make of his critique and concerns and do you have similar concerns? >> well, you know, i'm very data driven. i like to see the data and really see how people handle that data. people can change their minds with data. i have seen that all over the world, all the presidents, prime ministers that i've worked with and the ones i've worked with in this country, data speaks if you present it in a way that people can understand it.

i think what scott gottlieb and the rest of us should be doing right now is seeing what rfk brings to his hearing and what data he speaks to. he's already said he's changed on his viewpoint about the importance of vaccines. but to me, his willingness to focus on chronic disease and say we haven't been successful, we haven't been successful in preventing disease progression, that's what we did in africa with hiv/aids. we prevented disease progression, and we need to do that now in the united states. i'm committed to that. started programs now in rural america because the rural america data is terrible and we've just accepted it. like we were accepting hiv deaths in africa. it's unacceptable and we need to change that. i'm committed to that. i am hoping to see that the trump administration and robert f. kennedy jr. is committed to changing our pandemics we're committed to of facing chronic diseases. >> dr. deborah birx, thank you very much. good to see you once again.

back on "morning joe" jts. >> >> glad to be with you. >> the third hour of "morning joe" continues right now. >> it doesn't surprise me that he will pick people that he believes are very loyal to himself and that's been a part of the process. every president wants people that are loyal to themselves. i'll also share with you that chris wray, who the president nominated the first time around, i think the president picked a very good man to be the director of the fbi when he did that in his first term. when we meet with him behind closed doors, i've had no objections to the way he's handled himself and i don't have any complaints about the way he's done his job right now. >> republican senator mike rounds of south dakota, expressing his support for current fbi director christopher wray after donald trump announced over the weekend he will nominate loyalist kash patel to that position, one

which shouldn't normally even be open for a nomination. we'll have the latest about that controversial selection from the president-elect. also ahead, we'll dig into newly surfaced allegations against trump's pick for defense secretary pete hegseth as reports of whistleblowers have surfaced detailing years of troubling behavior. and we'll go through president biden's pardon of his son hunter who was set to be sentenced later this month on federal tax evasion and gun charges. good morning. welcome to "morning joe." it is monday, december 2nd. with us we have the host of "way too early" jonathan lemire and president emeritus of the council on foreign relations richard haass. let's take a closer look into the man that donald trump says he will nominate as former national security council official kash patel to serve as fbi director. patel is an ultra trump loyalist who has promoted lies that the

2020 election was stolen, as well as the baseless conspiracy theory that federal bureaucrats in the deep state tried to overthrow the former president. at the end of trump's first term patel served as an adviser to the acting director of national intelligence and as chief of staff, to acting defense secretary chris miller. during that time, trump proposed that patel run the fbi which attorney general bill barr objected to. as joe mentioned barr wrote in his memoir, he told then white house chief of staff mark meadows that patel would get the deputy job, quote, over my dead body. barr also wrote that patel had virtually no experience that would qualify him to serve at the highest level of the world's preeminent law enforcement agency. the idea of moving patel into a role like this showed a shocking

detachment from reality. that's a quote. >> that's bill barr. that's bill barr's quote, not npr. that's bill barr's quote. >> in the closing months of his first term, trump suggested that patel serve as deputy cia director, then cia director gina haspel threatened to resign if patel was installed. in an interview last year, patel vowed to go after judges, lawyers, and journalists he viewed as enemies of donald trump. take a listen. >> kash, i know you're probably going be to head of the cia, but do you believe that you can deliver the goods on this in a pretty short order of the first couple months so we can get rolling on prosecutions? >> yes. we got the bench for it, bannon, you know those guys. i'm not going to say their names right now so the radical left wing media can terrorize them. the one thing we learned we have to put in all-america patriots top to bottom and we got them

for law enforcement, intel collection and for offensive operations, we got them for d.o.d., cia, everywhere. we will go out and find the conspirators not just in government but in the media, yes, we're going to come oofrtsz after the people in the media who helped joe biden rig presidential elections, whether it's criminally or civilly we'll figure that out. we're putting you on notice. >> hold on a second. can you play that again. can we do a cc to republican senators. hey. mitch mcconnell and chuck grassley, mike rounds is a great patriots, i'm sure he's disturbed by this, he said just that, susan collins, lisa murkowski who stood up to the

atrocious selection of matt gaetz, we want to play this one again. this is a long distance dedication from casey to you. >> kash, i know you're probably going to be head of the cia. but do you believe that you can deliver the goods on this in a short order the first couple months so we can get rolling on prosecutions? >> yes. we got the bench for it, bannon. you know those guys. i'm not going to say their names so the radical left wing media can terrorize them. the one thing we learned the first go round we have to put in all-america patriots top to bottom and we got them for law enforcement, we got them for intel intel collection, offensive operations, we got them for d.o.d., cia, everywhere. we will go out and find the conspirators not just in government but the media, yes, we're going to come after the people in the media who lied about american citizens, who helped joe biden rig presidential election, come after you, whether it's criminally or civilly we'll figure that out.

we're putting you on notice. >> you know, i'd love to also play one more time for all those wall street billionaires, come on, come on. this is just all about tax cuts. he's not going to prosecute. never put kash patel in as fbi director. love to see "the wall street journal" editorial page. maybe they written about it this morning. they should have. we'll have to play this for other apologists who have said that, oh, oh, kash patel would never get put in that position. we kept hearing that time and time again. mainly for the republican senators, republican senators who stood up when their advise and consent power was tested when it came to matt gaetz,

well, this is not a question of either or, no to matt gaetz, maybe the one -- no, no, no. if somebody threatens the constitution, if somebody threatens the first amendment, if somebody threatens a basic bill of rights it does to the matter whether you have to say no to one of those or two of those or three of those. you know, the founders did not write that the senate had the advise and consent power for one, one and a half dangerous selections. got that for as many as you need. this is not just uniformly vote no against everybody that donald trump puts up. i think everybody agrees that marco rubio, though not a democrat selection, certainly is within the framework of somebody who could be secretary of state, who knows the issues, who works with people on both sides, who

may be an effective secretary of state. same thing with the treasury director. same thing with the treasury director. but not this. play it again. >> we will go out and find the conspirators not just in government but in the media, yes, we're going to come after the people in the media who lied about american citizens, who helped joe biden rig presidential election, we're going to come after you, criminally or civilly we'll figure that out. yeah, we're putting you all on notice. >> we're putting you on notice, this is not only bad for the men and women who run the fbi, this is not only bad for the rule of law, this is not only bad for the first amendment, this is not only bad for the united states of america, this is bad for donald trump. this is bad for the trump

administration. this is not going to end well. i think the best case scenario for everybody is, that kash patel and this talk of kash patel ends like the matt gaetz nomination ended. because this will not go well for anybody. and i believe -- i still believe -- that there will be four republican senators who will not vote to confirm somebody who says he's going to throw judges in jail, he's going to throw bureaucrats in jail, he's going to throw reporters in jail, who did not go along with the 2020 stop the steal conspiracy theory. by the way, just got word "the wall street journal" did write about this. they don't like it. >> no. let's bring in nbc news national security editor david rohde, nbc news justice and intelligence

correspondent ken dilanian and congressional reporter for the hill, mychal schnell. good to have you on board. >> how dangerous is this selection. >> again, we need to be -- let's get this straight, right. since christopher wray is still the fbi director, not like he nominated matt gaetz to be a.g. he just put this out on truth social. so he's going to have to fire chris wray first. chris wray, an fbi director he appointed himself, so if he fires chris wray, which many republican senators have already expressed concern about, and then he moves on to someone like kash patel, or let's just say kash patel specifically, how dangerous is that for the rule of law in the united states of america? >> to me, it's an unprecedented effort to politicize the fbi. i've been reading kash patel's memoir. you've been citing these quotes. he's a conspiracist. the memoir is black and white hp

he worked as a public defender in florida, talks about federal prosecutors conpiring about him and his clients. works for the justice department and the national security division. again, people in the justice department and judges who are ruling against him over and over. it's this very dark, simplistic vision of conspiracies. and he is nominated now to be the most -- the head of the most powerful law enforcement organization in the united states. it's just a critical moment. it's this -- he endlessly talks about deep state conspiracies. to go back, there was a nearly four-year investigation by special counsel john durham during the trump administration, the biden administration allowed it to continue, they looked at all the deep state conspiracy theories about the fbi and trump in 2016. no senior officials were charged. there were mistakes made by the fbi, low-level lawyer pled guilty to changing a document.

two people were brought to trial and acquitted by john durham. these conspiracy theories aren't true, and this is a very dangerous moment i think. >> so, ken, let's get reaction from people you've talked to about this potential selection. let's be clear what patel has said he will do if he were to get this job. he would target trump's political opponents including members of the media. he also said he would shut down fbi headquarters, turn it into a museum of the deep state in his words, and also purge the roles of those in the preeminent law enforcement agency in this country. what is the initial response here of to what patel's vision would look like? >> well, no one would be surprised to know people at the justice department, the fbi, current and former, are horrified. people of all political persuasions by the way by this idea -- just to be clear about something, the proposal that bill barr said amounted to a shocking detachment from reality, was to make kash patel the deputy fbi director under

chris wray in the prior administration. now they're talking about elevating him to lead as david said not only the most powerful law enforcement agency in the country, one of the most powerful national security agencies. i got to emphasize this to our viewers because people don't understand everything the fbi does. the fbi director wealds incredible power in the united states and for anyone who doesn't believe that read a biography of j. edgar hoover. the fbi, they have people who can break into your home and plant a bug and you'll never know about it and get secret warrant, national security warrants to do that and no one will find out. they can obtain the records of news media phone calls and we'll never hear about it, assuming a justice department set of guidelines on that is overturned. so this is an incredibly powerful job. just at a very basic level, kash patel is not qualified for it, by objective standards. past fbi directors the past three have all been very senior

officials in the justice department with long experience as prosecutors. and then, of course, you had lou free, a career fbi agent. significant figures in american life. kash patel spent several years as a public defender and spent three years in the justice department's national security division, and he went on to say he was the lead prosecutor in the effort to bring the benghazi terrorists to justice that isn't true. that's been debunked. leaving aside his conspiracy theory beliefs, he's just by objective standards not qualified for this job. it's worth remembering, you know, how he came to donald trump's attention. it was this thing called the newness memo he co-wrote in 2018 that was looking at how the fbi obtained fisa warrants on carter paige and the russia investigation. it's worth saying there's a lot of things in that memo that were vindicated by the justice department inspector general. the fbi did make mistakes, as

david said, but the fundamental notion that the russia investigation was a hoax, that's a conspiracy theory. if you don't believe me, go read the senate intelligence committee report released in was to that was co-signed by marco rubio. i hope he's asked about this at his confirmation hearing. this is a remarkable document that most people have never seen, don't know what it says. it was signed off on by the republican senators on the intelligence committee, and it said that russia interfered in the election, that the trump campaign was open to those efforts, and was willing to use the fruits of russian interference to help get elected. it called that a massive counterintelligence threat. so i think that's kash patel's foundational belief, the russia hoax, and it's just flat wrong, guys? >> coming up, the story we mentioned at the top of the hour, donald trump's pick for the pentagon faces damming new allegations of heavy drinking and sexual harassment. the latest on a whistleblower

report about pete hegseth is straight ahead on "morning joe." "

we got breaking news last night in "the new yorker," more -- i already heard that the pete hegseth nomination was in grave danger from my sources inside the senate, grave danger

before a letter that dropped this weekend and before the whistleblower news that came out late last night from "the new yorker." >> real pattern tracked out and fact-checked about his behavior, and now penelope hegseth, the mother of trump's defense secretary pick, pete hegseth, told her son, he should, quote, get some help and accused him of abusing multiple women in an unearthed e-mail from her back in 2018. the e-mail was obtained by "the new york times" from another person with ties to the amily. in it penelope wrote in part you are an abuser of women. that is the ugly truth and i have no respect for any man that belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around, and uses women for his own power and ego. nbc news has not independently obtained the e-mail. the message was sent in the midst of an acrimonious divorce

from hegseth's second wife samantha. their marriage ended after trump's choice to lead the department of defense impregnated a fox news coworker with whom he was having an affair. in an interview with the "times" on friday, penelope hegseth defended her son saying she disavowed those sentiments as well as apologized in a follow-up e-mail. she told the paper, it's not true. it has never been true. adding, i know my son, he's a good father, husband. to read the full original e-mail in a moment. hegseth's lawyer declined to respond. trump's transition team provided a statement saying it was shameful but not surprising that the "new york times" is publishing a story about one out of context snippet. the entire purpose of this exercise is to malign mr. hegseth. the e-mail comes as senators weigh the potential impact of the 2017 sexual assault investigation against him, but

has come to light. no charges were filed in the investigation and hegseth has maintained the encounter was consensual but in 2023 he paid his accuser an undisclosed sum as part of a settlement agreement. meanwhile, a new piece on pete hegseth was just published in "the new yorker" about a whistleblower report and other documents suggesting trump's nominee to run the pentagon was forced out of a previous leadership position for financial mismanagement and sexual behavior and being repeatedly intock cated on the job. it reads in part, a trail of documents, corroborated by the accounts of former colleagues, indicates that hegseth was forced to step down by both of the two nonprofit advocacy groups he ran, veterans for freedom and concerned veterans for america, in the face of

serious allegations of financial mismanagement, sexual impropriety and personal misconduct. previously undisclosed whistleblower report on hegseth's tenure as the president of concerned veterans for america from 2013 until 2016 describes him as being repeatedly intoxicated while acting in his official capacity to the point of needing to be carried out of the organization's events. the detailed seven-page report, which was compiled by multiple cba employees and sent to the organization's senior management in february of 2015, states that at one point hegseth had to be restrained while drunk from joining the dancers on the stage of a louisiana strip club where he had brought his team. the report also says that hegseth, who was married at the time and other members of his

management team, sexually pursued the organization's female staffers whom they divided into two groups, the party girls and the nonparty girls, "the new yorker" continues. in a separate letter of complaint, which was sent to the organization in late 2015, a different former employee described hegseth being at bar in the early morning hours of may 29th, 2015, while on an official tour through cuyahoga falls, ohio, drunkenly chanting "kill all muslims. kill all muslims." in response to questions from the new yorker a lawyer for hegseth replied with the following statement which he said came from an adviser to hegseth that read in part, we're not going to comment on outlandish claims laundered through "the new yorker" by a petty and jealous, disgruntled former associate of mr. hegseth's. "the new yorker" also notes that

hegseth has been open about resorting to alcohol during a period in his life when he had returned to the u.s. from active military duty and felt lost. nbc news has not seen the whistleblower report or letter of complaint cited by "the new yorker." >> more quotes from "the new yorker" the whistleblower continued as if in disbelief, quote a fox news contributor with the rank of captain in the national guard and the ceo of a veterans organization in a strip club trying to dance with strippers, which, of course, as the whistleblower reports, say, from 2015, he had to be dragged off stage. let's bring in right now the former supreme allied commander of nato he's an international analyst for nbc news, how does any united states senator, republican or democrat or independent, vote for pete

hegseth to run the department of defense? >> i don't see it. let's break it down into three items. one is this package of character issues, and it's the entire parts that you've talked about. there's just too many there for any rationale observer to say that's a disgruntled employee or somebody he worked with a long time ago. these are recent. fresh. my mom is watching today. your mom's a pretty good source on most of us. i think all of that is almost in and of itself a character issue that's significant. secondly, you haven't mentioned it, his comments about women unqualified to serve in xwads, i've commanded women in combat, a lot of them, including as a young captain of a ship with a mixed gender crew that went into

combat to aircraft carrier strike groups to nato itself, women are 20% of the department of defense and they have performed well in combat. those comments alone i think would be pretty close to disqualifying. that's kind of a policy piece. and third and finally, you mentioned it, joe and, mika, it's the management responsibilities. i spent two and a half years as secretary of defense don rumsfeld's senior military assistant as a three-star admiral. i've seen that job up close and personal. you look at the people who have held it -- i worked directly for bob gates who led the cia, leon panetta who was chief of staff in the white house and led the cia -- that's the kind of level and experience and management you need to have. when you put all that together, i'll just close with two words, nuclear codes. this is a job that goes beyond

the range of anything else in the cabinet in its power, and its impact. the number of people, the complexity and the need to model appropriate behavior. >> so, richard, you're well acquainted with the federal government with the pentagon, give us your sense as to hegseth's qualifications for this job, but also considering all the allegations that are being put forth here, how would this be perceived by the rest of the world were hegseth to get the job? >> he's unqualified for this. the one thing in his favor he served in the military and that's significant, but everything else is from the character issues to the lack of management issues, experience and so forth is disqualifying. this is not a close call. the rest of the world, particularly our allies who depend on this, they see this. this is the sort of thing that's unnerving. donald trump has 340 million americans to pick from.

we've been through kash patel and pete hegseth, we haven't gotten to tulsi gabbard or rfk jr. the well of possibility, people who are ideologically attuned to him and qualified, there's an enormous number of people. why this stuff? to satisfy his most extreme elements? these are people who probably couldn't get security clearances in some cases. the idea they would have this enormous responsibility and the other point, by the way, the other thing a secretary of defense does besides manage, he's the president's adviser. this is often the last person in the oval office with the president talking about things when we're about to commit american troops to combat. again, the question you'd have to ask here, about kash patel who would be in the meetings if confirmed, tulsi gabbard, are these the sort of people you want at the end of the day giving advice to the president? do you trust their judgment? i think the answer is pretty obvious. >> we'll have more on this in our next block including pete

hegseth's mother accusing her son of mistreating women for years plus, how the president-elect is already pushing the boundaries of executive authority. what it means for congress and the constitution straight ahead right here on "morning joe." ." my favorite babysitter is annalisa. she's pretty good, she's like my grandma. she says “hola cómo estás” and then we go skateboarding! from babysitters, to nannies, to daycare centers. find all the care you need at care.com

i have one, too. i'd be so lost without mine. we are talking about mentors, right? yes. a mentor can guide you. support you. and unlock your potential. being a mentor can be just as life-changing.

you can create opportunities. and inspire the next generation. helping someone find their path can transform your own. so find a mentor. or become one. wait, can i do both? you know what? let me ask my mentor. of course, you can. bring someone along on your journey. and see where it takes you. so here now is the text of the e-mail that pete hegseth's mother sent to him in 2018. it's rough. son, i've tried to keep quiet about your character and behavior, but after listening to the way you made samantha feel today, i cannot stay silent and as a woman and your mother, i feel i must speak out. you are an abuser of women. that's the ugly truth and i have no respect for any man that belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps

around and uses women for his own power and ego. you are that man and have been for years and as your mother it pains me and embarrasses me to say that, but it is the sad, sad truth. i'm not a saint, far from it, so don't throw that in my face, but your abuse over the years to women dishonesty, sleeping around, betrayal, debasing, belittling needs to be called out. sam is a good mother and a good person under the circumstances that you created, and i know you know that. for you to try to label her as unstable for your own advantage is despicable and abusive. is there any sense of decency left in you? she did not ask for or deserve any of what has come to her by your hand. neither did meredith. i know you think this is one big competition and that we have

taken her side. bunk. we're on the side of good. and that is not you. go ahead and call me self-righteous, i don't care. don't you dare run to her and cry foul that we shared with us, that's what babies do. it's time for someone, i wish it was a strong man, to stand up to your abusive behavior and call it out especially against women. we still love you, but we are broken by your behavior and lack of character. i don't want to write e-mails like this and never thought i would. if it damages our relationship further, than so be it. but at least i have said my piece. and yes, we are praying for you and you don't deserve to know how we are praying so skip the snarky reply. i don't want an answer to this. i don't want to debate with you. you twist and abuse everything i say anyway. but on behalf of all the women,

and i know it's many, you have abused in some way, i say get some help and take an honest look at yourself. mom. >> admiral, i'll have you respond. repeatedly the mother talk -- his mother -- it is an extraordinarily painful letter. the mother repeatedly talks about him being an abuser of women which lines up with the whistleblower report that came out last night which lines up with the charges that i believe came out about this same time. of course the mother, as we said at the top, later recanted, as lawyers would say, the fact patterns line up from the actions that the new yorker reports and the veterans organizations and the letter and of course the allegations of

rape and drunken behavior after that. admiral, again, i go back to the question, how does anybody with his own mother continually called him an abuser of women, how does anybody in the senate have this man run the pentagon, run -- run the armed services of the united states of america? >> first, that is a heartbreaking letter -- >> yeah. >> -- i think we ought to take a beat here and think of penelope the mother and what she must be feeling as she writes a letter like that and then has to try to recant it, et cetera. my heart goes out to that family. let's just park that. now let's go back to the national security of the united states of america. that's an important thing. it's a vital thing.

and richard just outlined how this kind of selection hurts us with our allies. think about how this is being received in moscow n beijing, in tehran, in havana, in damascus, in ka ranchically, this is not who we want to entrust our national security to. character, we've unpackaged i think pretty thoroughly at this point, the inability to model the behavior to lead at least 20% of the force, the women, and number three, i just keep coming back to it, the management of the size and scale, 3 million people, $800 billion budget, these are enormous burdens we place on people like robert gates, leon panetta. i don't see how someone like

pete hegseth is ready for those kind of burdens on any of these accounts. >> so, michael, we had heard last week before the thanksgiving holiday that hegseth's nomination was in trouble. now that gaetz had bowed out. in the wake of the new allegations, the new reporting, where do things stand? do you see at least four republican senators who would say no? >> i suspect this letter and the new reporting in "the new yorker" will make that possibility much more greater, right as you mentioned before, this wasn't looking too great for pete hegseth before the thanksgiving break. senators were giving him the ben fifth of the doubt saying we'll allow him to sit for his hearing and have the conversations, but there was a lot of skepticism. he was receiving that scrutiny. we're hearing from senators they wanted to see more information. i suspect this is going to put that into overdrive. senators, obviously, don't have to comment on something if it drops over the weekend. they don't want to. but they're coming back to the capitol today. they're going to be in the

building this afternoon, and i know for sure they're going to be peppered with questions about this. we've heard from some, who has been against sexual assault in the military, who has asked for more information against pete hegseth. i suspect we'll hear from more people on a vocal level. let's look ahead a little bit. if this nomination does make its way to a potential confirmation hearing, you know, it's an if right now, we saw matt gaetz withdraw before we got to that point, if pete hegseth gets there we'll be hearing about these allegations in stark detail. mika read that letter from pete hegseth's mother. i suspect we'll be hearing it be read from senators during that hearing over and over again. it's not the narrative that the trump transition team wants in these waning days of the biden administration as they prepare to head too their first 100 days. this is taking up a lot of oxygen in the room and seems that this trickle of allegations

against hegseth just continue to come out. >> coming up, the other big headline of the morning. president biden pardons his son hunter who was facing sentencing this month on federal gun charges. plus, we'll go live to cnbc as the markets kick off a new month on wall street. business before the bell is straight ahead in the fourth hour of "morning joe." ur of "mo" with the money i saved i thought i'd get a wax figure of myself. cool right? look at this 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 ♪

president biden has should a full and unconditional pardon for his son hunter. biden announced the controversial decision last night after previously saying he would not use his presidential powers to do so. in a statement biden argues there's been an effort to break hunter who has been five and a half years sober even in the face of unrelenting attacks and

prosecution. in trying to break hunter they've tried to break me, and there's no reason to believe it will stop here enough is enough. hunter biden would have faced sentencing on december 12th for his conviction on federal gun charges and a separate sentencing on december 16th for federal tax evasion charges, which he pled guilty to in september. >> with us now, bring in former u.s. attorney and msnbc legal analyst joyce vance co-host of "the sisters in law" podcast. we'll get to you about this concernedly important news and your reaction to the iron bowl on saturday night. first let's go to ken dilanian at the justice department. ken, curious, what is the reaction in and around the justice department on this decision by joe biden to pardon hunter? >> sadness, joe, and some disquiet not so much about the pardon but the rationale that

president biden gave. if he stopped at saying hunter biden is my son and any father would do this that would be one thing, but he asserted that the prosecution of hunter biden had been political, had been selective, and doj officials, current and former, balk at that. there's no evidence that's true, and we should remember any david weiss, the special counsel in this case, was the u.s. attorney in delaware under donald trump and joe biden and the biden white house made the decision to keep him on to continue the hunter biden investigation before merrick garland was named to be the attorney general and confirmed as attorney general. that was a biden white house decision. david weiss the prosecutor. they investigated the case and the reason that hunter biden is facing prison time by some accounts he was looking at three years in prison based on the tax and gun convictions, he and his lawyers walked away from a no jail time plea deal, and it didn't give them immunity from

different kinds of conduct and he could still be prosecuted under a trump administration, so he went to trial and lost, and he pled guilty, and he was in a serious predicament which is probably one of the reasons that joe biden felt compelled to pardeden him and spare him from prison. people are concerned that what this does is it normalizes donald trump's world view that the doj is not on the level, that it's politicized, that it's not nonpartisan. that's the big concern. >> nbc's ken dilanian, thank you for your reporting. joyce vance, your thoughts on hunter biden being pardoned by his father? >>, so i hate to disagree with my friend ken dilanian, but the reality here is, if this was anyone other than joe biden's son, no one would object to a pardon on these facts. the pardon process is meant to do mercy, justice.

it's often used for people, most frequently used for people who are guilty of the crimes that they've committed, where there are extenuating factors at work. as i say, if this was not joe biden's son, no one would object. but we are clearly here because this is joe biden's son. while judges may not have seen fit to dismiss the cases under high legal standards for selective and vindictive prosecution, there's a clear feeling here these cases would not have been indicted if anyone other than joe biden's son was involved in the conduct and on that basis, you can understand how these -- this pardon makes sense under the circumstances. >> and i've been reporting for a better part of a year now about the weight, the personal toll this took on president biden, the concerning he had about his son and guilt he felt. he would tell his closest allies he feels hunter biden wouldn't have faced these charges or

could have gotten the plea deal were he not president and the republicans tried to use hunter biden against him as a political weapon here. i think some of the outcry is because president biden himself and the white house repeatedly said over and over they would not do this, and that i think is fueling some of the anger, though many feel like father, of course, would do this for his son. let's talk about the trump reaction, though, including -- and i think we should be clear he probably was going to do pardons anyway, but seized upon this as a talking point he could do the same for january 6th convicts. >> that's the scary dynamic. you have donald trump saying he's equating january 6th with these other acts by hunter biden and that's the difference here. we're rmalizing january 6th and those were just political prosecutions. i agree with ken, that the problem for the public they're going to see the justice department and the whole kind of judicial system as corrupt.

the president's pardon their sons, trump pardoned -- the kushners, charles kushner, made him the ambassador to france, and so this is this pattern it seems of this corruption in washington that americans are frustrated with. >> yeah. to that point, let's remember jared kushner's father, charles curber in, was convicted of crimes, pardoned by donald trump and over the weekend named ambassador to france. this is far from the first time that a president has used the pardon power to -- for a family member, for a close ally. but this is one with hunter biden that has been a flashpoint for republicans for years now and we should note congressional investigations into hunter biden about wrongdoing of father and son went nowhere, but it's no surprise they're going to grab on this now. >> coming up our next guest directed one of the biggest movies in the world right now.

"wicked" had another huge weekend at the box office. we'll talk to the film maker when john joins the conversation. "morning joe" is back in a moment. on "morngni joe" is back in a moment there's no slowing down. each day is a unique blend of people to see and things to do. that's why you choose glucerna to help manage blood sugar response. uniquely designed with carbsteady. glucerna. bring on the day. right now across the u.s., people are trying to ban books from public schools and public libraries. yes, libraries. we all have a first amendment right to read and learn different viewpoints. that's why every book belongs on the shelf. yet book banning in the u.s. is worse than i've ever seen. it's people in power who want to control everything. well, i say no to censorship. and i say yes to freedom of speech and expression. if you do too, please join us in supporting

the american civil liberties union today. for over 100 years, the aclu has fought for your rights and mine. including the right to read all manner of books. so please call or go online to myaclu.org. for just $19 a month, only $0.63 a day. you can become a guardian of liberty and help protect all the rights promised to us by the u.s. constitution. make no mistake, this move to ban books is a coordinated attack on students right to learn. this is a clear violation of free speech. that's why the aclu is working to fight against censorship in all its forms. it is so important now more than ever. so please call or go to myaclu.org and become an aclu guardian of liberty, for just $19 a month. use your credit card and you'll get this special

we the people t-shirt and more to show you're helping to protect the rights of all people. the aclu is in all 50 states, d.c. and puerto rico defending our first amendment right of free speech and all of your constitutional rights. because we the people, means all of us. so please, call or, go online to myaclu.org today.

and coming up, our next guest says there is a low key player on the trump team who could do a world of damage. molly jong fast explains when "morning joe" comes right back. "morning joe" comes right back rt

fbi director, christopher wray, with loyalist kash patel, who

has promoted baseless conspiracy theories about federal bureaucrats and the deep state, trying to overthrow the former president. >> well, he also, of course, has said that if he got into power to do so, he would go after judges, lawyers and would jail members of the press. >> and nbc news senior washington correspondent hallie jackson has more. >> reporter: new fallout this morning from the pick of kash patel to serve as fbi director in the incoming trump administration. >> he agrees with donald trump that the department of justice should serve to punish, lock up and intimidate donald trump's political opponents. >> reporter: patel, a former capitol hill staffer, who served in the first trump term, seen as a fiery and fierce trump loyalist. >> i would shut down the fbi hoover building, on day one, and reopen it the next day as a museum of the deep state. >> reporter: he backed president-elect trump's 2020

election fraud lie and he threatened retribution against perceived trump enemies, like journalists. >> we're going to come after you. >> reporter: some senate republicans so far sounding supportive. >> there are serious problems at the fbi. >> reporter: mr. trump, apparently looking to force out the current fbi director, his own pick, in 2017, christopher wray, who has three years left on his ten-year term. the fbi in a statement saying director wray's focus remains on the men and women of the fbi, the people we do the work with, and the people we do the work for. the confirmation spotlight also focusing on pete hegseth, the former fox news anchor chosen to lead the pentagon and a previously undisclosed seven-page 2015 whistle-blower report obtained by the new yorker alleging hegseth was repeatedly intoxicated while serving as head of the concerned veterans for america, to the point of having to be needed to be carried out of the event.

hegseth's attorney via an adviser tells the new yorker we're not going to comment on outlandish claims laundered through the new yorker by a petty and jealous disgruntled former associate of mr. hegseth's. and a newly released 2018 email published by "the new york times" in which hegseth's mother suggests he's mistreated women for years. writing, you are an abuser of women, and i have no respect for any man that belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around, and uses women for his own power and ego. nbc news has not independently obtained the email, but penelope hegseth told the times she apologized almost immediately in a follow-up email and disavowed her original note, sent while her son was going through a difficult divorce. nbc's hallie jackson with that report. and joining us now, staff writer for the atlantic, tom nichols, former news host and former congressional candidate and new york's first district john avlon back with us, and special correspondent for "vanity fair"

and host of "the fast politics podcast," molly jong-fast, her latest piece looks to answer what's scariest about donald trump's cabinet. also with us, chief washington correspondent for "the new york times," carl hulse, his latest article, "a second trump term poses a crucial test of the senate's independence." we saw some independence in the matt gaetz pick. last week even before the letter was broken by "the new york times" from his mother calling him basically a serial abuser of women, even before "the new yorker" last night talking about how he was kicked off of several veteran -- vets organizations because of drunken behavior, according to those reports,

senate republicans were starting to break against him. i'm curious now, with kash patel, and, of course, tulsi gabbard out there with fighting in syria picking up again, i'm wondering how much stomach will senate republicans at least, four senate republicans have, to push back on some of the worst picks? >> well, i think that's what we're going to find out here in the next few months, you know. are they going to resist these picks? these are very unusual potential nominees for the senate. usually they deal with issues that don't reach this level. so, it is a real test for the senate. some people are calling it a moment of truth. are there people who are going to say that we can't go in this direction, but, you know, they're worried about recess appointments and president-elect

trump brought that up himself in a tweet, earlier, and so they want to -- there is a push right now by the democrats who really aren't able to do much about these nominees for the republicans to stand firm, require fbi background checks, which i think we're going to find out is a big issue and make sure there is hearings and votes. senator schumer has a letter out this morning to john thune, the new incoming majority leader saying, hey, you know, we'll cooperate in hearings as long as you abide by the sort of norms that we're used to. >> so, tom nichols, your latest piece is entitled "the kash patel principle" and you write this, for trump, naming patel to the post serves several purposes. first, trump is taking his razor thin election win as a mandate to rule as he pleases and patel is the perfect nominee to prove that he doesn't care what anyone

else thinks. second, trump wants to show the objections of senior elected republicans are of no consequence to him, and that he can politically flatten them at will. if trump's goal is to break the fbi and undermine its missions, kash patel is the perfect nominee. some senior officials would likely resign rather than serve under patel, which would probably suit trump just fine. of course, this means the fbi would struggle to do the thing it is supposed to be doing, including fighting crime and conducting counterintelligence work against america's enemies. but it would become an excellent instrument of revenge against anyone trump or patel identifies as an internal enemy, which, in trump's world, is anyone who criticizes donald trump. >> and which tom, "the wall street journal" editorial page rightly warns that down this path lies ruin. let me just read you very

quickly from "the wall street journal" editorial this morning. does patel want to unleash the fbi on democrats and media critics a la hoover? down that road lies no end of political trouble for republicans and the trump presidency as the effort is sure to backfire. what's your take, tom, on how this always blows back against the people doing it, and also on patel in general, who has said he's going to throw journalists in jail? >> well, you know, again, i think carl's point, this comes back to the senate. are these republican senators, when patel who, you know, is the very image of the kind of unserious trollish pick, you know, up there with hegseth and the others, when this person ends up at the fbi, and causes

all of this havoc and undermines american national security, because, of course, the fbi has a very important national security role, are these senators going to step forward and say, yeah, i voted for the guy. i voted to nominate this guy. i think that's something that they have to think about ahead of time, especially when there are going to be more things as in the hegseth case that are going to come out if there isn't -- if there isn't vetting. and so, yeah, this will eventually blow up in their faces, but donald trump doesn't care. if we go back to trump's first term, a lot of things trump did blew up in his face and other people in his administration paid the price. trump managed to slip away at every turn, but there were other people, i mean, you know, call rudy giuliani, ask him how that's going. you know, other people will pay the price. but in the end, the country pays the price. our national security pays the price. and that's something that i

think is just unacceptable and i hope the members of the senate think about that. >> so, john, it has been the point well said that these choices, potentially hegseth at dod, kash patel at fbi, robert kennedy jr., tulsi gabbard, they wouldn't well serve the incoming president. it seems part of the motivation, people around trump openly talk about, it is not about leading the agencies, it is destroying them, it is grinding them down, it is making sure that he gets retribution against the bureaucrats he thought were out to get him the last time around and to make sure what is left of the wreckage here is loyal only to him. >> that's right. the question is whether serving donald trump literally means serving the man or the constitution, serving principles like law and order, which the fbi exists to uphold. but this is all part of the downstream effect of trump's revenge bender, which he promised and that brings us to the second question, it is a test of the senate whether they will constitutionally

self-neuter the principle of separation of powers. as they did very often in the first term. not standing up to donald trump at the expense of their own authority. so, that's the real test we're facing. that's the test the senate is facing, that's the test that the american system is going to face in this second trump term. >> and, you know, molly, what is so fascinating is we have been pointing out all morning, this isn't just members of the media, members of the deep state that are concerned about people like patel and hegseth. this is actually people around donald trump. they were already having concerns about pete hegseth before "the new york times" released the letter from hegseth's mother accusing him of being a serial abuser of women. they were already concerned that they didn't have the votes. i heard last thursday, hegseth is going down in the senate, even before all of this, an now, of course, the new yorker

reporting about just drunken behavior, and a lot of things, again that would serve no president well, especially the 47th president. you can say the same thing about tulsi gabbard as things heat up in syria and she's been an apologist for assad, a man who killed 500,000, the death of 500,000 syrians we could go down the list and, of course, as "the wall street journal" editorial page says, again, and as people around donald trump know, you start a war against the press, and you start saying you're going to arrest the press, you say you're going to start arresting judges, that always has a blowback effect. that sort of talk caused republicans to lose the 2018 midterm election. it would cause, i think, even more devastating losses for the republican party now.

we -- we still are a constitutional republic and we still have elections every two years. >> yeah, i mean, for me this is particularly personal because my grandfather was jailed, so i've seen what an fbi director going after writers looks like, firsthand. though i wasn't alive then. but i think that you're right, i think the question is really will these republican senators use advise and consent, right, second -- this -- the article 2, section 2, and really use this separation of powers to look at these candidates -- look at these cabinet members. this is their job and the american people should demand this from them, right? because they are not, you know, this is what the senate is. and this is why they serve as senators. so, i do think, look, ultimately

so much of this is going to be about protecting norms and institutions. and this norm that we're trying to protect here is the united states senate. >> let me ask you, the reporting you've gotten on hegseth again, even before i heard obviously murkowski and collins, collins who has an election two years from now, and maine, an estate that went strongly for biden and harris, mitch mcconnell and others having real concerns. how does the reporting that he got fired from two vets organizations as reported by the new yorker for drunken behavior, his mother's letter calling him a serial abuser, which seems to line up with everything -- all the charges that he faced before. how does that impact the vote

for hegseth for sec def? >> some will remember john toler, a parallel here, some similar accusations derailed him when he was trying to become secretary of defense. you mentioned mitch mcconnell. i think mitch mcconnell is an important player in all of this, stepping out of the leadership position, he's feeling liberated. is he going to go along with some of these nominees? but, you know, republicans can't defeat -- they're not in a position where they're going to be able to reject everyone. i think they're looking and saying, okay, what's acceptable, what's not, you mentioned tulsi gabbard, i think there is some real concerns about her, but you're not hearing as much about, but obviously this kind of reporting has a big impact. and it also makes republicans nervous about what is more to come when we get into these hearings, you know. the -- when you're a senator, what you have that makes you a senator is your vote. and i think that there are some

senators and probably more than we really think who are not ready to really say, hey, i'm going to just go along with all this. john thune, guy to watch here. he's the new majority leader, he's got to balance trump and also has to look out for the institution and how is he going to handle that. he has said he's going to make sure that advise and consent is honored, but he's also said all options are open. i think we're in for some really interesting moments coming up here after january 20th. >> chief washington correspondent for "the new york times," carl hulse, thank you very much for coming on. his latest reporting is now available to read online. so, molly, you're focusing on another trump pick, this one to run the office of management and budget. russell vought. you write this, what makes his nomination so troubling is that he isn't some tv personality or

crank who had a brain worm. vought is wildly competent. in his project 2025 chapter, vought wrote in favor of the aggressive use of the vast powers of the executive branch and depicted the omb as playing a key role in this effort. as the guardian notes, according to vought, the office needs to be intimately involved in all aspects of the white house policy process. that's not all. the long difficult road ahead of returning to our beloved constitution starts with being honest with ourselves. it starts by recognizing that we are living in a post constitutional time. vought wrote, in 2022. post constitutional. sounds bad. and, molly, i would agree with you. we kind of think that the parameters of the constitution

maybe we would like that they're the basic framework of our democracy. >> and let's just underline the fact, again, that, you know, donald trump disavowed project 2025 and had nothing to do with it, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera and one of the architects being put into a key position. >> and he was in office of management and budget before. i think he will sail through. this is a very legitimate -- it is just that his -- his goal, his gestalt is not the federal government we lived with this whole time. he wants to really sort of shut down. and i think the larger anxiety here for a lot of people is that he may try not to fund the federal government, and he may try to enact budgetary reforms in a way that sort of circumvents the congress, and that is sort of one of these structures of project 2025 is this idea that you can, in fact,

sort of take apart the federal government from the inside out, and give the president as much power as possible. and so if our goal here as, you know, if our goal is to protect norms and institutions, this kind of circumventing of the congress is sort of a new and kind of scary paradigm. >> let's bring you in on this exact idea, the product 25 concept, but it predates that. steve bannon in the early days of the first trump administration said well, he wanted to do was dismantle the administrative state, take it all apart and feels like trump is putting a team in place to do just that. >> and i think that's the point of molly's piece, and the threat of this particular individual. and it comes after an entire campaign was spent saying, we got nothing to do with project 2025. and now, of course, it has been institutionalized. but there is the deeper sort of irony, absurdity of people saying we're living in a post constitutional order.

typically when people talk about a constitutional order, it is about more balance of powers and more robust legislative branch. but that's not what they're talking about. this talk about a post constitutional order, it is interesting to think about when does that kick in? is it the 14th amendment? is it the 1950s and '60s? what point did we slide into this? i think what the real job is to actually create a true conservative in a sense of conserving our constitution's coalition that a lot of senators can be part of if they choose to defend it. otherwise we'll go further down the road, creating a imperial president presidency. it is easy to focus in on any one of the potential selections there with kash patel. we talked about pete hegseth, tulsi gabbard, with syria back in the news. that is a pick that is going to have a lot of concerns. but just in terms of the overall -- these overall -- the

checks and balances of the federal government, the agencies, even congress itself, do you have faith right now under what is an onslaught from donald trump, do you have faith they'll hold? >> i don't know. i think some of them will. i think it would be foolish to be overly optimistic at this point. the way i look at this, you described this as an onslaught from donald trump. the way i think of this new administration is that trump has gotten what he wanted. trump's -- all of trump's main goals have been achieved. he has stayed out of jail. he has quashed the cases against him, and he's going to now seek revenge against particular people and institutions that he thinks were after him. for him, that's everything. and he has opened the doors and said the rest of you may indulge yourselves, give me some cabinet secretaries who look good on tv, that's really all i understand.

what makes vought -- molly is dead right to focus on vought, vought is going to -- has a lot of power in a place that donald trump finds boring. it is always important to remember, donald trump doesn't care about policy. he doesn't understand it. he can't be briefed on it. he's basically uneducatable. so vought can just pretty much say, you know, we got this, don't worry and he will have immense power and john's absolutely right. we didn't know anything about project 2025, but basically this guy over at omb because of donald trump's limitations is going to basically run the government. that's incredibly dangerous. but if there is a -- john, back to your point about will the institutions hold, this is going to be so disorganized and so chaotic and so much back fighting and infighting that, you know, that may work to the

benefit of american institutions because while vought may be competent, there are going to be a lot of other people in the administration who have no idea what they're doing. >> i've always talked about a man who is probably the most skilled, tom, that i met, and all my interviewing and over the past 15, 20 years and serving in congress, the man most skilled at knowing how washington works, bob gates, who ran the dod, who ran the cia, when he wrote a leadership book, said about 75%, 80% of his day was trying to stay one step ahead of the bureaucrats in the institutions that he served. he wasn't deriding them. he just said it is such a massive undertaking, running one of these agencies, especially the dod, that that does -- he gets through 60, 70, 75% of his day, he goes and then at that point, i can start focusing on

how i want to change the agency. how i want to improve the agency. i want to improve the lives of the men and women in uniform and their families, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. what you're saying is so important that, again, this isn't just bad for america, the dod, it would be bad for any president who wanted to institute those changes that you're talking about. >> yeah, although i -- there are two things here. one is when donald -- people keep asking, well, how will donald trump institute long-term change? i'm going to keep saying it, he doesn't care about any of that. he just doesn't care. and so, you know, that i suspect probably won't happen. what you'll get in place of long-term change is ongoing chaotic, you know, an ongoing chaotic mess. the last time around is one of my friends in the military quipped, he said the two most common surnames on doors at the

pentagon were acting and temporary. but the other thing to consider is that if trump gets some of these picks, then the people you have to look at, if hegseth, by some miracle, ends up becoming secretary of defense, the person running the defense department is going to be the deputy secretary. the number two guy. that will probably be some career dod person or somebody with a lot of experience in this. hegseth won't be running the pentagon and people will miss that. most people don't know that there is a deputy secretary of defense. all of that second tier of bureaucrats at the pentagon, at justice, and other places, they'll actually be running those institutions and that goes back to jonathan lemire's point, maybe that's where the resilience comes in, because if you really want to change a place like the pentagon, you need a bob gates. you're not going to do it with a pete hegseth and two or three

under secretaries. >> you better know what you're doing and we're going to get -- next block, i'm going to talk to john avlon, because right now it may be hard to see, but it is important to remember that there is an election in '26. so overreaching with project 2025 leads to big democratic gains in election 2026. and that's just the political reality. >> the atlantic's tom nichols, thank you very much. his latest piece is on kash patel and it is available to read online now. online shoppers spent close to $11 billion on black friday, that's more than double what consumers spent in 2017. worldwide, 69% of all purchases came from mobile devices, meaning far fewer people ventured out to shop in person. for more, let's bring in cnbc's dom chu.

still cyber monday. tuesday and wednesday. >> cyber all the way through. but it is so interesting that all the shopping on black friday, and it used to -- it was just an event. and i saw some commercials on nfl games, and they seemed kind of quaint, talking about everybody rushing to walmart or other big stores. most people just pick up their phones and shop. right? >> more than half of them. exactly. it is just easier. and, by the way, there is a bleed effect, right? i think i told you guys before, i think i told willie this past week, for me, the shopping season started maybe a couple of months ago because you already had retailers putting out their early deals. they had early prime day, early everything else out there. so, i think a lot of americans actually were able to get some of that shopping done for deals ahead of black friday and ahead of this cyber monday. but even with that, those numbers that mika just reeled

off indicate that people are still continuing to spend. so, if cyber monday, today, is anything like black friday, we could see another record for consumer spending during what is pretty much evolved to be the biggest single online shopping day of the year. those numbers you talked about, we're going to see even more for this cyber monday. the same adobe analytics numbers that you got for that $11 billion spend for black friday could end up becoming $13.2 billion today and that would be a 6% increase over last year. there is no reason to think right now that a record will not be set today given what we saw there. but the interesting part about this is what it says about the american consumer. because it says that it remains remarkably resilient in the face of what many think is continued threats from inflation. now, the pace of those

inflationary threats has decreased substantially over the course of the last year. but the prices are still higher for many things than they were over the last few years. so it will be a dynamic to keep track of. the other thing i want to point out is where else other people are spending is on just not just shopping, but also going to the movie theater, right? opening -- the weekend that we saw for moviegoers this past five days, they shelled out a record $420 million for movie tickets in the five-day window that started on thanksgiving and then ended just on sunday. now, as you're seeing there, the biggest thanksgiving haul wasn't all that unexpected given the early indications. we saw disney's "moana 2" take in $221 million in the five-day span, making it the biggest thanksgiving holiday movie ever.

coming in second was "wicked," picking up $117.5 million. that brings its total domestic receipts to $262.4 million, which makes it the biggest broadway adaptation film of all time. and then, of course, universal disclaimer-wise, sister company to msnbc, and cnbc, third place is paramount's "gladiator 2," which topped another $44 million in the last five days bringing its total over ten days to $111.2 million. they're not just spending online shopping. they're also going for experiences like the movie theater, "gladiator," "wicked" and "moana 2." and one more thing, we'll cap it off with late breaking news we saw in just the last hour or so, that's computer chip giant intel. it announced that ceo pat gelsinger has retired from the company effective immediately that move caps off what has been a rocky and tumultuous tenure as the ceo of one of america's most

storied tech companies after a nearly four-year tour as the chief executive. intel is a brand for many americans that they know, especially anyone who owns a pc or laptop. pcs are still used in many of those things, but it never regained the glory days it had during the dotcom era in the late 1990s and 2000s. it is now far surpassed in value and influence by names like nvidia and taiwan semiconductor and others which are valued at multiples higher than intel is. the board is conducting a ceo search. a lot of big news out there and spending is a big part of that story, guys. back over to you. >> all right, cnbc's dom chu, thank you so much. we appreciate it. coming up, one country passes a landmark ban on social media for children under 16. we'll tell you which nation was able to pull that off.

plus, we'll have more on the record-breaking hit "wicked" which the director jon m. chu joins us just ahead. you're watching "morning joe." j. you're watching "morning joe." cool right? look at this 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 ♪

welcome back. time for a look at some of the other stories making headlines this morning. australia lawmakers approved a landmark ban on social media for children under the age of 16. the measure will make social media platforms liable for fines up to $33 million for failure to prevent children from holding accounts. the platforms now have one year to implement the ban before penalties are enforced. china is studying the impact on western nctions on russia. according to "the wall street journal," chinese officials are closely watching how moscow circumvents the economic

penalties. china has long viewed taiwan as part of its own territory, and has recently stepped up its military posture in the region. and the ceo of a major automaker is stepping down. carlos tavares, the chief executive of stellantis, which produces chrysler, jeep, ram, and dodge, resigned yesterday. the company had faced declining profits and slumping sales across north america. tavares had previously said he plans to retire at the end of 2026. so back to the conversation that we were having before we went to break, john avlon, before you go, what is your take? joe was making the very point that you got to watch what you wish for because radicalism one year can lead to two years later big democratic wins. >> 100%. that's the pendulum swing. that's what happens when people overreach, they court a backlash.

the question we're dealing with in our current politics is how much of this stuff is baked in the cake. you get different turnout models. because trump did not have a massive mandate, but he's acting like he's going to run the table ideologically, with -- including with empowering project 2025, which was less popular than lice in a lot of polling in the last election, that's going to provoke a massive backlash. it just is. the question is whether democrats will be in the position to benefit from it because they need to make sure they are building that broader coalition, that they are not looking like they're in hawk to the culture war distractions that have very little to do, that they are focused on rebuilding the middle of our politics, the middle of our economy. that's the key test for democrats. taking crime and the border seriously, but that pendulum swing is going to come back. a lot of damage can get done in that time. but you got to think, especially if you look at the senate map, the house, that pendulum swing is going to come back. the more extreme trump gets, the more pendulum swing will come

kicking. >> just because we're not shocked, appalled and hair on fire does not mean that we don't see what's happening here. this is what we were warned about. and what we're looking at now, what the consequences will be on both sides of the aisle, and it could be consequences all around to some of these picks. thank you very much, john avlon, we really appreciate it. coming up, we'll take a look at the massive hit -- movie "wicked" which explores the complex friendship between the wicked witch of the west and glinda, the good. the director of the film jon m. chu joins us live in studio on that and why he says he waited 20 years to helm the project. "morning joe" will be right back. o helm the project "morning joe" will be right back

what causes a curve down there? is it peyronie's disease? will it get worse? how common is it? who can i talk to? can this be treated? stop typing. start talking to a specialized urologist. because it could be peyronie's disease, or pd. it's a medical condition where there is a curve in the erection, caused by a formation of scar tissue. and an estimated 1 in 10 men may have it. but pd can be treated even without surgery. say goodbye to searching online. find a specialized urologist who can diagnose pd and build a treatment plan with you. visit makeapdplan.com today.

drop everything and get some magic of your own and build a treatment during the xfinity black friday sale. xfinity internet customers, our best deals of the year are back! switch to xfinity mobile and get your choice of a free 5g phone, plus your next unlimited line free for a year. get amazing savings and connect to wifi speeds up to a gig on the go with xfinity mobile. fly don't walk to get our best deals of the year. connect to the world of wicked this holiday, the future of cool, comfortable sleep is here. introducing the new sleep number climate cool smart bed. the only smart bed in the world that actively cools and effortlessly adjusts to both of you. sleep up to 15 degrees cooler on each side. it actively cools by drawing warm air away from your body, to keep you cool and comfortable throughout the night. our smart sleepers get 28 minutes more restful sleep per night. and now, save 50% on the sleep number limited edition smart bed. plus, free home delivery beds when you add a base. shop a sleep number store near you.

what's that sound?

no. >> who are you? and why do you seek me? >> say the thing. say the -- >> say something. say something. >> my name is elphaba. and this is -- >> elphaba. >> a man. >> elphaba. i didn't know it was you. you made it. >> a clip from the blockbuster hit "wicked" currently in theaters. the film is now the highest grossing broadway adaptation of all time, domestically surpassing $260 million at the u.s. box office since its release on november 22nd. joining us now, the film's

director jon m. chu, congratulations. is there a "wicked" part two already under way? >> we shot them at the same time. so we're editing it now. >> okay. >> this is -- >> my daughter and i are going to have a "wicked" party. >> talk about how this is a long time coming. >> yeah. >> everybody knew about the musical. for you, this has been an idea, decades in the making. >> yeah. i saw "wicked" before it was on broadway, in san francisco. i grew up in the bay area and my mom took me and i remember just being blown away. i was, like, this feels more cinematic than any show i've ever seen. this is 20 something years ago. i had no idea i would be the one they would call eventually to go make it. so i feel very blessed for that. >> jon, congrats on the film's success. the actual making of these films was very long.

you're doing two at once. walk us through. what is a product of that size and scope like? what are the challenges you had to overcome? >> when ing oz, in the land of oz, all these different things embedded in our culture, it was important to build oz, so we built emerald city. we built munchkin land, the 9 million tulips we planted and then, of course, all the cast and, you know, thousands of people, as munchkins and emerald city people and then cynthia erivo and ariana grande and michelle yeoh and jeff goldblum and the whole thing comes together, it takes every department to come together, physical effects, visual effects, and music. you add the musical element on top of that. steven swartz, brilliant songwriter, who wrote all of these. so, yeah, it was a lot. i'm still tired. >> you directed one of my favorite, favorite movies, "crazy rich asians," it is

moving but it is exciting, but it is visually very beautiful. but a very different kind of movie than "wicked." talk to us about how that works. >> yeah, for "crazy rich asians," that was something that was very scared to make. talking about my own cultural identity crisis is, like, something i avoided all my movies before because i didn't want to be seen as an asian american director. just seen as a director. but that was the one that i got to go out there and tell my story through these other characters. and because of the reaction, because people brought out their families and their grandparents and it really changed my view of what cinema can do. you put a movie out there, it can change -- it is the only medium in the world where after one weekend, no matter what pundits say, reviewers say, with the audience shows up, it changes everything and all the actors become huge stars. for me it changed the way i look at movies in general, what i want to do. >> so back to "wicked," one of the decisions you made for the musical is to sing -- have them sing live. don't dub it in later. record it, do it live.

talk to us to why you decided to do that, that choice, what that brought to the film and you had some pretty talented singers to work with. >> two greatest singers of our generation in this movie. that wasn't the plan from the beginning. i didn't want to put the pressure on them. the reality is when you're mixing true acting moments and music, you really want that to integrate as closely as possible, that music isn't just a thing you put on top of the scenes, that is part of the expression, extended part of the dialogue, with dialogue can't cover. and so these girls were able to weave in and out so expertly and it felt every time we did that, it got better. we kept doing that. and we had a pianist live every day, with an ear wig in their ear, like this and they would hear that, we got to hear it echo through all our sets. all day long. we saw people walking to their cars singing "popular," we could feel it on the set. >> that's wonderful. >> talk about -- talk about the

new lens that viewers who may have seen this musical so many times on broadway get to -- get to see this through, and specifically obviously when you're in theater, the emotions have to be more grand and you have to be making sure that everybody sees everything. it is like a bono concert. like, you have -- here with the lenses, you said you can get two inches from a character's face and there is an intimacy to "wicked" the film that you could never get on broadway. talk about that. >> i mean, that's the great thing about cinema is that, one, you walk into a theater and it is black and you're with strangers and we get to take you to the best seats in the house. it is not just whatever ticket you can afford, and we get to do itthe world. and best thing is stuff like flying and defying gravity, we

take you 10,000 feet in the air as she spins around and get there with her and what she's trying to express with her voice and at the same time, be right there for her when she says something has changed within me, something is not the same. and we see that it is not just a declaration of something, but maybe she's conflicted about that idea, that she doesn't want to change but she has to. i think those nuances in this day and age when we all sort of feel that uncomfortable feeling of what is next, we don't know what that answer is, i think it goes a long way for what people are feeling now and the cinema can do that. >> talking about an uncomfortable feeling, most authors who write a memoir talk about the uncomfortable feeling they have writing it and then after it is done. you have written a memoir, a memoir of seeing and being seen. tell us about your decision to do it. any second thoughts you may have had, and what readers are going to see. >> yeah, it is really awkward to

right your own book with jeremy mccarter, great co-author, but it felt like therapy. it was during covid and i felt like talking about what it meant to chase your dreams what it meant to be in a creative business, everybody, you know, when i was doing it in high school, i was one of the only people, now everybody has a phone in their hand, everybody has a camera, everyone is editing. everyone is learning the power of that grammar and what i wish i had at that time is understanding that power and understanding what to do with that power and that actually what you have to say is important with it. so you have to be careful with that. so i tried to make something i wish i had when i was 16, 17 years old, i was going through the ups and downs, something that helped nudge me through all the uncomfortable hard parts of it. that's where it started. i love seeing people read it all around the country and get that feeling. >> "wicked" is in theaters now. jon's book "view finder" is also available now. director and author jon m. chu,

thank you very much, and congratulations on your incredible success. we appreciate it. coming up, we'll take a look at the morning papers including a concerning story about the number of americans who do not trust science. "morning joe" is back in a moment. t science. "morning joe" is back in a moment so, what are you thinking? i'm thinking... (speaking to self) about our honeymoon. what about africa? safari? hot air balloon ride? swim with elephants? wait, can we afford a safari? great question. like everything, it takes a little planning. or, put the money towards a down-payment... ...on a ranch ...in montana ...with horses let's take a look at those scenarios. j.p. morgan wealth management has advisors in chase branches and tools, like wealth plan to keep you on track. when you're planning for it all... the answer is j.p. morgan wealth management. hi. i'm damian clark. i'm here to help you understand how to get the most from medicare. if you're eligible for medicare, it's a good idea to have original medicare. it gives you coverage for doctor office visits and hospital stays. but if you want even more benefits,

you can choose a medicare advantage plan like the ones offered at humana. our plans combine original medicare with extra benefits in a single, convenient plan with $0, or low monthly plan premiums. these plans could even include prescription drug coverage with $0 copays on hundreds of prescriptions. plus, there's a cap on your out-of-pocket costs. most plans include dental, vision, even hearing coverage. there are $0 copays for in-network preventive services, and much more. get the most from medicare with a humana medicare advantage plan. call today to learn more. remember, annual enrollment for medicare advantage plans ends december 7th. humana. a more human way to health care.

i was out on a delivery, when i came across a snake... a rattler. fedex presents tall tales of true deliveries there we were, driver versus reptile. our battle was legendary. (♪♪) wait a second. you don't own a pet snake, do you? phew maybe now my friends will believe me. if this is what we did for one delivery, see what we can do for your business. fedex. you don't stop being you just because see what we can do foyou turn 65. ss. but, you do face more risk from flu and covid. last year alone, those viruses hospitalized

nearly 1 million people 65 and older. 1 million. vaccines lower your risk of getting really sick, so you can keep doing you.

time for a look at the morning papers. a new poll showing a concerning amount of americans who doubt scientists. the pew research center asked, u.s. adults if they believe scientists act in the best interest of the public about 76% anticipated yes, a slight increase from the same time last year but significantly down from 2019 when 86% said -- >> well, i mean -- >> yes. >> that's 10 percentage points and a drop but that will go back up further probably we get from

the pandemic. >> let's hope. >> let's hope so for everybody's well being and health. >> "the florida times union" looking back on the 2024 hurricane season. 18 named storms and 11 hurricanes wreaked havoc in the atlantic. five hurricanes made landfall in the u.s. killing hundreds of people and causing nearly $200 billion in damage. experts say climate change will continue to make these storms become more intense and destructive. >> what's so frightening is how quickly they intensified, especially the last storm that started over the gulf instead of coming across the atlantic so dangerous. that does it for us this morning. jose diaz-balart picks up the coverage in one minute. balart p coverage in one minute — (balloon doug pops & deflates) and then i wake up. is limu with you in all your dreams? oh, yeah. only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty, liberty, liberty, liberty. ♪

right now on msnbc, pardon power. new reaction to the president's sweeping and unco